Our gazelles along the paths
The raging lions hunt with word and glance.
And the gazelles of the Franks hunt too, with both of those,
But by adding hands the hunt they enhance.
1.5.7
Baʿīr Bayʿar was a big-buttocked, short-legged, round, waddling little glutton, but he was also mild-mannered and loved peace and self-effacement. To a great extent he was a simpleton. He had delegated his worldly affairs to a base man of vicious morals, conceited, proud, arrogant, uncouth, boastful, and haughty. An hour or two would pass without his uttering a word, so the poor simpleton thought he must be exercising his wits on setting the world to rights or syncretizing the different sects, for it has become a habit to regard the man of elevated status, if he be inarticulate and at a loss to answer questions, as serious and dignified, and if he be a prattler, as a sound counselor.
1.5.8
Baʿīr Bayʿar’s spiritual affairs, on the other hand, rose and fell, waned and waxed, came apart at the seams and were mended up again through the scheming of a jolly, cheerful, smiling, jovial priest, short and fat, white and plump. This goodly Father had gained an unshakeable control over the man’s womenfolk, having found his niche with one of the man’s daughters, who was comely of face, dulcet of tongue, and had been married to a man who had gone insane and become a madman; leaving him to his madness, she had sought the sanctuary of her father’s household, where the priest had become her master and commander, her conscience and reprimander. Anything that was delivered to her or that she dispatched she would give him to look at, for she was one of those who made no distinction between the domains of this world and the next. She confessed her transgressions to him in private, and he would question her concerning every slip and lapse, asking her, “Do your buttocks shake and your breasts quake as you climb the stairs or when walking? And does this shaking produce a pleasurable sensation? I ask only because it is mentioned in a chronicle that a certain sensualist found relief in any shaking whatsoever, even praying many a time that the earth would quake beneath his feet and the mountains above him move from side to side. And did you ever see yourself in your dreams struggling with some bed-mate, or shaking the hand of some profligate (there being in God’s eyes no difference between the waking and the sleeping state, the strongest realities being but built upon dreams)? And did the Recoiler ever whisper in your ear and leave you with a desire to be a hermaphrodite (which is to say, both male and female, and not, as the common people say, neither male nor female, the latter being a definition that has found no favor with erudite and learned scholars who make sure of their facts)?”
1.5.9
Thus spoke he, and of other matters that this chapter is not large enough to hold. He could do no wrong in her father’s eyes because the latter was so convinced that all who wore black had weaned their appetites off worldly pleasures and cut themselves off from sensual desires, that, when one day he saw the following line of verse in a book155—
To us they condemned the world while they themselves on it suckled
Till they’d drained the milk that collects between milkings, so that even the supernumerary teats could yield us nought—
he imagined that this had been written to run the clergy down and make insinuations against them and ordered that it be burned, which it was, and its ashes scattered. And one day he saw another two verses in a book, which went like this—
How is it that mine eye ne’er sees
A skinny man among those mortals who wear black?
Of what they have by way of flesh or any other thing
The hardest bit is that which stands erect, the rest is slack—
so he ordered that that book be burned too and sent spies out into the town to find out who its author was, the call going out over hill and dale, “Let him who can point out the author of this book come forward, for he will be rewarded with the best of rewards and raised to an elevated state!” When the poet heard this, he was obliged to go into hiding for a while, until his name was forgotten. If you say, “This contradicts your description of him as mild-mannered,” I reply, “It is the custom of the people of the country to regard mildness as praiseworthy in all things but two — the sanctity of women’s honor and the sanctity of religion, for the sake of which a man will deliver his brother to perdition.”
1.5.10
The Fāriyāq resided with this mild-mannered man for a while, during which he made not a sou. Too proud to complain when asked, he was driven one night to gather large quantities of firewood and straw and set fire to them. The flames leaped toward the private apartments of Baʿīr Bayʿar, who, thinking that the fire had engulfed his palace, roused everyone. They came, each trying to be the first to reach the fire, and there they found the Fāriyāq adding fuel to it by the armful. When they asked him what he thought he was doing, he said, “This is one of those fires that take the place of a tongue, even if it doesn’t have the form of one. Among its virtues, it alerts the slack-twisted and gives warning to the tight-fisted that behind it stand words that are strong, and an iron tongue!” “Woe unto you!” they said. “This is one of your godless innovations! Who speaks through fire? We’ve heard of people speaking to one another using a trumpet, or by beating on something with a stick, or by making a sign with a finger, or by winking an eye, or by moving an eyebrow, or by raising a hand in the air, but fire is a godless innovation and a deviation.”
1.5.11
Just as they were about to declare him a heretic and a disbeliever and call him a Magian156 and throw him into the fire, one man said to the others, “Before you do anything rash, report his answer to the one who sent you.” When they informed Baʿīr Bayʿar of what they had seen and heard, he demanded to see the Fāriyāq and asked him to tell him about the blaze in question, so the latter said to him, “God better Our Lord and more blessings and power to him accord! Once I had a little pursie that was of no more use to me than I was to it. Now pursies, and other things that have similar-sounding names,157 have a way with them that goes against all other ways, for, when they’re light they’re a drag, and when they’re heavy, they’re delightful. When my pursie grew light while within your Happy Purlieu, which is to say, when it grew to be a drag, I burned it in this fire, which I only made this big because when that pursie was in my pocket it felt as big to me as Mount Raḍwā,158 to the point that it often prevented me from standing up and going out on some important errand.”
1.5.12
When Baʿīr Bayʿar heard his words, he laughed at his fanciful invention and squeezed from his tight fist something equal in its exiguousness to what the Fāriyāq had copied out in his ledgers. The Fāriyāq then hopped and skipped all the way home, swearing he would never again write anything that wasn’t worth writing or yielded no profit, with the hope that the fee would be in proportion to the quantity of the work — which is, of course, a ridiculous notion, as those who work hardest and whose work deserves the geatest consideration receive the lowest wages and remuneration, while for those who can do no more than sign their names are reserved the highest planes, and the hands and feet of such as these are gobbled at, much as the breast is gobbled at by the suckling child.