The colorful hijabs of the women and the smoke of the hookahs welcome the patrons at Book Forum (Multaqi al-Kitab), a literary cafe near the University of Mosul, in the eastern part of the city.

Old photos of Mosul in the 1930s and portraits of poets and writers decorate the walls. The famous Arab 10th-century poet Al-Mutanabbi shares the same wall with Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, and both enjoy the company of Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Russian master of 19th-century novels.

It was difficult to imagine a place like Book Forum a year ago, when the Iraqi government announced the defeat of the Islamic State (IS), which had taken control of a third of the Iraqi territories. But the literary cafe opened its doors on Jan. 1.

Book Forum attracts both women and men, and especially students. Maslawis — as the people in Mosul are known in Iraq — enjoy getting together at the cafe to talk, read and smoke the hookah. The bookshelves are filled with thousands of Arabic novels, poetry books and masterpieces of the past, in addition to French, English, Spanish and Russian literature. Patrons can buy tea, coffee and juices and order pizzas, salads and sandwiches from a nearby cafe and enjoy the meal at Book Forum.