Peshawar closing its
books By Shaheen Buneri and
Charles Recknagel
For more than 55 years,
the Maktaba-e Sarhad bookstore has been a cultural
monument in the heart of Peshawar [the
administrative center of Pakistan's Federally
Administered Tribal Areas]. But now, the store is
closing.
"Those who love reading books
have no money, and those with money are busy in
other activities," owner Haji Rasheed says, with
tears in his eyes, amid his once-crowded
bookshelves.
When he opened in 1956, he
says, he had a "missionary's zeal" to squeeze the
whole world of ideas into his medium-sized shop.
And he succeeded. His shop had 30,000 books in
English, Pashto, and Urdu, ranging from literature
to studies of law,
theology, medicine, and
political science.
But beginning last
month, Rasheed priced everything at 50% off. Now,
with just 3,000 books left, he is turning from
selling books to the more profitable business of
selling computers, radios, and televisions.
The collapse of his bookstore might seem
like just another business failure if it had
happened elsewhere. But in Peshawar, it is the
third of the city's landmark bookstores to fold in
the past two years. After it closes, there will be
only one major bookstore left downtown and one in
a distant suburb.
War of ideas The
disappearance of Peshawar's bookstores is as much
about the city's creeping Talibanization as it is
about economics.
Since 2001, suicide and
other bombings have become commonplace in
Peshawar. Militant groups openly rail against
institutions they see as Western-influenced or
corrupting Islamic values. Music stores and
bookstores are among the favorite targets of their
wrath.
At the same time, the militants
directly undercut bookstores' sales by offering
free alternatives. They distribute jihadist
literature outside mosques every Friday. And
private TV stations offer round-the-clock
religious programming.
Adeel Zareef, a
civil society activist in Peshawar, says the war
of ideas began during the 1979-89 Soviet-Afghan
war and never stopped.
"In the 1980s, when
jihadist organizations came into being, they
brought this decay," Zareef says. "Religious
thought dominated original thinking and a certain
political thought and ideology was imposed."
People 'Deprived' Peshawar
offers fertile ground for extremism partly because
there is a constant influx of desperate people.
Once they were refugees from Afghanistan, but
since 2001 they are mostly internally displaced
people (IDPs) from Pakistan's tribal areas fleeing
army operations. According to the UN, 180,000 new
IDPs have arrived since January alone, when the
latest army sweep began in Khyber Agency.
As instability grows, businesses flee to
the comparative security of Islamabad, Lahore, and
Karachi. One of Peshawar's closed bookstores,
Saeed Book Bank, has reopened in the capital, four
hours away by car. The other, Old Book Shop, which
sold used books affordable to poorer students,
closed for good.
The loss of the
bookstores not only deprives Peshawar of books. It
equally deprives the city's intellectuals of
places to meet and feel strong enough to resist
extremists.
"When I was studying in
Peshawar, Saeed Book Bank was full of youngsters.
Even those who were not buying books, they would
also know about the new books by visiting the
shop," says Samar Minallah, a women's rights
activist and documentary producer now living in
Islamabad. "Adjacent to Saeed Book Bank there was
a shop for the repair of musical instruments [now
closed]. The old Book Shop was not merely a book
shop; it was a symbol of our culture. Our younger
generations are being deprived of these cultural
roots."
Still, the city's intellectuals
are far from giving up. After the loss of the
Saeed Book Bank, one group of readers formed
Peshawar Readers Club to try to plug the gap. The
club meets regularly and shares books among its
members.
Club organizer Nasir Yousuf calls
the progressive collapse of bookstores selling
foreign literature a steady isolation of Peshawar
from the world of ideas.
"Why do people
read books in English? Because [English-language]
literature is more advanced than ours," Yousuf
says. "We have a very good [Pashto and Urdu]
literary tradition, but our literature [today] is
in the bondage of a certain ideology. It is very
important that we gradually liberate our future
generations from the bondage of our current
books."
Written by Charles Recknagel,
based on reporting by Radio Mashaal correspondent
Marvais Khan
Copyright (c) 2012,
RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW,
Washington DC 20036
(To view the original
article, please click here.)
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