In the end there is still the word

In a dusty Peshawar street, Robert Fisk happened upon a remarkable bookshop fighting a desperate rearguard action to preserve Afghanistan's literary heritage in the face of Taliban hostility

The dirt comes off on my hands, thick grey, sticky dust, moist with 100 palms, thickened by the dun-coloured exhaust from the Pakistani street. Farid Anwari hands me a grubby white cloth to clean my fingers before I open the cover of a Sixties magazine called Aryana. On the left is a photograph of a bespectacled US diplomat, Chester Bowles, President Kennedy's special envoy, on a mission to King Zahir Shah – the same old king who now languishes in Rome. And what is Mr Bowles telling the Afghan monarch? "We greatly admire the people of Afghanistan," he says in the caption, "and their long, proud heritage of national independence."

Even the plastic "Old Books" sign on the window has seen better days, and has peeled in the heat. Afghan kids peer through the door with hangdog expressions, waiting for a 10-rupee note. They cannot read. Indeed, most Afghans are illiterate. The Anwari bookstore is for the intellectuals of Afghanistan, the last doctors and professors and civil servants passing through Peshawar, who want to preserve their culture – those who have not already sold their libraries in Kabul to stay alive.

Farid Anwari climbs on a stool and reaches for a volume in dark brown leather, blowing black dust from the cover. It is a collection of the first issues of one of Afghanistan's first newspapers, the Serajul Akhbar – the "News of the King" – published in 1895, in the reign of Habibullah Khan. Anwari's hands move across the cover of another volume, Mahmoud Terzi's early newspapers of 1912 – "Titanic period," Farid Anwari says with a cynical grin – and offers me a whole archive of history by the father of Afghan journalism for just £120.

Anwari's father Farhat left Kabul six years ago; the former head of the arts and literature section of Afghan state television until the Taliban came along, he decided that art and literature could be dangerous and photographs of living creatures blasphemous.

"We opened our little shop for economic reasons – we needed the money," Farid says. "But we also wanted to provide a service for Afghan intellectuals here in Peshawar and in other countries." And service it is. The poetry of one of Afghanistan's greatest female poets, Mahjouba Heravi, nestles in black patterned covers next to Pietro Mele's 1960s volume of photographs, perhaps the most powerful images ever taken of the Buddhist statues of Bamian, so swiftly turned to dust by the Taliban this year.

Hamid Kashmidi's poetry about Wazir Akbar Khan – "killer of the Englishman McNaughten," Farid roars – lies beside A Guide to the Kabul Museum by Ann and Louis Dupree and AA Mohammedi. Published in 1968, it contains dozens of photographs of Buddhist busts and Greek statues – all lost now to looters and Taliban iconoclasm.

"The educated Afghans on their way to Western countries and America come here to save their culture and traditions by buying these books," Farid says. "I bought some of them from the shopkeepers on the streets of Kabul. They bought them from professors and specialists who, because they had no money, have sold all their personal libraries. It's not their wish to do so, of course. They had to do it. Times were difficult for them."

Those "times" are catalogued in this little box-like shop in dust and paper, a steadily sinking Titanic of social dream and foreign invasion. Cheerful peasants applaud high dams, new housing estates and seven-year plans in Afghan magazines printed on presses imported from the German Democratic Republic. Unbound files of newspapers from the early 1980s applaud the "fraternal intervention" of Soviet troops; most of the journalists were employees of the Parcham intelligence service.

When I turn over a pile of issues, a cascade of little stones runs from its pages. Two shelves away is a volume from the Royal Library of Zahir Shah, a copy of an 1850 fortnightly journal called Shamsun Nahar – the "Sun in the Day".

Farid has received no books since the American bombardment of Afghanistan began last month; he last visited Kabul in July, bravely carrying with him on his return journey a parcel of antique books, many of them containing the dreaded images of human beings so loathed by the Taliban.

My hands are again black with dirt, and I use Farid's cloth to clean them. Two cardboard-covered volumes have caught my attention. Astonishingly they are published by the Taliban, officially entitled the Islamic Emarate (sic) of Afghanistan, and dated 2000 and 2001. They are – you guessed it – lists of laws, prohibitions on drugs, encouragement for village reconstruction, computer legislation and special rules to cover the work of foreign non-governmental organisations.

Not far away is an even more disturbing volume, Mohamed Ali's Guide to Afghanistan. I open the pages and come across a paragraph that reaches out across the years. "Afghanistan is open to attack, being hemmed in and blocked on all sides...'' Mr Ali informs us. "Hordes of invaders have tried to force their way through these passes in face of a stubborn opposition held out by its inhabitants, and in spite of heavy losses of lives, and property.''

Invaders. Stubbornness. Heavy losses in lives and property. I flick back to the date. 1938. Just 63 years ago, Mr Ali wrote our scripts for us.