在恐怖主義年代堅守的巴基斯坦老書店

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After his father died, Ahmad Saeed took over the office on the ground floor of the family's storied bookstore here, Saeed Book Bank. Then the elderly men started visiting, seeking to settle old debts.

巴基斯坦伊斯蘭堡——父親去世之後，艾哈邁德·賽義德(Ahmad Saeed)就坐進了賽義德書店(Saeed Book Bank)一層的辦公室裏，他家的這座書店有三層樓高。之後，一些老人陸續拜訪，希望償還昔日的債務。

“They all apologized and said they had tried to see my father while he was alive, but his office was always too crowded and they were embarrassed,” Saeed said.

“他們都是來道歉的，說本想在我父親在世時就來拜訪，但他的辦公室總是擠滿了人，而且他們覺得很不好意思，”賽義德說。

Five times such men arrived, hat in hand, not just to pay their respects to the son and family, but also to say they wanted to pay for books they had shoplifted as children. Saeed said his father, Saeed Jan Qureshi, who died of heart failure in September, would have been amused: He had always regarded book theft by children as an investment in a future where people still read, and thus become his customers.

像這樣的拜訪有五次，他們把帽子握在手裏，不僅是向賽義德及家人致以哀悼，同時還表示，希望賠付自己兒時在書店內偷竊的書籍。今年9月，賽義德的父親賽義德江·庫雷希(Saeed Jan Qureshi)因心力衰竭去世。賽義德說，他父親一定會感到很喜悅：他從前總是將偷書的孩子視作對未來的投資，相信他們長大後依然熱愛讀書，會成爲他的顧客。

The man himself became an oracle to those looking for advice on books, taking time to establish a personal connection and to urge favorites on visitors. (That is another thing his son has inherited: He asked a visitor if he had read “Fallen Leaves,” the last book by the prolific American historian Will Durant, published in 2014, more than 30 years after his death.)

對於尋求建議的愛書人來說，庫雷希自己也成爲一個權威，他花很多時間與讀者建立私人關係，還熱心地向他們推薦心頭所好。（兒子也繼承了這個特點：賽義德就追問一位來訪者是否讀過《落葉集》[Fallen Leaves]，這是多產的美國曆史學者威爾·杜蘭特[Will Durant]的遺作，直到他去世30多年後，纔在2014年出版。）

That approach helped Qureshi make an extraordinary future for Saeed Book Bank, particularly in an era when online sales have been driving independent bookstores out of business, and in a region where unfettered book piracy adds to retailers' travails.

庫雷希採取的這種方式，令賽義德書店擁有了光明的前景。尤其是處在當今時代，網購正將獨立書店逐出市場，當地猖獗的盜版，也加重了圖書零售商的負擔。

With his passion for books, Qureshi built one of the biggest bookstores in the world — mostly selling books in English, in a country where that is a second language for most people.

秉承對閱讀的熱衷，庫雷希創辦了這家書店，它是世界上規模最大的書店之一。店內大多數是英文書籍，而在巴基斯坦，英語對大多數人而言都是第二語言。

Saeed Book Bank has 42,000 square feet of usually busy floor space over three stories, displays 200,000 titles, and stocks more than 4 million books in its five warehouses — all, Ahmad Saeed said, “by the grace of the almighty.”

賽義德書店佔地4.2萬平方英尺（約3900平米），三層樓的書店裏人頭攢動。書店陳列着20多萬種書籍，五座倉庫裏有超過400萬冊庫存。艾哈邁德·賽義德將這一切稱作“萬能之神的恩典”。

(His visitor had not read “Fallen Leaves,” so Saeed sent one of his 92 employees to fetch a copy. “It is so good, you must read this book.” Another visitor to the office, an aged doctor named S.H. Naqvi, agreed, having himself read it at their insistence: “It will touch your heart,” he said.)

（一位訪客沒有讀過《落葉集》，於是賽義德派他92名員工中的一個去取來了一本。“這本書寫得太好了，你一定要讀讀看。”另一位來到辦公室的訪客，上了年紀的醫生S·H·納克維[i]，也同意他的說法，他已在店員的強烈推薦下讀過此書。“這本書能觸動你的心，”他說。）

Saeed Jan Qureshi came from a family that worked for a feudal landlord named Mir Banda Ali. His estates in southern Sindh province were so vast that five railway stops reputedly lay within his property lines. His library was similarly scaled, and as a 9-year-old, Qureshi was put to work dusting the shelves. One day Ali found him reading instead of working, and told the boy to get back to work immediately — but added that he could take a book home every night, so long as he returned it in mint condition.

賽義德江·庫雷希的家族曾經爲封建地主工作。那位名爲米爾·班達·阿里(Mir Banda Ali)的地主，在南部的信德省擁有遼闊的土地，據說當時有五個鐵路車站，都在其領地境內。他的藏書閣同樣規模龐大，當時九歲的庫雷希，職責就是撣掃書架灰塵。有一天，地主阿里發現庫雷希在工作時看書，就命令這孩子立刻去幹活，但補充道，每天晚上庫雷希都可以帶一本書回家，只要他愛護書籍，好好還回來就行。

Qureshi never got past high school but he was exceedingly well-read, and after school he found a job as a book salesman for a company that sent him to its Peshawar branch. Later, in the 1950s, he opened his own bookshop in Peshawar.

庫雷希高中都沒上完，但他博覽羣書。離開學校後，他在一家公司找到了圖書推銷員的工作，公司把他派去了白沙瓦的分公司。後來到了50年代，他在白沙瓦開設了自己的書店。

During the Cold War years that followed, Pakistan was an outpost in the U.S. rivalry with the Soviet Union, and Peshawar became an important military base, and later a vital CIA base of operations, particularly during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Say what you will about the spooks, they were readers, and Qureshi built his business around catering to their literary tastes.

在隨後到來的冷戰時期，巴基斯坦是美國對抗蘇聯的堡壘，白沙瓦成了一個重要的軍事基地。後來，白沙瓦又成了美國中央情報局(CIA)的重要行動基地，特別是在蘇聯佔領阿富汗期間。不管你對間諜有什麼看法，但他們也是讀者。庫雷希以滿足他們的文學品味爲核心，發展起了自己的業務。

(Speaking of Afghanistan, Ahmad Saeed said: “Have you read `The Spinner's Tale,' by Omar Shahid Hamid? No?” He seemed mildly shocked. Moments later a Pan Macmillan paperback copy of the novel materialized. “I am sorry, we've sold out of `Fallen Leaves' — it's so hard to keep in stock — but read this,” Saeed said. “A lot of it is set in Afghanistan.”)

（說起阿富汗，艾哈邁德·賽義德說：“你看過奧馬爾·沙希德·哈米德[Omar Shahid Hamid]的《板球投手傳說》[The Spinner’s Tale]嗎？沒有？”他似乎稍微有點震驚。過了一會兒，一本由潘麥克米倫[Pan Macmillan]出版的平裝版《板球投手傳說》便出現在了我面前。“不好意思，《落葉集》賣完了，很難有存貨，不過可以看這本，”賽義德說。“它的很多場景都設定在阿富汗。”）

Later the rise of terrorism and fundamentalist Islam made Peshawar, capital of the wild frontier lands of Pakistan, a dangerous place for a bookseller — especially one who insisted on carrying magazines like Cosmopolitan and Heavy Metal, books by Karen Armstrong on Islam, and even scientist Richard Dawkins' atheist treatise, “The God Delusion.” (“You just wouldn't believe how that sells,” Saeed said. “We buy a thousand copies from Random House every year, year after year.”)

再後來，隨着恐怖主義和伊斯蘭原教旨主義的崛起，作爲巴基斯坦廣袤邊境地帶的首府，白沙瓦對於書商成了一個危險的地方——尤其是一個堅持銷售《時尚》(Cosmopolitan)和《重金屬》(Heavy Metal)等雜誌、凱倫·阿姆斯特朗(Karen Armstrong)有關伊斯蘭教的書籍，乃至科學家理查德·道金斯(Richard Dawkins)的無神論著作《上帝錯覺》(The God Delusion)的書商。（“你根本想不到有多暢銷，”賽義德說。“我們每年從蘭登書屋[Random House]買1000本，年年如此。”）

On the other hand, he said, another best-seller is “The Message of the Qur'an,” an English translation of the holy book by Muhammad Asad, a European Jewish scholar and diplomat who converted to Islam.

他說，另一方面，另一本暢銷書是《古蘭經的訊息》(Message of the Qur’an)。該書是《古蘭經》的英譯本，譯者是皈依了伊斯蘭教的歐洲猶太學者、外交官穆罕默德·阿薩德(Muhammad Asad)。

Forced to close shop in Peshawar, Qureshi focused his efforts in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, a place heavily insulated from the country's more extremist elements. Hard times followed as even Islamabad became a “no families” posting for diplomats and aid workers, but by then the bookstore was so big that its sheer breadth kept it viable, as plenty of Pakistanis read books in English.

被迫關閉白沙瓦的書店後，庫雷希把業務放在了巴基斯坦首都伊斯蘭堡，那裏遠離巴基斯坦較爲極端的勢力。但隨着伊斯蘭堡變成外交官和援助工作者“不宜帶家屬前往”的駐地，經營困難也隨之而來。不過那時，書店已經很大了，單是書籍的廣度就能讓它存活下來，因爲看英文書的巴基斯坦人很多。

“Other Pakistani booksellers laughed at us that we never carried pirated books,” Saeed said. “But only best-sellers get pirated, and we carry everything.”

“其他巴基斯坦書商笑我們從來不賣盜版書，”賽義德說。“但只有暢銷書纔有盜版，而我們本身是什麼都賣的。”

For his father, books were more than just a business, Saeed said. One of the penitent former book thieves who dropped in was Suleman Khan, the vice chancellor of Iqra University, in Islamabad.

賽義德表示，對他父親來說，書不僅僅是一門生意。前來懺悔偷過書的人中，包括伊斯蘭堡伊克拉大學(Iqra University)的副校長蘇萊曼·汗(Suleman Khan)。

“He came to say that when he was a child, 6 years old or so, he stole an Archie comic book and my father saw him,” Saeed said. “He said he was afraid he was going to get slapped, but my father said, `This is good that you like books. So every day you can take a book but keep it in mint condition and return it when you're done so I can still sell it.”'

“他來了以後說，他小時候，大概6歲左右，偷了一本阿奇(Archie)漫畫，被我父親看到了，”賽義德說。“他說他當時很害怕，以爲會捱打，但我父親說，‘喜歡看書這一點很好。你每天都能拿走一本，但要確保書完好無損，看完了要還回來，這樣我還能賣。’”

And then the vice chancellor said, “Everything that I am now, I owe to your father.”

那位副校長說，“我之所以能成爲現在的我，都要歸功於你父親。”

(Naqvi, who is getting on in years, had seemed to doze off for a moment but awoke when he heard that story. “`Fallen Leaves,”' he sighed. “You have to read that book. Everything is in there.”)

（上了年紀的納克維似乎打了會兒瞌睡，但聽到這個故事後，他醒了過來，嘆了口氣說：“《落葉集》你一定要看，一切都在那本書裏。”）