Urban Bystander
The first sign that Islamabad had begun eating its bookshops was not the closure itself but the décor.
Shelves appeared where no books were sold. Quotations bloomed on walls. Menus began referring to themselves as curated experiences. Somewhere between the shawarma counter and the poetry night, the city decided that reading was best preserved as ambience.
In F-6, a bookseller disappears. In F-7, literature survives in a basement under three floors of lunch. Above ground, the signs glow with appetite. Below, the remaining books sit in half-light like elderly relatives not consulted about the renovation.
The Economic Census 2023 counted 6,099 accommodation and food service establishments in the Islamabad Capital Territory. Arts, entertainment and recreation just 390. That is roughly fifteen and a half places prepared to feed you for every one formal establishment dedicated to play, culture, or public life. Human health and social work stood at 2,150. The city, in other words, can feed you, test you, medicate you, and send you home with a follow up. What it cannot reliably do is sell you a book. In 2024, CDA approved plots in Capital Street for international food brands and restaurants. Blue Area gets food hubs, scenic walkways, and cashless convenience. No one announced a bookshop corridor or protected space for stationery, sports goods, or music retail. Vibrancy, it seems, now means menu density and the quiet disappearance of everything that does not serve dessert.
Saira Malik, who teaches English literature in F-10, went looking last month for an annotated copy of To Kill a Mockingbird after the school library copies disappeared in the usual educational fog. In F-6, Durrani & Company was gone. In F-7, Saeed Book Bank survived, surrounded by restaurants that had arrived more recently and prospered more loudly. The air smelled faintly of fryer oil. Downstairs, Atticus Finch survived in limited quantities.
Babloo, Head of Aerial Retail Balance, has seen the pattern from above. In one plaza: pizza in the basement, pathology on the third floor, a pharmacy on the corner, delivery bikes breeding on the curb, and not a bench, toy shop, repair stall, or readable sign of public life in sight. “A complete ecosystem,” he said. “First the burger, then the blood test, then the follow-up consultation upstairs.”
Mirza Chughal Khor required only one line for the file. “Mixed use,” he muttered, “now means kebab downstairs, cholesterol upstairs, and culture painted on the wall.”
The city licensed its way here.
Durrani’s shutters came down after fifty years. Saeed Book Bank was sealed then de-sealed by tax authorities, while chains waited outside with larger cheque books. Inside, the calculus was simple; rent it to coffee businessmen or food chains. They earn more than books.
There it was: the post-reading master plan.
At the Directorate, a licensing clerk reviewed a proposal for a literary-themed café promising “cultural ambience” and “curated shelves.” The menu offered Gatsby Burgers and Espresso Expectations. After a pause required for administrative dignity, he ticked both boxes: Food & Beverage and Cultural Activity. Two permits. Two fees. Vibrancy, properly documented.
Nosy Mynah, auditing the matter outside Jinnah Super with the satisfaction of a civil servant closing a file on national decline, read out the ratios. “Food and hospitality outnumber arts and recreation fifteen to one. Health establishments outnumber them more than five to one.”
The result is the Naan to Statin Corridor: shawarma below, sugar test above, pastry on one side, liver function on the other, no bench, no field, no toy shop, no civic variety that does not invoice by the hour.
In a locked room above a converted shopfront, an ISBN scanner beeps softly in the dark. Below, planning files classify menus as vibrancy. Then, through the floorboards, the scanner sounds again. A junior officer, hearing it from his desk, has reportedly marked the noise: non-food commercial activity, pending conversion review.
—The writer can be reached at [email protected]
