Is above my capacity to bear.
Continued rejection
Has reduced the wasted lover to indignity
And grace of form
Creates in him his desires.
3.2.47
A
NOTHER
Did my tribulation not continue,
You’d not be hearing my complaint
And he’d not know my weeping place—
He who abuses me in love.
You have multiplied your rejections of me,
You who fail to keep your promises to me.
You have not observed your pledges to me
And have not asked me how I fare.
You turned from me in pride
When to grant me union would have been proper.
I have quite run out of patience
From the excess of what has struck me.
You loaded me with heavy burdens
And were happy to think no more about me.
Tell me “Yes!” or “No no!”
For prevarication has worn me out.
You of unique beauty,
You full moon, make me well!
You have given my censurers reasons to gloat.
Have not my sufferings been enough?
3.2.48
Glory to Him who created
This most marvelous visage
And placed beauty in its entirety
In your bewitching eye.
Love is an abasement
That makes bodies grow thin.
No one would choose it
Did he not suffer from it.
My lord, O my lord!
O object of my desire!
Take unto you none but me
And do not forget me for another!
tazabbub (“chattering and salivating”) means “talking too much” (synonym tazbīb) and tazabbaba famuhu means “the saliva collected in the sides of his mouth”; takassus means “affectedness.”
a dirdiḥah is “a woman whose height and breadth are equal”; a dahsāʾ is a woman who is large-buttocked; a falḥasah is “a woman… with small buttocks.”
tajbīh [verbal noun of mujab-baban, “paraded on a donkey”] means “painting the faces of the two adulterers red and mounting them on a camel or a donkey, each facing in the opposite direction, though, by analogy, they ought to be facing each other, since the word is derived from tajbīh [in the sense of ‘brow-to-brow’]”; kashkhān means “wittol” and kashkhanahu means “he said to him, ‘You wittol!’”
(1) ʿihn is “wool, or wool that has been colored by dyeing”; birs is “cotton, or something resembling it, or papyrus cotton”; khurfuʿ is “carded cotton”; ʿuṭm is “teased wool”; baylam is “papyrus cotton” and “sugarcane cotton”; qishbir is “the worst cotton, or cotton waste”; nawdal means “breast.”
(2) jatt is “feeling a ram, to know what part of it is fat and what lean.”
(1) “The muṣlif is one ‘whose wife finds no favor with him’ and also a man ‘who is in low spirits and whose wealth has decreased.’ The mushafshif is ‘one who suffers from trembling and confusion out of jealousy and worry over his wives.’
(1) zaḥanqaf (“bumping along”) is “moving over the ground on one’s backside.”
(2) the sīfannah is “a bird in Egypt that eats all the leaves of any tree it alights on”; one who is sarṭam is “wide in the throat and swallows quickly.”
(1) jazr means “the extraction of honey from its cell.”
(1) al-baṣīrah (“the bloody proof”) is “a quantity of blood used to track a game animal, or the blood of a virgin [when displayed on a sheet following her defloration by her husband].”
CHAPTER 3: CONTAGION
3.3.1
It has been stated previously, in the first maqāmah,37 that the contagion of evil spreads more widely than that of good and that one man with mange may infect a whole city while a healthy man will infect none of his neighbors, and the same is true of disorders of the brain and the heart. The proof of this, as they claim, is that the brains of teachers of small children go soft and their judgment turns foolish because they spend too much time in their company and mix with them too much. The same goes for those who spend too much time mixing with women — their hearts grow soft and their natures effeminate and they are stripped of that audacity and courage that mark the more exasperated among us.
3.3.2
I know many of my race who have lived among the Franks but have become no more refined in nature as a result of that contact, or it was their vices that they picked up, not their virtues. One such will not rise from the board without first wiping the plate he’s been eating from so clean that it needs no washing, or enter an assembly, without bowing to one of its sides and letting rip a fart, as loud as any donkey’s, that echoes round the chamber, which he will then try to atone for by saying “Scusi!” (meaning “Excuse me!”). Another will wear those special Frankish shoes and walk in them all over your special Arab cushions, or will wear his hair loose like a woman’s and the moment he takes his seat in the assembly pull off his hat and sit there sending the scurf flying over your lap. Another, if he finds himself in an assembly among his brethren, acquaintances, and others and notices two men of letters engaged in a contest or telling curious anecdotes, will start whistling, but a mongrel, off-key whistle that is neither honest-to-goodness Frankish — given that he won’t have lived among those people long enough to master that noble art — nor authentic Arab. Another, on sitting down, will stretch out his legs, thrusting the soles of his feet toward the face of the person sitting with him.38 Another will come to pay you a visit and glance every little while at his watch to show that he’s an extremely busy man with lots of things to attend to, despite which he’ll stay with you until he sees you nodding off or sees you’ve gone and gotten your pillow and said, “May your sick friend get well!” as al-Akhfash did to those who visited him when he was ill.
3.3.3
At the same time, there’s no denying that the Franks have numerous good qualities. One is that they consider it shameful to borrow furniture, pots and pans, books, and other things. Another is that if a friend visits one of them and sees that he’s busy, he turns on his heel and goes back where he came from and doesn’t sit and wait for him to finish what he’s working on; indeed, even if he finds that he’s free, he spends as little time sitting with him as possible, and if he sees notebooks or papers on the table, doesn’t snatch them up so as to read them and discover their contents. Another is that if one of them who has a visitor has a sick child or his wife has just given birth or has fallen ill, he won’t leave the patient and sit with his visitor to exchange pointless courtesies and gossip. Another is that a Frank won’t marry a woman unless he has first seen her and kept her company and that they kiss women’s hands and the faces of their daughters and see no disgrace or disrespect in that. Also, no meal-scrounger,(1) sponger who attaches himself to invited guests, or guest who invites other guests exists among them and none of them says to his friend, “Lend me your handkerchief so I can blow my nose in it” or “Lend me your clyster syringe so I can give myself an enema.” Another is how easygoing they are on authors and how ready they are to put up with their ignorance and mistakes and attribute them to absent-mindedness or exoticism. They do not, for example, find fault with someone if he says, Fulān shamma l-narjisa wa-ḥabaq (“So-and-so smelled narcissi and farted”) or ḥabaqa wa-shamma l-narjis (“He farted and smelled narcissi”) or shamma fa-ḥabaq (“He smelled and farted”) or… thumma ḥabaq (“… and then farted”),39 though our authors would not allow this.