Oddly tucked between glamorous and snazzy outlets selling branded clothing and fashionable accessories, is a bookshop to the left before you enter the main square of Jinnah Super Market in Islamabad. A narrow front leads you into a rather longish space filled with thousands of books on subjects as varied as philosophy and philology, horticulture and husbandry. Atlases, journals and magazines of different shapes and sizes, colours and smells, hardbound and paperback, are lined or stacked from the floor to the ceiling. There are tall racks fixed to the walls and erected in the middle of the shop, leaving only enough space for a person to slightly bend downward or squat on the floor to look at the books tightly huddled in the bottom shelves.

One of the oldest bookshops in the capital city, Old Books Collection is a treasure trove of old and new English-language books from around the world. Except for some new arrivals which meet your eye as you enter, it requires a bit of hard work if you are looking for something in particular. There is certainly an order to how books are categorised, but you have to either frequent the store often to be able to locate an author, a subject and a title, or you have to ask the attendant. This traditional way of keeping books makes it homely and gives one the feeling of browsing through a friend’s personal library. It is a personal library that is open to ardent bibliophiles and occasional readers alike, where you feel more like a guest than a buyer.

This is a collection put together by Malik Ejaz, who built it book by book over decades after deciding to specialise in English-language books. These books include international literature translated into English. He acquired old and new titles from readers and publishers within the country and abroad. If you couldn’t find a specific book anywhere, you were sure to find it in Ejaz’s collection. Else, you placed a request and he would produce it for you in a few days. Each visit also introduced you to some new title — which may have been old otherwise in terms of its publication date — and some new author. Ejaz served as both Google and Amazon when these services were not available to us. He had this uncanny sense of figuring out what you needed after only a couple of your visits. From C.P. Cavafy to Derek Walcott, Philip Larkin to Seamus Heaney — all were made available to lovers of poetry. He was very familiar with classical and contemporary fiction and knew what would sell to whom. He would not only show you novels that were shortlisted for or awarded Booker or Pulitzer prizes, but also ones that were less celebrated but important for serious readers to have a look. If you were interested in philosophical works or non-fiction, he had racks full of them to occupy you.

Ejaz had a range of customers, including many foreigners who would spend a few years in Islamabad and then leave. People from other cities would also visit his bookstore. He was friendly and hospitable to regulars, offering them tea and snacks and engaging them in interesting conversations about books, authors, reading habits and the challenges of his trade. From keeping books safe from silverfish and termites to why poetry sold less and current affairs sold more, he had a distinct opinion on everything about books. Once he told me: “Well, poetry doesn’t sell. But you tell stories in your poems and I am sure you can write prose. Write a novel instead. If it is a success, you will be able to leave your day-job and concentrate on writing.” “But I am not a fiction writer. I don’t have the skill,” I protested. He laughed at me. “You think all of those who are writing and selling fiction know what it is about?”

In a country which seems to have turned into an intellectual wasteland, Islamabad can still boast the presence of some fine bookstores, many of them quite large, such as Mr Books, Saeed Book Bank, London Book Co., Book Searchers, etc. But his bookstore was the dreamworld of Malik Ejaz. He left his dreamworld on Dec 25, 2016, at the age of 53. I hope his passion survives as his wife and co-workers continue to run Old Books Collection.

The writer is a poet and essayist based in Islamabad. His collection of essays Crimson Papers: Reflections on Struggle, Suffering, and Creativity in Pakistan was recently published by Oxford University Press

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, April 9th, 2017