KARACHI: With a backpack slung over his shoulder, Habib Hussain Abbasi, 74, turned into a street off Karachi’s bustling Napier Road and lifted the shutter to open “Abbasi Kutubkhana.”

Established as a roadside stall in 1910 by Abbasi’s maternal grandfather Ghulam Abbas Dawoodbhai in Juna Market, Abbasi Kutubkhana now stands as the port city’s oldest bookstore. 

Located in a 48-square-yard space with a ground and a mezzanine floor, the store houses over 6,000 books on a variety of topics from politics and history to school syllabus and fiction. New titles as well as many that are over 60 years old are available in several languages, including Urdu, Arabic, Persian, English, Pashto, Sindhi, Punjabi, and Saraiki. 

“It’s like you have arrived from a desert to an oasis,” Abbasi told Arab News in an interview one morning this month as he entered his bookstore, which he described in its heyday as a vibrant space frequented by Karachi’s writers, poets, scholars and politicians. 

Abbasi himself started sitting at the store when he was in the fourth grade, he said, coming straight from school in his uniform to assist his father. 

“I would change here, have my lunch and start helping my father,” he recalled. “Still every day I ache to come here. For me it is like having food, if I don’t come here for a day, I feel like I’m hungry.”

Around the bookstore, one can find stalls of street food like jalebis and samosas and shops selling crockery, hardware, spices and shoes but there are no other bookstores in sight. 

That was not always the case.

After Pakistan gained independence in 1947, Abbasi said, around a dozen bookstores emerged in Juna Market, making it the go-to area for Karachi’s book lovers. 

“Earlier there used to be many bookstores here, at least 10-12,” the shop owner said.

“Slowly they started diminishing, to the point that now only my bookstore is left ... reaching this place [Juna Market] is a task in itself.”

But the shop’s vast collection means if one can’t find a book elsewhere in the city, they will eventually still make the hike to Juna Market and end up at Abbasi Kutubkhana. 

“A customer came looking for some specific books which were not available in the market, hence I have come here looking for those books,” said Nizamuddin Khan, a customer at Abbasi’s shop who himself owns a bookstore in the city’s Urdu Book Bazaar. 

“Generally, if a customer needs a book that is out of stock anywhere in Pakistan and has very little chance of being found, there is a 90 percent chance they will find it here.”

And Abbasi does not mind if you aren’t a paying customer. 

“If they come and sit here, read the book, take notes or make photocopies, they are fully allowed to do so,” he added. 

While Abbasi has carried on his grandfather’s and father’s legacy of managing the bookstore for 60 years, none of his three children have opted to join the family business. 

That worries the septuagenarian. 

“I need to think about the bookstore’s future,” he said, particularly in an era when online sales have been driving independent bookstores out of business across the world:

“It would have been a wise decision on my part if I had pursued that direction [of setting up an online bookstore], it would have helped me significantly. From the beginning, I did not lean toward that approach … Sometimes, I hold myself responsible and question why I didn’t … Had I done so, it would have created more ease for people as well.”

Pointing at other shops in the street, Abbasi said:

“Sandals or shoes are displayed in beautiful glass showcases while books are being sold on footpaths. This is a huge tragedy when it comes to books.”

Then he paused, and added: 

“But God willing, I won’t let that happen to this bookstore.”

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar will attend the oath taking ceremony of Iran’s President-elect Masoud Pezeshkian in Tehran today, Tuesday, the foreign office confirmed, saying that the visit attests to the two countries’ commitment to forge stronger bilateral ties. 

Pezeshkian will take oath of office after Iran’s supreme leader formally endorsed him as the country’s president on Sunday. Pezeshkian won a runoff election on July 5 against his ultraconservative opponent Saeed Jalili to replace president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash in May.

“Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar will lead the Pakistan delegation at the inauguration/oath ceremony of the President-elect of Iran, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian, to be held on 30 July 2024 in Tehran,” Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) said in a statement. 

“The visit attests to the commitment by the two countries to strengthen leadership-level engagement and bilateral cooperation.”

Pakistan and Iran have had a history of rocky relations despite several commercial pacts. Their highest profile agreement is a stalled gas supply deal signed in 2010 to build a pipeline from Iran’s Fars gas field to Pakistan’s southern provinces of Balochistan and Sindh.

Pakistan and Iran also find themselves at odds due to the instability along their shared porous border, with their leaders routinely trading blame after militant attacks in their respective territories.

Earlier this year in January, Pakistan and Iran exchanged airstrikes, with each government claiming to have targeted militant hideouts in the other country. Both states have since made peace overtures and restored bilateral ties through multiple high-level visits.

One of these high-level visits included that of Raisi, who visited Pakistan in April this year. Both countries resolved to enhance their bilateral trade to $10 billion during the late Iranian president’s official tour. 

Pezeshkian, a relative moderate, will assume office amid soaring tensions and fears of a wider conflict breaking out in the Middle East with Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah threatening to attack each other. 

Iran on Sunday warned Israel against attacking Lebanon as Israeli authorities blame Hezbollah for a rocket attack on Saturday that hit a football ground in Israel-occupied Golan Heights. Twelve people were reportedly killed in the attack, with Israel vowing to inflict a heavy response against Hezbollah.