You never quite know what will come to mind on a favorite writer’s birthday. Sitting down to write about Humayun Ahmed this year, I find myself thinking about a notebook. It holds accounts of mysteries that remain unsolved. The notebook belongs to Misir Ali.
There is something comforting about that. Here is a man who understands so much, who finds connections among things that seem contradictory, yet keeps a record of his own limitations. He makes no attempt to hide the questions he could not answer. He writes them down instead. Perhaps he will return to them. Perhaps new information will emerge. Something that seems inexplicable today may one day make sense.
Today, November 13, 2026, marks the 78th anniversary of Humayun Ahmed’s birth. He was born on this day in 1948. As I remember my favorite writer, I feel drawn to this particular creation of his—a man whose intelligence leaves room for an honest understanding of its limits.
I am not impartial about Humayun Ahmed. As a devoted reader, I have no wish to pretend otherwise. What his name means to me is difficult to explain entirely in the language of literary criticism. We read many writers. Some gradually find a place inside our thinking. Then, when we are trying to understand someone or facing an uncomfortable question, we remember a character they created.
For me, Misir Ali is one of those characters.
And whenever I think of him, a question follows: How much do I actually know about this thing I am discussing with such certainty?
Why I Keep Returning to Misir Ali
Ask Humayun Ahmed’s readers about their favorite characters, and you will hear different names. Some are drawn to Himu’s freedom, others to Shubhro’s nature. Baker Bhai holds a permanent place in many hearts. My particular affection is for Misir Ali.
His intelligence is certainly part of the attraction. He pays attention to details that seem insignificant. Where someone else might move on to the next subject, he has another question. His habit of examining inconsistencies in people’s accounts, gaps in their memories, and weaknesses in their explanations makes the reader think alongside him.
But my interest goes beyond his ability to solve mysteries.
What an intelligent person does with that intelligence matters, too. Does he want to prove everyone else foolish? Does he need his word to be the final word? Or does he want to understand the problem better?
In my reading, that desire to understand is a large part of Misir Ali’s appeal. Thinking alongside him reminds me that understanding people requires time as well as intelligence. Finding a possible explanation does not mean the inquiry is over. You still have to ask how much of the event that explanation actually accounts for.
That patience matters outside books, too. In families, friendships, workplaces, and public life—wherever we make judgments about other people.
The Distance Between Being Intelligent and Being a Know-It-All
We have a familiar picture of intelligence. An intelligent person answers quickly. He never struggles for words. He has an explanation ready for every discussion. No question should catch him unprepared.
For someone raised with that expectation, saying “I don’t know” is not easy.
That is precisely why Misir Ali’s unanswered questions matter to me. They remind me that even a person capable of deep thought has limits to his knowledge. Expertise in one subject does not confer authority over every other subject. And failing to find one answer does not make everything you have understood before it worthless.
Accepting that simple truth would spare us a great deal of pretending.
The “Unsolved” Notebook: The Courage to Record Failure
The cover description of Misir Ali Unsolved explains that, despite considerable effort, he cannot unravel certain mysteries. He records them in his “Unsolved” notebook, hoping that someday he will find the answers. He does not give up.
It is a brief description, but there is a lot to sit with.
We generally prefer to remember our successes: when we were right, which decision proved sound, and when we understood something others had missed. We preserve those memories carefully. We are less eager to remember mistaken assumptions or explanations that fell apart.
But if we never keep track of what we failed to understand, how will we recognize the limits of our understanding?
That is the question I place beside Misir Ali’s notebook. It preserves what is incomplete. It holds evidence of his limitations, available for his own inspection. It also holds his wish to move beyond them.
When we cannot solve a problem, we often diminish its importance. We tell ourselves there is no point thinking about it. Sometimes we accept an explanation that eases our discomfort without actually answering the question. Misir Ali’s notebook reminds me that keeping a question alive is also a kind of work.
We do not have to rush every unfinished matter toward an appearance of closure.
Not Finding an Answer Does Not End the Search
An important distinction belongs here. Admitting that we do not know something is different from giving up the effort to understand it.
After saying “I don’t know,” we can close the door or leave it open. One person says, “I don’t know, and I don’t need to.” Another says, “I don’t understand it yet. I need to look more closely.”
The second position requires work. We have to seek new information and test old assumptions again. Sometimes we have to abandon an explanation that made us feel comfortable.
In Misir Ali, I find a faith in that effort. The existence of a mystery keeps his curiosity alive. As a reader, that matters to me: how to keep thinking when faced with something I do not understand.
Why Do We Judge People So Quickly?
When we reach the last page of a mystery, we want a solution. Who did what? Why did they do it? How did something apparently impossible happen? When the writer untangles it all, we feel relieved.
Sometimes we demand that same completeness from people in real life.
Someone contacts us less often. We decide they no longer value the relationship. Someone speaks sharply, and we reach a verdict about their character. Someone remains silent, and we supply the meaning of that silence ourselves.
Yet behavior that looks identical from the outside may have very different causes. Silence may come from hurt, exhaustion, or simply having no energy left to speak. Before finding out which explanation is true, we often fill the gaps with our own experience.
Then we forget that we supplied part of the explanation.
Thinking about this does not leave me entirely comfortable with myself. How much of what I believe about people rests on knowledge, and how much on assumption? It is an unsettling question. But the discomfort is necessary.
The portion of another person’s life visible to me is not the whole of that life.
Writing the Ending Before Hearing the Whole Story
Even while listening to someone, we often begin preparing our response. They have not finished their sentence, but we already know what we will say. We have decided how to categorize their experience, what advice to offer, and which mistake to point out.
Very little listening happens that way.
One personal meaning of remembering Misir Ali, then, is bringing my attention back. What exactly is this person saying? Where do they hesitate? Am I listening to their account or fitting it into an idea I already have?
Not every account will be true. Memory can be faulty. Explanations can be inconsistent. People may deliberately conceal things. But recognizing any of that also requires listening first.
Impatient suspicion can lead us astray just as easily as blind belief.
The Need for Doubt Amid So Much Certainty
Today, several explanations of an event can reach us before we know much about the event itself. A few seconds of video appear on a phone screen. We do not know what happened before or afterward. Yet the comments have already delivered a verdict on someone’s character.
An accusation immediately produces opposing sides. A sentence circulates without its context. The explanation delivered most forcefully often attracts the most attention.
In that atmosphere, asking for time feels awkward. As though failing to express an immediate opinion means having no position at all.
But having the right to express an opinion and knowing enough about a particular subject are different things. I am not obliged to contribute to every discussion. I can be concerned about an event while withholding judgment about its cause.
I do not want to stand outside this scene and imagine myself innocent. It is easier to believe statements that fit our preferences. Small doubts loom larger when they concern someone we dislike. When everyone in our familiar circle says the same thing, it can begin to feel settled.
That is exactly when I need the Misir Ali within me.
Let him remind me that many people are saying something is one fact. Whether what they are saying is true is a separate claim. The second requires evidence.
Questioning Our Own Beliefs
It is comparatively easy to doubt someone else’s beliefs. Finding weaknesses in our own bruises the ego.
Accepting that a position I have supported for years might be wrong brings personal discomfort. Sometimes we fear that changing our minds will make us look weak. Sometimes we defend an earlier statement more loudly to avoid facing our responsibility for it.
Yet revising a conclusion in light of new information ought to be ordinary.
Reason is tested when we identify an opponent’s mistake. It is also tested when an explanation we favor begins to fall apart. Do we change our standards of evidence then? Do we ask our own position the questions we ask of others?
I want my affection for Misir Ali to remain connected to that self-examination. Otherwise, it is entirely possible to admire a rational character while building an impenetrable wall around one’s own beliefs.
An Editor’s Responsibility to Say “I Don’t Know”
Because I work in publishing, these thoughts also carry a professional meaning for me.
The ability to publish a sentence comes with a responsibility to question its accuracy. A headline does more than attract attention. It can shape a reader’s first impression of a person or an event. Even when a detailed correction follows, that initial impression may remain.
Writing “it has been learned” does not complete the process of learning. Where did the information come from? Did the source witness it, or hear it from someone else? Have we distinguished an allegation from an established fact? Does our wording make clear what remains uncertain?
There is no easy substitute for those questions.
An editor cannot be an expert in every subject. But knowing when to seek expertise, when further verification is needed, and when to limit a claim is part of the job. Acknowledging a limitation does not diminish professional standing. It is one of the conditions of trust.
When information proves wrong, correction is a continuation of that responsibility. There may be a temptation to make a larger claim to conceal the original error, evade the issue with vague language, or blame the reader. But a commitment to accuracy sounds hollow if we cannot accept responsibility for what we publish.
Misir Ali is not a journalism handbook. Still, thinking about his unfinished notebook reminds me of a necessary habit in my own work: what has not been verified must not be presented as though it has.
Leaving Room for People Alongside Reason
There is another reason I am drawn to Misir Ali. Thinking of him makes me want a kind of rationality that allows people to sit beside it and speak.
Contempt so often enters our arguments. Once we prove someone wrong, we seem to assume they deserve humiliation as well. In challenging a mistaken belief, we laugh at the vulnerabilities of the person who holds it.
That may give us a sense of superiority. But does it leave the other person room to reconsider?
Someone is afraid. I may disagree with their explanation for that fear, but their experience of being afraid is real. Someone believes they have seen something that does not fit my understanding. Listening to them will not cost me my capacity to reason. It may improve my chance of understanding what happened.
Showing empathy does not require accepting every explanation. We can care about a person while questioning their assumptions.
That balance matters to me. Even when we are discussing facts, humiliation, fear, belief, and hurt may be involved. Ignoring that human part can make communication fail, however sound our explanation may be.
When Questions Become an Interrogation
The way we ask a question matters, too. We can ask something in a way that encourages a person to speak more openly. We can also ask the same thing in a way that makes them feel accused.
Am I trying to learn the truth, or trying to catch them out? That intention finds its way into our words.
Remembering Misir Ali in my own life, then, means more than asking additional questions. It means examining my purpose in asking them. The desire to understand someone needs to leave room for that person.
Not every conversation needs to end with a winner and a loser.
When Doubt Becomes an Excuse to Avoid Responsibility
Writing about the honesty of not having every answer requires a clear boundary.
Uncertainty can become a convenient refuge. Someone may refuse to accept substantial evidence because it challenges their position. Confronted with an established event, they may continue to insist that no one can really know what happened.
Used that way, doubt obstructs the search for truth.
There are things we know with reasonable confidence. Other matters require more information. Some claims have been disproven. Treating all these conditions as equivalent damages our judgment.
When evidence of wrongdoing is available, waiting indefinitely for more evidence is not neutrality. Nor does the existence of an accusation automatically establish someone’s guilt. Deciding what we can responsibly say requires understanding both the quality and the limits of the information.
To preserve the integrity of “I don’t know,” we must also accept the responsibility of saying, “This much we do know.”
My attraction to Misir Ali’s notebook is not a celebration of ignorance. It contains the effort to identify what is unknown. It marks the specific places where understanding remains incomplete. That is where the next stage of the work can begin.
Loving a Character and Learning From Him
I have a hesitation whenever I write about Humayun Ahmed. In explaining his characters, we can turn them into vehicles for arguments that are too neat.
The pleasure of reading Misir Ali is much more alive than that. There is the pull of the story, curiosity, strange situations, and wonder at human behavior. A reader can enjoy the book without seeking a moral lesson.
The meanings I am finding today belong to one devoted reader’s response. Another reader will notice something else. The same reader may see things differently at different stages of life.
Perhaps that is one reason we return to favorite books. Their sentences remain the same, but the person sitting before them has changed. At one point, solving the mystery may matter most. Later, the way questions are asked, or the discomfort of an unresolved ending, may become important too.
But loving a character does not automatically bring what we have learned from him into our conduct.
It is easy to praise patience; it is difficult to listen to an irritating remark all the way through. We can write about the possibility of being wrong and still struggle when our own error is exposed. We can argue for empathy and find it hard to hold on to when we are angry.
That is why, by “the Misir Ali within me,” I do not mean an identity I have earned.
I think of him as a question I keep close. Let it arise when I am eager to reach a verdict. Let it arise when I am about to sum up a person in a single sentence. Let it arise when I like my own explanation so much that I no longer want to hear anything else.
Do I know enough?
Returning to That Unfinished Notebook on His Birthday
The sadness of Humayun Ahmed’s absence will remain with us on his birthday. A devoted reader may never quite let go of the impossible wish for a new book. If only there were another story. If only Misir Ali could sit down once more with some strange problem.
That new story will not come. But our relationship with the stories he left behind can still change. His birthday is also an occasion to read again—to try to understand a little more of what a favorite writer has left within us.
This year, I keep thinking about that notebook.
The unanswered questions have been carefully preserved. They have not been discarded because they are incomplete. There is room to return. There is the possibility of trusting one’s intelligence while recognizing its limits.
We need some of that room in everyday life. A pause in the middle of speaking. Another look before passing along a piece of news. A chance to hear someone’s account before judging them. An admission when our own mistake becomes clear.
These are modest commitments. Keeping them might make our relationships a little easier. It might make our thinking a little clearer, too.
Dear Humayun Ahmed, on your birthday, this much I hope to carry with me: the patience not to write the ending of someone’s story before hearing them out. And when I truly do not have an answer, may I be able to say: I don’t know. Let me understand a little more.
