CHAPTER 18: VARIOUS FORMS OF SICKNESS
2.18.1
Thenceforth the Fāriyāq, being anxious to become known by the title of “Shaykh,” devoted himself to writing verse. To that end it occurred to him to study grammar under certain Egyptian shaykhs, for he’d made up his mind that what he’d acquired in his own country wasn’t enough for the prince’s Panegyricon. In the same month, however, that he declared his intent to study, he was afflicted with a painful case of ophthalmia. When he recovered, he made his first foray into scholarship and studied with Shaykh Muṣṭafā646 a few small books on morphology and syntax. Then he got a bad case of worms, caused, he was told, by eating raw meat, a well-known custom among Levantines. Whenever his stomach hurt him during the classes, the shaykh would put it down to the wide range of topics and the intensiveness of the analysis. Once he even said to him, “Glory be to God, no one has studied this science at my hands without getting a stomach ache!” to which the Fāriyāq replied, “The stomach ache isn’t all from Zayd and ʿAmr,647 Master Shaykh. The worms have a role to play in it too, for there’s nothing I eat that they haven’t got to before my stomach does.” “Never mind,” replied the shaykh, “Perhaps the blessings of scholarship will provide some relief.”
2.18.2
Around this time, the Fāriyāq happened to be asked by an acquaintance if he could study648 with the aforementioned shaykh the book the Christians study on the Mountain, namely the Baḥth al-maṭālib.649 When this acquaintance had gone through it all, he asked the shaykh to write him a certificate allowing him to teach the book in his own country,650 which the shaykh did, showing the result to the Fāriyāq. When the latter examined it, he found mistakes in the language and the inflections, and he asked his shaykh if he might point the errors out to him. On examining them, the shaykh said, “Tomorrow I shall write him another” and he wrote him another certificate. When the Fāriyāq took a close look at this, he found that it was as bad as the first. He alerted his shaykh to the mistakes, but the latter told him, “You write him whatever you want.” This was despite the fact that the shaykh was as well versed in the science of grammar as anyone could be and was capable of devoting a whole hour to the analysis of just part of a sentence. He did not, however, practice prose or verse composition, and, as a result, all his knowledge was in his heart and on his tongue, and he was almost incapable of getting any of it out and into his pen.
2.18.3
After studying grammar in the manner mentioned, the Fāriyāq had a recurrence of eye pain. When he recovered, he decided to study Al-Talkhīṣ fī l-maʿānī (The Epitome on Tropes).651 He started on it with Shaykh Aḥmad but had not got far into it before he was struck by pruritis, which he failed to recognize at the onset, which explains why he went on studying. Once, as the shaykh embarked on the explanation of some complex issue, the Fāriyāq’s body started itching all over, so he started scratching with both hands. The shaykh turned and, seeing him absorbed in scratching, asked him, “Why are you scratching and, as far as I can see, paying no attention to the ‘if-it-be-saids’ and the ‘answer-may-be-mades’? Are we here to scratch limbs or words?” “Please forgive me,” replied the Fāriyāq, “but the relief provided by scratching distracts me from everything else.” “You have pruritis?” the other asked. “It may be so,” he replied. The shaykh looked at his hands and said, “It is, by God. You must keep to your house and smear your body with dogs’ feces, for that is the only treatment.” So the Fāriyāq stayed at home and took to smearing his body every day with the aforementioned dogs’ feces and sitting in the sun for hours, until he found relief from that torment. Then, when he was cured, he returned to his studies.
2.18.4
After he finished going through that book, he suffered another attack of ophthalmia. Then he conceived the notion of studying al-Akhḍarī’s Sharḥ al-Sullam (The Commentary on the Ladder)652 on logic, so he started reading it under the direction of Shaykh Maḥmūd and was struck down by the hayḍah, which is the disease Egyptians call “the yellow air,”653 and spent three days oblivious to everything going on around him and incapable of uttering a sound, except that once his servant heard him raving about “the greater affirmative universal”654 and, thinking he was complaining of the severity of his state, replied that it was indeed “one of the greaters.” No one else had then contracted the disease in Egypt but by the time thirty days had passed it had spread throughout the country and become a general affliction, God save us, with thousands dying of it every day.
2.18.5
At this point, the Fāriyāq realized that he had been, to use the language of the logicians, the first term in this disaster, the others the second, and that it was the worms from which he suffered that had expedited his early subjection to this illness. Because of them, then, he moved quickly too and took — the Fāriyāq, that is — to mounting his donkey and touring the markets as though Fate could no longer touch him (note: this wasn’t the donkey that merited an elegy and a funeral oration; this one, being still alive, merited a eulogy), and went to a village in the countryside, accompanied by his male and female servant. A local governor, hearing of his presence, summoned him and his servants, the male and the female, and said to him, “Hey, wise guy! Is this a time for dying or a time for knocking people up? What are you doing bringing a girl like this here?” He replied, “I am the prince’s panegyrist, and I have come to let my eyes wander over the greenery of the countryside so I can praise it well, after the death of so many, for I have grown tired of the city and was afraid my creative powers would dry up.” “So who’s she?” he then said, pointing to the girl servant. “His sister,” said the Fāriyāq, indicating the male servant. “And who’s he?” he said. “His keeper,” he replied, indicating the donkey. The emir turned to the male servant and, finding him comely, said, “Since you’re the prince’s poet, or his poetaster, you cannot be sanctioned. But you will have to leave this servant with me, for he has the right qualifications to enter my service.” “You’re the boss,” said the Fāriyāq. “Take him!” That night the emir, having had his way with the boy, asked him insistently about the Fāriyāq and the servant told him, “Honestly, my lord, he’s a good man, but I think he may not be an Arab because I can hardly understand him when he speaks to me in our language.”
2.18.6
When morning came, the Fāriyāq made his preparations for the return journey but couldn’t find the donkey, so he decided he must have run off to join the first. He went looking for him and found that he’d gone off with another of the emir’s donkeys to an empty patch of ground, where he was bellowing and snorting beneath him. When the Fāriyāq saw him taking the passive role, he couldn’t contain his laughter and said, “It says in the hadith, ‘People follow the religion of their kings’ but no one ever said donkeys should follow the sect of their owners. Anyway, better the ass’s ass than the ass’s lender’s ass!” Then he returned to the house, where he found his serving boy and girl waiting for him. The boy told him, “The emir has released me from his service, because he found my qualifications were good for one night only, so now I’m free.”