An old bachelor doctor — sarcastic, bored, nervous, thin — who smokes greedily like a steam locomotive.
He loved one girl in his entire life, met her while studying for his doctorate at the university — and never married her. He is supposed never to have married at all — but in one of his stories he announces to us that he did in fact marry once.
All his stories revolve around the world of the supernatural and the parapsychological — that unknown world full of myths — with a touch of psychology.
He considers himself a "destroyer of myths" — because he researches the world of myths in his stories in a rational, neutral manner — and therefore he refuses to be convinced by the paranormal that clashes crudely with science and logic in his early days. But unfortunately, with time these convictions of his change — and he discovers that there are things he was unable to solve with science and logic.
It is difficult in my view to classify him with "Holmes" and "Poirot" and "Miss Marple" and "Maigret" and "Fletcher" and "Columbo" as a detective — but he is in fact classified among them by respectable literary associations and many critics.
Today's character is Dr. "Misir Ali" from Bengali literature — and his author is "Humayun Ahmed" — who drew the outlines of his character in 1972 — and he saw the light in 1975.
Dr. "Misir" lives alone — and he has annoying neighbours, some of them eccentric — and he uses a servant to run the affairs of his house, which is a small apartment — and the servant always steals from him and disappears — and he brings another, who steals from him and disappears — and so on.
"Misir Ali" is a psychiatrist — and his only beloved he never married — although in one of his stories he announced that he married her. His author says that this was a mistake on his part — he is supposed never to have married her at all — and to live on her love forever — until the universe perishes and the stars burn out.
He is a very heavy smoker — he lights "one cigarette after another, a chain smoker" — and that made him a walking infirmary. And his health is not up to much. "Misir Ali" is a model of "the anti-hero" — as he should be.
Dr. "Misir," by virtue of his work, meets endless oddities — from people who possess extraordinary powers of the senses and read thoughts and move things from a distance, to people who read playing cards and tell you the future in the story "Hearts-Spades," to people who walk while asleep and commit crimes, to a possessed child — and so on and so on.
He confronts a set of fears for several people in "The Ring of Fear," which was published under the trade title "Fear - ভয়."
He has terms in his stories that his reader comes to know, like "The Eunuch" — the ancient magic book in the story "The Eunuch - বৃহন্নলা." And he meets devils and jinn, and he has terrifying themes in his stories — and he writes other terms like "The Night Roamer."
He also writes a story in which he meets himself and presents his character to the reader — it is called "I am Misir Ali."
There are myths and puzzles he could not solve with logic and that science was unable to find an explanation for — so he collected them and called them "Misir Ali: Unsolved."
You can download "Misir Ali's" stories from Google and translate them on Google as well. True, the translation will not come out nice — but you will understand the dialogue and the general atmosphere of the subject. Dr. "Misir Ali" dies in 2012 — and his stories stop.
"Misir Ali's" stories are deep in the world of the supernatural and psychology — and they have a part related to the dark side of the human psyche and diving into the depths of complex, mad souls. And in truth I see them as somewhat naive — and they do not compare, for example, with the stories of Inspector "Zaki" — the Egyptian — neither in terms of plot nor structure.
And Inspector "Zaki" is one of the brainchildren of "Dr. Nabil Farouk" — and he appeared in the nineties in the "Panorama" series as short stories in unconnected episodes.
A clever, sharp-witted investigations inspector — like Holmes — he notices the finest details — sharp-witted like "Columbo" — and strong in build, sometimes clashing with the criminal like "Magnum" in direct hand-to-hand fighting — and he is also skilled at shooting like "Maigret."
Inspector "Zaki" is very silent — and that is a trait of "Miss Marple" after her character developed — and "Mrs. Fletcher" sometimes possesses it. He sits watching in silence — and when suspicions turn towards an innocent person and the matter is about to close in on him from every side — "Zaki" speaks and announces the truth.
"Zaki" uses "Holmes's" method and repeats his famous line: "If we exclude the impossibilities, the truth remains for us, however strange it may be." And he does not hide his admiration for "Holmes" and attributes this phrase to him when he repeats it in his stories.
And his method is the same as Holmes's method: "Abductive reasoning." Unfortunately, Dr. Nabil stopped writing Inspector "Zaki's" stories — because stories of this type take superhuman mental effort — and his health condition did not allow that.
Of course, that does not make us forget other stories like these that we all know and were raised on — like "The Five Adventurers" by Mr. Mahmoud Salem.
Very few know that Mr. "Mahmoud Salem" wrote these stories about his own childhood. He was a clever child — chubby, lonely, isolated, with no friends — so he drew in his imagination a wonderful world in which he would have friends who would cooperate with him in solving crimes.
"Tekhtekh" is the great Mr. "Mahmoud Salem" himself — but in his childhood. And he once said about himself: "I believe that The Five Adventurers is a kind of recovery of the sorrows and memories of an autistic, isolated child."
Mr. "Mahmoud Salem" tells us that he took the idea of the "Five Adventurers" series from the series of the English writer "Enid Blyton" — "The Five Find-Outers and Dog" — in that he began by translating the first five issues of it, and pointed to the source of the borrowing. And in any case, the series has no similarity except in the general idea: "five children and their dog solving crimes" — the story that was in his mind and that he felt was teasing his childhood memories.
And Mr. "Mahmoud Salem," may God have mercy on him, was the first to present this type of literature to children in the Arab world.
Borrowing is a praiseworthy thing and is permitted in the world of literature, art and writing in general — whether literary or scientific — on condition that you declare it and refer to your original source. Otherwise you are a thief — like "Uncle" who a few days ago was telling you "I have not read the English writer's novel" when he had read it inside his own copy.
There are many series about young secret detectives who solve crimes — like The Five Adventurers, and the adventures of X2, and the 13 Devils, and Detective Conan, and "Luke Harding," and "The Secret Seven," and "Enola Holmes" — and very many others. And there is no room this time to talk about them, and we need, God willing, to make a series of their own for them soon.
We have not even presented all the great detectives of the kind of "Holmes" and "Fletcher" — but we have talked about their most famous and most influential.
And in general this type of literature has a very strong influence on the reader — and it sparks his thought and strengthens the faculty of logical, rational thinking — and that is one of the important reasons that made them direct this literature in particular to children in many countries.
Perhaps most of the writers of this type whom we have mentioned have departed from our world or stopped writing — but their heroes
"Holmes" and "Poirot" and "Marple" and "Fletcher" and "Maigret" and "Zaki" and "Columbo" and "Queen" and "Magnum" — and "Misir Ali" and "Tekhtekh" and "Conan" and many others — are still here.
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References
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1 - https://goo.gl/ifNQeS - http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0014152/bio
2 - https://www.goodreads.com/series/84075
3 - http://www.enidblyton.net/mystery-series/
4 - شيرين صبحي، شبكة الإعلام العربية، سبتمبر - 2008 .
5 - Previous posts:
1 - https://goo.gl/KeQqsN
2 - https://goo.gl/hnar7K
3 - https://goo.gl/fasDn1
4 - https://goo.gl/WYXj1r
5 - https://goo.gl/dJjbXt