1.4.5
Do I hear someone objecting here and asking, “What is the point of this banal tale?” I respond: as we said, a tambour was a very rare item on the Mountain, for composing tunes and playing musical instruments are regarded as shameful, because they induce ecstatic pleasure and amorousness and incite desire. The natives there are fanatical about religion and warn against anything capable of causing sensual pleasure. Consequently, they do not want to learn to sing or play an instrument or to use the latter in their places of worship and their prayers, as do their Frankish shaykhs,145 lest this lead them into disbelief. Thus, every one of the gentle arts, such as poetry and harmony, for example, or painting, is an abomination. Could they but hear the hymns sung in the churches of their aforementioned shaykhs or the tunes on the organ that people are so fond of and that are played in places of entertainment, dance halls, and cafés to attract men and women, they’d find no sin in the tambour.
1.4.6
The tambour is to the organ as the branch is to the tree or the thigh to the body, for the only sound that it makes is a strumming, while the organ produces strumming and humming, mumbling and rumbling, jangling and jingling, squeaking and creaking, chirping and cheeping, burbling and barking, clicking and clacking, gnashing and crashing, chinking and clinking, gurgling and gargling, purring, cooing, and bleating, thrumming and drumming, roaring and guffawing, glugging and gabbling, la-la-ing and lullabying, horses’ neighs and the roaring of waves, blubbing of billy goats and cricking of cradles, cries of men at war, call of merlins and raven’s caw, old women moaning and heavy doors groaning, snores and stertors, huffing and soughing, water boiling and grief-stricken bawling, frogs ribbiting and ears tinky-tinkling, bulls bellowing and gaming-house reprobates roaring, reverberations and crepitations, pots gently bubbling and chilly dogs whimpering, pulleys squeaking and crickets chirruping, milk flowing, chickens crowing, and cats mewing, not to mention caw-caw and hubble-bubble and wham-bam and slurp-slurp and baa-baa and tee-hee and keek-keek and buzz-buzz and schlup-flup146—after all of which, what’s wrong, God guide you, with plinkety-plink? If it be said that that aversion to playing the organ derives solely from its resemblance to the buttocks, reply may be made, “What do you make then of the fact that their women enter their churches with those silver ‘horns’ that resemble pigs’ snouts (God exalt you above any contamination by their mention!) on their heads, given that pigs’ snouts (God exalt you above any contamination by their mention!) resemble you-know-whats?” This should prove to you that your objection is baseless and mention of the tambour appropriate.
1.4.7
If you insist on being obstinate, are bent on catching me out in error and exposing me for slips (and non-slips) of the pen, and want to show people how clever you are by criticizing me, then I won’t go through with this book. I swear, if you knew the reason why I embarked on it — namely, to relieve your dudgeon and entertain your mind — you wouldn’t utter a word of reproach against me about anything. Meet, then, good deeds with good and be patient with me till I finish my tale. Afterward, if it crosses your mind to throw my book into the fire, or the water, go ahead.
1.4.8
Let us return now to the Fāriyāq. We declare: he lived with his mother in the house and practiced the copyist’s trade, but news of his father’s demise in Damascus soon reached him. He was heartbroken and wished the tambour were still with the one who stole it. Each morning his mother would go off by herself, utter laments for her husband, and grieve for him, the tears gushing for his loss, for she was one of those righteous women who love their husbands with honest affection and true loyalty. She thought that, if she went off by herself, her son wouldn’t see her and her sorrow would not then be compounded by seeing him weep at her grief, but the Fāriyāq would look on her in her private place and weep bitterly over her desolation and loneliness. Then when she returned he would hold back his tears and busy himself with writing or anything else. It was now that he realized that he had nothing he could rely on, after God, but the sweat of his own brow, so he devoted himself to copying. However, since the day that God created the pen, that profession has never been enough to support those who practice it, especially in countries where the appearance of a piaster is cause for rejoicing and the sight of a dinar is greeted with plaudits of “God is great!” and “We seek refuge with God from lapidated Satan!” It did, however, give him a good hand and refine his thinking.
(1) Izāʾ means “means of sustenance, or whatever ease of living has been created through work.”
CHAPTER 5: A PRIEST AND A PURSIE, DRAGGING POCKETS AND DRY GRAZING
147
1.5.1
If anyone read the end of the previous chapter and then his servant came and called him to dinner, causing him to leave the book and rise and turn toward glasses and goblets, tumblers and tankards (in all their different shapes and sizes), and then his friends dropped in to pass the evening with him, one saying, “Today I beat my slave girl and went down to the market with her intending to sell her, even at half price, because she’d given my wife a pert answer” and another, “And I too today beat my son because I found him playing with the neighbors’ children and then I locked him up in the latrine and he’s still there” and another, “And today I insisted to my wife that she make me privy to every thought and worry that goes through her head or troubles her breast and every dream she dreams at night — such dreams coming from the food vapors that fill her brain or from the smoke of passion consummated before sleeping — and I told her, ‘If you don’t tell me every detail, I’ll set the priest on you and he’ll declare you a disbeliever and ban you from the church and then he’ll get out of you everything you’re hiding and harboring and take a good look at everything you’re concealing and secreting and holding out on, that you’re on guard against, have taken measures to prevent, feel at ease with, have a liking for, and have taken it upon yourself to do,’ and I left my house in a rage against my wife, uttering threats, and swore I’d only make up with her if she told me her dreams” and another, “My problem with my eldest daughter is even worse, to wit, today, after she had coiffed, hatted, perfumed, scented, bedecked, painted, made-up, arrayed, displayed, rouged, bedizened, bejeweled, tricked out, beautified, decorated, adorned, dandified, prettified, primped, preened, prinked and pranked herself, donned her saffron-dyed dress and girded her loins for battle, she went and sat by the window to watch the people going in and out. I forbade her to do so, so she left, but then she disobeyed me and returned to her place and tricked me into thinking that she was sitting there to darn some of her clothes, but for every stitch she made, she stole two looks, so I went to her burning with anger and tugged her by the hair that she’d dressed and braided and curled, and a tress came off in my hand (here it is!), and, if she doesn’t put an end to her wicked ways, I’ll pull it all out, for she’s like an unruly filly without reins: boxing her ears doesn’t stop her, and nor do beatings with sticks”—if anyone, I say, filled his bowels with all kinds of food and his ears with talk of this sort, he will certainly have forgotten all the physical and moral incidents that have befallen the Fāriyāq (his grief at hearing of his father’s death, his devoting himself to the copying of books, and how he thereby acquired an excellent hand) which is why I have just been compelled to repeat them.