Book Review: Smokewater by Ibne Safi translated by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi

Quote: Hameed was of the opinion that if everybody in the world tried to study the newspaper with such concentration, at least half of them would go mad. Therefore, instead of reading the newspaper, he spent his mornings reciting ghazals to billy goat, and lecturing it on progress and morals.

Until two weeks ago I didn't know who Ibne Safi was! Now I am ashamed that I didn't. Smokewater is a story about a case that comes to Colonel Faridi and his assistant Captain Hameed. When Shakila the intelligent and beautiful granddaughter of prominent industrialist Sir Fayyaz Ahmad comes knocking to their door, the corrupt world of super-rich gets revealed.

The book is a sheer page-turner with two detectives who are eccentric. Though Faridi is the brains, it's Hameed who is the man in action leading the story. Till the end, I kept wondering why was Sir Fayyaz was drugged and kidnapped, but the reason is so simple and so 40s-60s detective movies that it skipped my radar. Everything that happens in the book is smokescreen until the last fourteen pages!

I enjoyed the characteristics of Faridi who is not made to be all-knowing man just because he is a genius. He chases monkey and gets annoyed by things he can't make sense of. Hameed's cultivated dislike and distrust for women was bit problematic to read. His constant threat to hit women like Inspector Rekha and Shakila because they were too smart is acceptable today only because it was written way before 'misogyny in literature' was discussed. Had this been a contemporary text I would've yelled complaints from top of a building.

The language was crisp like well-made bacon and funny at the right places. The workings of an overarching super nemesis could be felt in the entire narrative against the domestic mystery backdrop.

What saddened me was the random dropping of Shaklia and inspector Rekha before the final climax! Two intelligent women who saw through Hameed's facade and called out his behaviour, also respected Faridi but never let it delude themselves, could sense a grand scheme brewing up were just left out in the end. That was really disheartening.

Also, the smoking monkey mystery was never explained.

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