In the 1990s, I first met Rana Abdul Rehman. His body was found a few days ago in a canal near Faisalabad.

On July 9, he was kidnapped in Lahore by unknown people after he had left home for his publishing house and bookshop called the Book Home. It is one of the few publishing houses in the country that promote enlightenment and critical thinking. Book Home produces books, mostly in Urdu, for all ages in varied branches of knowledge — from history to politics to global affairs — besides translations and other progressive literature.

Rehman was Zahoor Ahmed’s partner in establishing and running Fiction House publishers. On one humid and warm afternoon 30 years ago, there were quite a few people present in the Fiction House office and bookshop. They had gathered to listen to Dr Mubarak Ali’s views on the history of the Subcontinent.

Dr Sahib was both happy and surprised to see me when I entered Fiction House. I think there were two reasons for that. One, my presence was unexpected, as I didn’t live or spend much of my time in Lahore during those days and, two, I had recently reviewed his book Bar-i-Sagheer Mein Musalmaan Muashrey Ka Almiya [The Tragedy of Muslim Society in the Subcontinent] for Herald magazine.

I had met Zahoor Ahmed before but Rehman was introduced to me by Dr Sahib on that day. We instantly became friends, both because of the personal likenesses that you develop immediately for some people and because of the political ideology that we shared. Rehman was an affectionate and decent man.

Some years later, I found out that Rehman had left Fiction House and established his own publishing firm, Book Home. There was a gap of some years in our meetings due to my extensive travel and work routine. But then I started visiting him again, every once in a while, at Book Home.

Book Home is located near Safan Wala Chowk on Mozang Road. Sanjh Publications, another leading progressive publisher of Punjabi, Urdu and English books, is also in the vicinity. It is run by another dear friend and comrade-in-arms Amjad Saleem Minhas.

It was a delight to visit Mozang Road and meet both Rehman and Minhas and get some of their newly published titles. Undoubtedly, a major incentive was to get half of the books for free and the other half at their cost price. I always used to say: ‘Live long my generous friends.’ It seems that the Almighty turned down my prayer for a long life for Rehman.

Grieving for and thinking about the time spent together with Rehman and his passion for publishing and selling books took me down memory lane. I started thinking about the bookshops in Lahore I have a personal association with.

Grieving for and thinking about the time spent together with Rana Abdul Rehman and his passion for publishing and selling books took me down memory lane. I started thinking about the bookshops in Lahore I have a personal association with.

As a child, Ferozsons was the first bookshop I visited in Lahore with my father. We had come up from Karachi, like our family would do in most summers during the 1970s. My father’s Lahore office was on Fane Road and we walked from there to Ferozsons on the Mall. He told me that he used to visit the Ferozsons press in the walled city since 1942, even some years before the main bookshop on the Mall was opened.

After some crackdown on freedom fighters in Lucknow, my grandfather had sent my father to stay with some relatives in Lahore, where my father had enrolled in the Oriental College. While sifting through and picking up books in Ferozsons, I remember my father fondly remembering his older poet friend Sirajuddin Zafar. Zafar was married into the company’s founder Maulvi Ferozuddin’s family and later looked after their operations in Karachi.

After growing up, I started visiting Mavra Books, which is run by poet and publisher Khalid Sharif. Sharif was the first to have kept my earlier English poetry collections on display in his bookshop. It was such a pleasure to be in Sharif’s company, discuss the landscape of poetry and spend time in the bookshop.

There is also another memory associated with my first visit to Mavra Books in 1998. After a lot of effort, the leading English language poet Taufiq Rafat had agreed to meet me. Perhaps my friends, which include his sons and nephews, had convinced him. He had been a recluse for many years and was not meeting any new people. I had a deep desire to meet him before leaving for my studies abroad. Once the plan had been firmed up, I also called Sharif for a meeting on the same day and he politely agreed.

After I boarded the aircraft in Karachi for Lahore, the flight stewardess brought me Dawn. There was a single-column news on the last page about Rafat’s passing. Imagine how that would have felt. But I did manage to meet Sharif and visit Mavra Books for the first time on that day.

In Liberty market, Gulberg, Variety Books is the place that has flourished over the past few decades. They stress as much on selling stationery as books. But a good range of titles remain on offer. A little away from Gulberg is The Last Word in DHA. It is an exquisite bookshop where some unique titles can be found.

And, last but not the least, Readings on Main Boulevard in Gulberg has left an indelible mark on Pakistan’s publishing and bookselling scene. I visited Readings first when my activist and writer friend Amir Riaz Tutu joined it many years ago. It has been an occasional haunt since.

Au revoir Rana Abdul Rehman. Open a bookshop in the heavens and we will visit.

The writer is a poet and essayist. His latest collections of verse are Hairaa’n Sar-i-Bazaar and No Fortunes to Tell.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 21st, 2024