On Sherlock Holmes, Women and Ibne Safi

While growing and have been addicted to books (call me nerd), no other author shaped my personality more than Ibne Safi. Over period of my lifetime, I bought and simultaneously lost hundreds of books. But, still in my library I have full (and I mean full) collection of Ibne Safi. Layman Pakistanis may remember Ibne Safi only as a mystery writer, but his vivid readers know him as a man of deep thought who sprinkles intricacies of life in simple words - sentence after sentence. To them, story and plot were just a veil to his unique perception to life.

So, my son asked me - what he should read beside his school books. I advised him to start his readings from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, knowing he can't read Urdu. Let me give you a glimpse of his writing. In one case, Sherlock Holmes get beaten by a woman. As she gives wild goose chase to him and finally get away deceiving him, she wrote to Sherlock Holmes: ".......your client may rest in peace. I love and am loved by a better man than he....." And, at end Arthur Conan Doyle adds: "...and (that's) how the best plans of Mr. Sherlock Holmes were beaten by a woman's wit. He used to make merry over the cleverness of women, but I have not heard him do it of late. And when he speaks of Irene Adler, or when he refers to her photograph, it is always under the honorable title of the woman."