PEOPLE

THE FORLORN CALLS OF AN OLD BOOKS-BUYER

By: Nasser Yousaf

I have expressed my love for books and reading in several articles for the leading Pakistani newspapers. Making another case in support of reading may, therefore, sound repetitive and rhetorical.

There was, however, just some itty bitty that I wanted to add to what I have already stated. Reading classics in old, leather bound editions makes my reading immensely more enjoyable.

We all are familiar with the noun bookseller. But for want of such a noun for those dealing in buying old books, the word has to be hyphenated as books-buyer.

A few lines about a books-buyer, and a very brief ode in memory of the London Books Company Peshawar is all I wish to share with the readers.

A scrawny, slightly built man visits our street daily at exactly the same hour. He walks down and then comes up our small street as hurriedly as possible in a manner as if he was merely fulfilling a vow. During such visits, he calls out three or four times 'purani kitabaaaun' (old books), and then disappears, leaving behind the echoes of his forlorn voice.

I often wonder what keeps this man pursue his calling so doggedly. His entire being appears to have been famished by what he is holding onto so dearly, come rain or sunshine. But he is not giving up. Perhaps, he is living in other times, knowing little that the goods that he used to deal in were no more in fashion. 

We have precious little time for reading. Things have come to such a pass that you literally have to caution the readers about the time it would take to read such and such a piece. It could be three to five minutes, in which case readers would be well advised to set their priorities accordingly.

If this books-buyer is somehow on the lookout for my collection of the older editions, then he ought to know I would never part with them. I inherited these masterpieces from my late uncle who was an assiduous books-collector.

Also if he's looking for some other printed material, he must know that people have stopped reading even the newspapers, digests and magazines.

I feel like telling him one day that he should choose some other calling. But I then admonish myself. Like me, it must be the scent of books that keeps motivating him.

London Books Company Peshawar is no more. The building that housed the bookshop was also known for having Capitol Cinema under its roof.

George Eliot's Middlemarch was the last book I bought some five years ago from London Books. I had noticed Middlemarch for many years in one of the shelves in this bookshop but somehow I would always flinch back from grabbing it. One reason was jts sheer size, a tome indeed it looked to be.

I had not read George Eliot till then. We had her Silas Marner in our collections, which I one day picked up and instantly fell in love with the beauty of its prose. There was no stopping then as I started looking for Eliot's titles to sate my appetite on the beauty of her writing and explore the extent of her genius.

Adieu, and thank you London Books Company Peshawar for gifting me some of the best books that I have read.