November 16, 2003

Like plants and pets, books deserve continuous care. Read or yet unread, books expect frequent attention. Look at them, touch them, turn their pages, absorb their words and renew them. We neglect them at our own peril. If we turn away from them for sometime, or remove them from our sight for a while — for whatever reason — we can upset them so much that they can leave us forever! A terrible revenge, unlike any other. As I discovered recently.

In August 2002 my family and I moved out from the house in which we lived for over 25 years. The change of residence came because the place we lived in was sold to enable the purchase of new premises in another part of Karachi. As the remodeling and virtually complete re-design of the original structure on the new premises required about 10 months, we were obliged to take up temporary residence for this period in the office premises of the family business firm. The office itself also shifted to new premises elsewhere.

This was the background which caused me to pack my books into cartons for the interim period before we settled into our new home in September 2003.

Thirty-five of these cases were stored in a shed on the office premises. But the books were not entirely cut off from human contact. The office watchman occasionally slept in the same shed and kept them company for about 13 months.

The original owners of the books, my wife and I, and some bought by our daughter and our son, did miss the stored and displayed presence of our library which used to be mainly in our downstairs study. But over the years our collection spread into four bedrooms and the verandah upstairs. This made for a disorganized but comfortingly pervasive presence. Partly to make up for the absence during the transition phase of the familiar rows and piles of books, we continued purchasing new books at a regularly irregular frequency. We assured the new arrivals that there were plenty more of their species nearby which would soon be united with them.

Alas, tragedy struck suddenly and, as it often does, unexpectedly. My wife received a telephone call at home from a Mr Azhar at Thomas and Thomas, the historic bookstore at Regal Chowk, Karachi that is more an institution than a retail shop. Mr Azhar conveyed the news that he had just been approached by a Mr Farooq who sells books from a nearby pavement. Mr Farooq requested Mr Azhar to trace me to help verify whether some books that he had just purchased from a push-cart vendor of second hand books did actually belong to me or my wife because several of these books contained our names. Having some prior knowledge about my identity, Mr Farooq was uncertain whether I had actually sold these books.

We were alarmed. But we speculated that these books may really be pamphlets or publicity hand-outs or brochures that could have been sold with the normal periodic disposal of paper rubbish or raddi. So we requested Mr Farooq to bring the books to us for verification.

I was shocked to see them. They were all books, no pamphlets or magazines. Most of them were amongst our most precious possessions, made the more so because several were personally inscribed by the authors. Whether this was the late Dr Mahbubul Haq’s path-breaking Reflections on Human Development or descriptions of participatory appraisal in: Whose Reality Counts? by Robert Chambers or Mumtaz Saeed’s interesting explorations of Management Challenges in the Third World. All the books were amongst those packed into the cartons resting forlorn in the office shed. I recovered the 35 books from Mr Farooq after profusely thanking him and paying him Rs1000 as this was the sum he had paid the vendor.

A panic dash to the shed and a count revealed that where once there were 35 cartons, now there were only 28. Initial inquiries determined that the missing ones must have disappeared when we moved from our temporary residence at the old office premises to our new residence because the shifting also meant a change of the guard and the hiring of a new watchman to look after the now-vacant premises. The new watchman gave a blank, straight-faced denial about any knowledge concerning the missing cartons. But after four days of investigating all options, irrefutable evidence pointed to his guilt. When the new watchman was confronted with the evidence, he maintained about two minutes of further denial, followed by a startling collapse.

“Yes,” said the new watchman. He had sold seven cartons for a sum of Rs2,270. And promptly sent the amount by money order to his family at their village address. The original purchase price of those books must have been at least 50 times the sum that he got. He then proceeded to bow before me, beseeching forgiveness, but did not stop there. He put his forehead to the ground, an act that repelled even more than the discovery of the crime.

Later, despite initial assertions that he had taken no more, and despite being given more time to remember any other items he may have purloined, he eventually confessed to have sold a large grill frame for only Rs200.

What surprised me was my own reaction. The first information about the loss was so painful that I tried to bury it deep inside and put it away in an inner sanctum where it would not recur and continuously hurt me. I did not want to open the remaining 28 cartons to ascertain what exactly we had lost.

I already knew the titles of the 35 books we had recovered. I still do not want to know: until a few more days go by and the pain subsides. When we were moving the 28 cases that survived, one carton broke open to reveal that a rat had managed to get through to the edges of Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond gifted by Abdul Hafeez Sheikh. (For the record, over 95 per cent of our books are self-purchased; only about five per cent received as gifts from friends who write and read!)

What also surprised me was lack of rage at the thief. He is physically thin and slender with a bland expression. His demeanour does not suggest he is capable of such a horrible act as a wholesale pillage of books. Even when two friendly junior police officers from the local station passed by, I could not bring myself to file an FIR. I feared for what would happen when he was interrogated.

Notwithstanding the brazen deceit of the watchman and his artful use of prayer to mask his persona, one could not but be struck by the pathetic aspect of his conduct. Despite reaching first year in college, he obviously had no respect for books. Was his apathy overshadowed by a desperate need for Rs2,270 to overcome his poverty? Or was it mere greed?

The contents of those seven missing cartons are priceless, however easy it may be to purchase replacements. Those lost books, in one abiding sense, are irreplaceable because every one of them was a small milestone of discovery during the journey through the past few decades. Each book evoked a specific memory and association separate from its text.

Perhaps I should have visited the cartons every day while they were stored in the shed and reassured the books inside that they would soon re-occupy pride of place inside our new home. Unseen and untouched for several months — except by a rat and a thief — the books wrought severe retribution.

Wherever those books are now, may they bring light and pleasure to all those who read them.

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