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.

巴基斯坦伊斯兰堡——父亲去世之后，艾哈迈德·赛义德(Ahmad Saeed)就坐进了赛义德书店(Saeed Book Bank)一层的办公室里，他家的这座书店有三层楼高。之后，一些老人陆续拜访，希望偿还昔日的债务。

“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.

“他们都是来道歉的，说本想在我父亲在世时就来拜访，但他的办公室总是挤满了人，而且他们觉得很不好意思，”赛义德说。

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.

像这样的拜访有五次，他们把帽子握在手里，不仅是向赛义德及家人致以哀悼，同时还表示，希望赔付自己儿时在书店内偷窃的书籍。今年9月，赛义德的父亲赛义德江·库雷希(Saeed Jan Qureshi)因心力衰竭去世。赛义德说，他父亲一定会感到很喜悦：他从前总是将偷书的孩子视作对未来的投资，相信他们长大后依然热爱读书，会成为他的顾客。

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.)

对于寻求建议的爱书人来说，库雷希自己也成为一个权威，他花很多时间与读者建立私人关系，还热心地向他们推荐心头所好。（儿子也继承了这个特点：赛义德就追问一位来访者是否读过《落叶集》[Fallen Leaves]，这是多产的美国历史学者威尔·杜兰特[Will Durant]的遗作，直到他去世30多年后，才在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.

库雷希采取的这种方式，令赛义德书店拥有了光明的前景。尤其是处在当今时代，网购正将独立书店逐出市场，当地猖獗的盗版，也加重了图书零售商的负担。

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.

秉承对阅读的热衷，库雷希创办了这家书店，它是世界上规模最大的书店之一。店内大多数是英文书籍，而在巴基斯坦，英语对大多数人而言都是第二语言。

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.”

赛义德书店占地4.2万平方英尺（约3900平米），三层楼的书店里人头攒动。书店陈列着20多万种书籍，五座仓库里有超过400万册库存。艾哈迈德·赛义德将这一切称作“万能之神的恩典”。

(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.)

（一位访客没有读过《落叶集》，于是赛义德派他92名员工中的一个去取来了一本。“这本书写得太好了，你一定要读读看。”另一位来到办公室的访客，上了年纪的医生S·H·纳克维[S.H.Naqvi]，也同意他的说法，他已在店员的强烈推荐下读过此书。“这本书能触动你的心，”他说。）

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.

赛义德江·库雷希的家族曾经为封建地主工作。那位名为米尔·班达·阿里(Mir Banda Ali)的地主，在南部的信德省拥有辽阔的土地，据说当时有五个铁路车站，都在其领地境内。他的藏书阁同样规模庞大，当时九岁的库雷希，职责就是掸扫书架灰尘。有一天，地主阿里发现库雷希在工作时看书，就命令这孩子立刻去干活，但补充道，每天晚上库雷希都可以带一本书回家，只要他爱护书籍，好好还回来就行。

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.

库雷希高中都没上完，但他博览群书。离开学校后，他在一家公司找到了图书推销员的工作，公司把他派去了白沙瓦的分公司。后来到了50年代，他在白沙瓦开设了自己的书店。

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.

在随后到来的冷战时期，巴基斯坦是美国对抗苏联的堡垒，白沙瓦成了一个重要的军事基地。后来，白沙瓦又成了美国中央情报局(CIA)的重要行动基地，特别是在苏联占领阿富汗期间。不管你对间谍有什么看法，但他们也是读者。库雷希以满足他们的文学品味为核心，发展起了自己的业务。

(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.”)

（说起阿富汗，艾哈迈德·赛义德说：“你看过奥马尔·沙希德·哈米德[Omar Shahid Hamid]的《板球投手传说》[The Spinner’s Tale]吗？没有？”他似乎稍微有点震惊。过了一会儿，一本由潘麦克米伦[Pan Macmillan]出版的平装版《板球投手传说》便出现在了我面前。“不好意思，《落叶集》卖完了，很难有存货，不过可以看这本，”赛义德说。“它的很多场景都设定在阿富汗。”）

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.”)

再后来，随着恐怖主义和伊斯兰原教旨主义的崛起，作为巴基斯坦广袤边境地带的首府，白沙瓦对于书商成了一个危险的地方——尤其是一个坚持销售《时尚》(Cosmopolitan)和《重金属》(Heavy Metal)等杂志、凯伦·阿姆斯特朗(Karen Armstrong)有关伊斯兰教的书籍，乃至科学家理查德·道金斯(Richard Dawkins)的无神论著作《上帝错觉》(The God Delusion)的书商。（“你根本想不到有多畅销，”赛义德说。“我们每年从兰登书屋[Random House]买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.

他说，另一方面，另一本畅销书是《古兰经的讯息》(Message of the Qur’an)。该书是《古兰经》的英译本，译者是皈依了伊斯兰教的欧洲犹太学者、外交官穆罕默德·阿萨德(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.

被迫关闭白沙瓦的书店后，库雷希把业务放在了巴基斯坦首都伊斯兰堡，那里远离巴基斯坦较为极端的势力。但随着伊斯兰堡变成外交官和援助工作者“不宜带家属前往”的驻地，经营困难也随之而来。不过那时，书店已经很大了，单是书籍的广度就能让它存活下来，因为看英文书的巴基斯坦人很多。

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

“其他巴基斯坦书商笑我们从来不卖盗版书，”赛义德说。“但只有畅销书才有盗版，而我们本身是什么都卖的。”

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.

赛义德表示，对他父亲来说，书不仅仅是一门生意。前来忏悔偷过书的人中，包括伊斯兰堡伊克拉大学(Iqra University)的副校长苏莱曼·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.”'

“他来了以后说，他小时候，大概6岁左右，偷了一本阿奇(Archie)漫画，被我父亲看到了，”赛义德说。“他说他当时很害怕，以为会挨打，但我父亲说，‘喜欢看书这一点很好。你每天都能拿走一本，但要确保书完好无损，看完了要还回来，这样我还能卖。’”

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

那位副校长说，“我之所以能成为现在的我，都要归功于你父亲。”

(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.”)

（上了年纪的纳克维似乎打了会儿瞌睡，但听到这个故事后，他醒了过来，叹了口气说：“《落叶集》你一定要看，一切都在那本书里。”）