1.7.6
After touring a number of villages offering neither bed nor board, and after long debates with customers and hagglings and chafferings they could ill afford, the Fāriyāq and his partner returned with nowt, deciding to cut their losses and return to whence they’d set out, well aware that “the empty well cannot be filled by rain,” that any further toil at this affair would be in vain. They were thus compelled to sell their goods for the price they’d paid to forestall from gloating any who might see them returning with the very stuff they’d taken to trade, and spent the night as though stunned from all the rout, for there are people who’ll buy a thing only after they’ve turned it inside out and called the seller a fool and a gyp, leaving him no choice but to bite his lip, to the likes of these paying no attention but turning, rather, a blind eye and offering no contention. This talent, though, was not one possessed by either the Fāriyāq or his friend, each of whom sought to bend the world to his own end.
1.7.7
Thus they returned with the cost of the goods and the donkey and handed the money over to his owner, who offered them other goods, which they refused. They did, however, agree to meet again to work as partners on some business of greater import, preferring that this be in selling and buying too, for it is usual, when someone does a job and does not at first succeed, that his avarice insist he try again, since no one will accept that he was born to be unlucky or suffer dire fortune; rather, he attributes his bad luck in his chosen profession to certain accidents and unexpected incidents that have befallen him, telling himself, “The same will not occur this time around.” The root of all this is man’s dependence on his own intelligence, his confidence in his own efforts, and his reliance on his own intuitions. Many of God’s creation have done so fecklessly, most hurting themselves in the process and destroying their livelihoods recklessly.
CHAPTER 8: BODEGA, BRETHREN, AND BOARD
1.8.1
After a long discussion between the Fāriyāq and his companion, they settled on renting an inn on the road to the city of al-Kuʿaykāt, where are to be found the caravans that leave for the city of al-Rukākāt.161 They stocked up on what they needed by way of provisions and equipment and settled there, doing business with whatever capital (and assets)162 they’d been able to muster. It wasn’t long before their renown spread among all who came and went thence, all travelers learned of their good sense, and people started seeking them out for their reasonable prices, so that their inn was so much frequented by the better and more skilful class of men, those possessed of means and gravamen, that it became as a garden where the distressed could find relief.
1.8.2
Now, it is typical of the people of that district that they can hardly meet together in any place without passing back and forth among them the chalice of discussion and debate, plunging into matters that both to this world and the next relate. If one asserts a proof, the next denies its truth, and if the first believes that it is well, the other condemns it and claims it’ll send you to Hell. The people thus divide into opposing factions, the place filling with clamor and disastrous actions. Sometimes the discussion ends with boasting over noble extraction and high degree of influential connection, one saying, for example, to his fellow, “Would you answer me back, when my father’s the companion of the emir, sits with him of an evening to maintain his good cheer, is his partner at board and at bar, the frequenter of his salon and his mate, his special friend and intimate? Not a night goes by without him summoning him to socialize, and he makes no decisions without first asking his advice. Plus, my people have been known since time immemorial as ambassadors to many a land and confidential advisors to the grand. Never has any man vied with him in glory, honor, plenty, pride, or virtue without being beaten, thrashed, trashed, outdone and undone.” At this, cudgels might be set to work and take the place of arguments, he who hadn’t lost his temper losing it, and all, drunk and sober alike, setting down to brawl. In the end, news of the affair would come to the ear of the emir of the local lands, who would send men to exact punishment by dealing out to them slaps with their hands, and woe betide any who dragged the name of the emir into the discussion: pardon for him was out of the question. Where grave matters were concerned and the aggressor fled in fear of retribution, a member of his family or a neighbor, or his cattle and stores, would be taken to pay for his crime, his trees would be felled, and his house burned.
1.8.3
Our company, however, never crossed the line between debate and donnybrook, for the Fāriyāq and his companion took on the role of arbiter, and, this being the case, the number of those who frequented them became great. Many a time, family men would spend the night with them, each the other with wine plying, songs succeeding one another, faces radiant,163 turbans flying—which led to conflict between the women and their husbands. It is in the nature of women generally, should anyone keep their husbands from them, to scheme till, by one of their wiles, they can get close to that person. If the man is handsome, they promptly make a deal of barter and exchange with him, to exact revenge, taking every limb of his as their husband, every hair as their boon companion; should he be of the type to which the eye’s averse, they get him into trouble, plotting to wrest their husbands from him and thus their loss of goods reverse.
1.8.4
The women of those lands,164 however, do not oppose their husbands, keeping the latter’s infidelities to themselves and regarding it as permitted for their husbands to replace them. They have been raised to feel affection for their fathers and be obedient to their husbands, and their disputes with them go no further than reprimands — and how pleasurable a reprimand can often be! To this day no one has heard of any of them taking a dispute with her husband to the legal authorities or an emir or a bishop, though many members of these three groups would like that to happen in certain circumstances, either so that they could boast of their imposition of justice and fair dealing upon their subjects, or for some other reason. Also part of the nature of these blessed creatures is the purity of their intentions, the sincerity of their belief, and their capacity to create intimate relationships with men without hint of debauchery. One may observe one of these women, married or a widow, sitting beside a man and taking his hand, or putting her hand on his shoulder and resting her head on his chest, smiling at him, holding friendly converse with him, and making him a present of something that has come her way, and all that with sincere intent and uncomplicated affection. The best qualities to be observed in them are their simplemindedness and naiveté, which, in women, are to be preferred to guile and cunning, so long as they do nothing to bring them dishonor or destroy their sanctity as women. When things get serious, however, simplemindedness will not do.