O you who ask what part’s prettiest
In a girl who’s cute and plump,
Our master has passed this down to us:
“One half of all beauty is found in the rump.”
3.5.12
The reason for this is that it comes in so many shapes and sizes. Thus, if you consider the shape of the underside of the single buttock(1) it will look to you like a cone, while if you think of it as being twinned with its partner it will look to you like a semicircle, or a crescent. However, if you trace it from the tip of the coccyx to the opposite end of one side of the continuous crack, you will observe what is level, or flat, and should you do the same from the same place to a less distant point, you will find yourself presented with a dome and a curve, and if you consider it when the person is lying on their stomach, you will find yourself confronted with what is concave,68 and so it continues. No other part of the body has so many shapes. I declare: how exciting are the lines of that celebrated man of letters Shaykh Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī, that go
And her buttocks heaved like waves, leaving the lover
To drown where the billows clash!
3.5.13
In addition, it would seem from the presence in this magnificent language of ours of the word mirfad,70 as well as from the statement by the author of the Qāmūs that “the mukhaddam is the cord of the drawers at the lowest part of a woman’s leg,” that the garments of the Arab women of ancient times were like those of the women of Syria now, though perhaps these garments were peculiar to the women of the cities — although on the other hand al-Mutanabbī’s words “I abstain from what is in the drawers” suggest that they were in general use, based on the fact that it was desert girls that he was wooing, as indicated by his words, quoted above, “In the desert there’s a beauty that needs no importing.” In the Qāmūs the author says, “Al-dubr and al-dubur are ‘the opposite of al-qubl’ and mean ‘the afterpart or back part of anything’… or the anus, or the back.”
3.5.14
I would add that the names of the letters making up this word have their own meanings and, no matter how you switch them around, they’ll give you a new meaning each time.71 Similarly, if you combine each two letters of the word, they add up, according to their numerical values,72 to even numbers, in allusion to the paired nature of the two sides, while again the two “u”s imply ponderousness and gravity73—the entry on this word in the Qāmūs is one of the richest in that work. Whether the coining of the word occurred posterior to that of muʾakhkhar (“posterior”) or anterior to that, and whether it is derived from the idiom “I came to you at the end of the month (dubura l-shahr)” or vice versa,74 are open questions; what is clear is that the abstract and the figurative derive from the concrete, leaving for debate the question of its derivation from “the afterpart of anything.”75 In the Qurʾān one finds “they [would certainly] turn their backs.”76 Metropolitan Atanāsiyūs al-Tutūnjī, in Al-Ḥakākah fī l-rakākah, denies this.77 Know too that the Arabs compiled some ninety terms for the backside, divided among names, nicknames, and epithets. Some of these appeared above in “Raising a Storm.”78 Epithets include Umm Suwayd, Umm al-ʿIzm, and Umm Khinnawr,79 and had they not held it in the same esteem as they did lions, swords, and wine in terms of doughtiness, fatal impact, and ability to intoxicate, they would not have coined epithets to describe it.80
3.5.15
Irrelevant here is what that Bedouin said of the cat: “God damn the animal! Lots of names and a low price.” We would claim that the low price of that animal (a function of its large numbers) does not reflect poorly on its value or virtues and that the multiplicity of its names is simply a matter of piling like on like in order to achieve some resemblance to a possessor of Umm Suwayd,81 from the perspective that the cat is a highly fertile animal and it is in its nature to play and fight, though this often results in scratching and bleeding, or gashing and sudden death, or gnashing of teeth and blinding. Also, it is so good at surviving accidents and injury that it is said to have seven lives. There is no height too high for it to ascend and no abyss too deep for it to descend. If it smells food that it likes, it will climb the highest wall and insert itself into the narrowest space to carry it off. If a hand passes over it, it sticks up its tail and produces a snoring and a susurration that express the pleasure it derives from being touched. Also natural to it are cleanliness and its way of eating secretly and shyly, or as though frightened.
3.5.16
If you refuse — as has been your wont from the start of this book — to leave anything uncontested you say, “How is it, if the giving of names depends on the respect accorded to or the usefulness of the thing named, that there are so many words for disasters and old women and so few for the sun and the moon?” I will respond, “The large number of words for old women is related to the fact that they were once young girls, or that they may be used as a means to get hold of one.82 As far as disasters are concerned, it’s because they create fear, and respect may result from fear as it may from tender affection. The sun and the moon do have a large number of names, but these are not well-known among us. This is not the first unfair accusation that people have leveled against the language, as I have demonstrated in another book.”83
3.5.17
Here is the full list — to which I have devoted considerable research — of names and characteristics that have been invented to describe a woman possessed of a “Mother of a Little Black Thing”: al-athīnah (“the luxuriantly growing”), al-khabandāh (“the fat and full”), al-rājiḥ and al-rajāḥ (“the weighed down”), al-radāḥ (“the heavy-thighed”), al-dulaḥah (“the fattily fleshed”), al-habyar (“the one whose buttocks are so fat that she runs out of breath when she walks”), al-shawtarah (“the big-buttocked”), al-ʿajizah (“the large-buttocked”), al-ʿajzāʾ (“the mightily buttocked”), al-muʿajjazah (“the huge-buttocked”), al-dahās and al-dahsāʾ (“the mightily buttocked”), al-bawṣāʾ (“the mightily buttocked”), al-laffāʾ (“the huge-thighed”), al-rakrākah (“the mightily thighed and buttocked”), al-zakzākah (“the large-buttocked”), al-wakwākah (“the mightily buttocked”), al-ḍibrik (“the massively thighed”), al-ḍunʾak (“the firm-fleshed and tendonous”), al-ʿaḍannak (“the huge-thighed, the meeting point of whose thighs has become constricted due to her plumpness”), al-warkāʾ and al-warkānah (“the large-rumped”), al-thaqāl (“the well-rumped”), al-jazlah (“the massively buttocked”), al-sajlāʾ (“the massively uddered”),84 al-mikfāl (the well rumped), al-hirkawlah (“possessed of haunches that quiver”), al-muʾakkimah (“the massively posteriored”), and al-alyā and al-alyānah (“the large-buttocked”). Curiously, the author of the Qāmūs mentions astah and sutāhī (“a man who has, or is seeking, a large backside”) but fails to vouchsafe us their feminine forms, so I note them here, with his permission. Further examples are: nufuj al-ḥaqībah (“huge-haunched and — buttocked”), dhāt al-ahdāf (“she of the shooting butts”), dhāt al-taʾkīm (“she of the thick buttocks”), dhāt al-raḍrāḍ (“she of the quaking buttocks”), all with reference to “women with big buttocks” (niswah bilākh); balkhāʾ is also used,85 even though al-Fīrūzābādī mentions it only in the sense of “stupid.”