3.3.15
With this in mind, I beg the gracious pardon of your most honorable eminence, our grandest guarantor of what is right, our prized High Priest, for what I wish to ask you (by way of enquiry, not criticism), to wit: “How can you know, O you of penetration, that this ‘bloody proof’ with which the handkerchief is stained and which is raised like a flag to announce the girl’s virginity is in fact a sign of virginity? Is it not possible that, on the night the wedding was consummated, the baker’s oven flared up, the heated pot boiled over,51 or that this had happened previously and some spots had remained and it was with these that the handkerchief was embellished, or that the man, if it was he who had already plucked that rose, had cut the throat of a sparrow or cut one of his fingers, or that the girl had kept a little blood in one of those caskets of theirs? Were you to reply that in the latter case the man would discover this by virtue of his greater experience, I would say, ‘By my life and that of your father, this is not a time of keeping his wits about him and rational thought but of being knocked off his rocker and becoming distraught, especially if there’s a group behind the door insisting and clamoring, urging him on and yammering! Answer me that! I await your reply, bring it you to me from far or from nigh.’”
(1) [An awshan is] “A man who goes to a man, sits with him, and eats his food.”
(1) hadhāhidh [from which the author derives the adjective hadhāhidhiyyah (“[accounts] that he claims to be his own”)] are men who say of everyone they see that he belongs to them, or is one of their servants.
(1) ʿuqr [in the first sense] is “the exploration of a woman to see if she be a virgin or not.”
CHAPTER 4: ANALEPSIS
3.4.1
It is the custom of my fellow writers sometimes to go back and leap over a period of time and connect an event that happened before it to an event that happened after it. This is called analepsis (tawriyah), that is, “taking backward” (warāʾ). They may also start by mentioning everything about the protagonist from his first whisperings into his beloved’s ear until his reappearance as a married man. In the course of this, the author will relate such long and tedious matters as how his face paled and his pulse raced when he met her, how he was reduced to a tizzy and felt ill while he waited for her answer, how he sent her an old woman or a missive, how he met with her at such and such a time and place, and how she changed color when he spoke to her of the bed, of drawing her close, of embracing, of leg over leg, of kissing, of kissing tongue to tongue, of intercourse, and the like.
3.4.2
Sometimes the same writers make rude insinuations about the mother and father too, often stating plainly that the mother is content for her daughter to be a source of discord among those who lay eyes on her and allows her free rein to flirt with a passel of men so she can share some of them with her. Likewise, that the father, given that his mind is in his wife’s lap, not in his own head, is powerless to prevent such goings-on and that the servants all connive with the wife against the husband — the females because they seek to imitate their mistress’s way of doing things and the males because they want her. All in all, they turn the house of the girl being courted into an alehouse, a brothel, a den of iniquity, and a spawning ground for every sort of corruption, trickery, and wile. Each of these fellow authors of mine comes up with a device off the top of his head and then attributes its invention to someone else.
3.4.3
The leap backwards is acceptable, in my opinion, if the author finds himself faced with a block to composition; afterwards, he can return to what he was about. But leading the man to his bride’s bed and then shutting the book on the couple without peeping through the crack in the door to find out how they fared next I cannot accept; I have to know what happened to them after the wedding. Many women who were reckoned females before assuming that noble station turn into men, just as men turn into women. I have therefore decided to follow the Fāriyāq more closely after his marriage than I did before it, for talk of two invites more admiration than talk of just one. Chasing after low matters, digging up dirt, and pursuing trivial affairs are not, however, my way. Allow me then, my dear sir, and permit me, my dear madam, to make use of “the leap” and say,
3.4.4
During the time when the Fāriyāq was caught in the noose of love but before he got married, one of the Bag-men had invited him to the Island of the Foul of Breath52—meaning that island whose inhabitants speak a mephitic tongue — to take over the post of dream interpreter53 at a wage higher than that which he received from the Bag-man in Cairo. He determined to undertake the voyage and informed his fiancée of this a while before the wedding. She said, “So be it. A husband has the right to take his wife with him wherever he wills, and every spot on earth should be for her, in his company, a home and a homeland.” Then he informed her mother of the same and she agreed.
3.4.5
When the day appointed for the wedding arrived and the knot had been tied, the Fāriyāq said to his wife, “Now we must make ready for the voyage, for the Bag-man’s dreams are multiplying in his head and he’s afraid they’ll get away from him before they can be interpreted.” She replied, “Are you really serious? Is it the custom for women to travel immediately following their marriage, exposing themselves to barrenness and danger? Are we not exempted, here in Cairo, from the need to be strangers and voyagers? How am I to leave my brothers and my parents and go to a land in which I have no friends or intimates?” “I haven’t presented you with a surprise, or told you anything different from what I told you before,” he replied. “I didn’t know about marriage then,” she answered, “what I know now. People likened it to the smelling salts the physician gives a sleeper or a drunk to make him wake. Now I realize that women were not created for travel but travel for them.” “I promised the man that I would go to him,” he said, “so I must fulfill my promise. The proverb says that a man is tied by his tongue,54 not his horn. Moreover, this Bag-man of ours will be traveling with us along with his wife, so you’re just like her.” She said, “I am not like the Bag-man’s wife, for I am newly inducted and in the limbo between virginity and marriage, and I have yet to grow tired of land that I should go to sea.” When her mother heard this, she insisted that she travel, so she said, “Let me then consult a doctor and find out if travel by sea is injurious to the newly wedded woman or not.”
3.4.6
A doctor was brought who, when he heard what she had to say, laughed and said, “You eastern Christians make pledges to churches in the hope that the patron saint will grant you pregnancy or a cure from some illness. Here we make pledges to the sea, for when our women despair of getting pregnant, they make for the back of that Friend of God55 and beseech his blessing. Some of them return pregnant with a single child and some bear twins, especially if the ship’s captain has a soft spot for women and can provide them with the food they desire” (at which the Fāriyāq said to himself, “God grant that the captain of our ship be ill-humored, ill-tempered, ill-affected, ill-natured, ill-disposed, and irascible!”). When his wife heard what the doctor had to say, her fears abated and she took to the idea of travel, so they got together their provisions and made the journey to Alexandria.