1.17.2
Be that as it may, no one can deny that anyone who drinks, eats, or plays with snow derives from it a feeling of heat. The same goes for the reader of my words: if he finds himself getting chilly, all he has to do is seek protection with me from the cold, in which case the goal, which is to put his brain through some warm-up exercises, will have been achieved. This will be especially true if the said brain still carries some traces of anger and indignation left over from the preceding chapter, though I meant nothing by telling the tale but to speak the truth, and, had it crossed my mind to lie or fib, I would have done so in a poem concluding with prayers and praise for some miser; if anyone doesn’t believe me, let him ask the priest himself. All the same, snow differs from my words in one thing: snow falls on what is black and makes it white, while my words fall on paper and make it black. Both, in my opinion, are a delight to the eye, and the two share the following feature: a few days after the sun rises over the snow, it melts, and the same is true of my words, for almost nothing will remain of them in the reader’s head after the passing of one moonlit night or the rising over him of one Shining Orb. And here’s a further point of resemblance: the falling of the snow gives rise to a clearing and brightening of the weather; so too the descent of my words from my head brings about a brightening of the weather of my thoughts, a clearing of my mind, and a readiness on its part to delight and please. In any case, I’m sure you’ll agree that the comparison is appropriate here and my excuse to the point.
1.17.3
To proceed. I see that the well-off and well-to-do, in their spacious homes, use one set of living quarters for the summer and another for the winter, one nook for passing the night and another for taking a bath. Others, who have only one house, aren’t worth the visiting, unless that house happens to be close by at the time for visits or the time for visits happens to coincide with closeness to their houses. It follows that, in emulation of their better-off betters, scholars should assign themselves, in their roomy heads, numerous and varied locations for the cold, tepid, and hot words that come to them. That way, when their blood is hot and their natural tempers are aroused, they’ll be able to read something cold and so reduce the underlying causes of the heat that has exercised them, and when things are quiet they’ll be able to recite out loud from the hot, or pursue the opposite strategy, in keeping with the school of those who treat things with their like and not with their opposite. Let no one say that the reader will be wasting his time if he spends it distinguishing between the cold and the hot among these chapters, for the only way to thoroughly digest their contents is to read them through to the end, unlike other books, in which the sin of “cold talk”269 isn’t committed and which follow one set curriculum. Every one of these chapters, I declare, has a title that points to its contents as unambiguously as smoke does to fire; anyone who knows what the title is knows what the whole chapter is about. If, for example, you happen to come across some chapter with the word bālūʿah or ballūʿah or ballāʿah (“drain”) or barbakh (“drainpipe”) or irdabbah (“sewer”) as a heading, you can assume that one of the donkeys at the monastery must have dived into something of the sort looking for help with their Arabizations and translations.
1.17.4
On the other hand, of course, just because the reader has got to know the gist of the chapter from its title doesn’t mean he can decide not to read it and then boast to his friends and brethren, “I read Leg over Leg and understood it all!” That would be like someone who claims to be of noble origin(1) saying, “Today I saw the emir, God strengthen him, and spoke to him,” when all he saw of him was the back of his head, and that from a distance, and it wasn’t granted to him to kiss the noble hand; or the same emir asked him about something and he stammered over his reply or had to think about it, so the emir insulted his father and forefathers and cursed him out, threatening to have him crucified or to have his eyes put out with hot irons; or like some habanqaʿ (one who puts on airs, is stupid, and loves talking to women) saying, “I saw such and such a woman today, and, when she was face to face with me, she stopped and sighed deeply,” when she probably stopped to spit, or she sighed a deeply malodorous sigh. The reader should, preferably, on opening this book, go through it page by page, from the beginning to the end, including the footnotes and page numbers.
1.17.5
It is believed that each author has his own style and no one can please everybody, for people’s likes are diverse, their opinions various. One mystery I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of is that a certain author will appear slothful, with neither energy or good cheer, ill at ease with anything that might stir up commotion or conflict, tepid in both inaction and action, viewing everything that happens as though it was just what he’d expected — and yet set every vein of the reader’s throbbing and every muscle aquiver the moment he takes up the pen; and there are some whom you’ll find lively and brisk, always in a hurry and a rush, quick and agile, coming and going, running around and falling over himself, chasing and speeding, ducking and weaving, shoving and jostling — and then, when he composes something, it falls out of his head onto the reader’s brain like snow and almost douses the fires of his intelligence.
1.17.6
When I thought about the matter and looked into it in depth, I started to doubt that snow could be created by an excess of cold formed in the air. I decided that, on the contrary, it may well, in fact, be caused by the creation by excessive heat of an irritated patch on the air’s breast above the inhabitants of the Earth plus a superabundance of ire inside its guts, followed by the precipation of the latter onto the said inhabitants in the form of snow, to pay them back for the abominations they practice on cold nights, meaning the way that some of them try to turn nature upside down and heat their beds with an instrument containing fire or, in the case of others, one containing piping hot water or, of others, by using an instrument containing drink, or of others, one containing meat.270 Such meat might even include pork, God save your dignity, and the air would therefore drop accumulations of snow upon them to prevent them from leaving their houses to make use of these instruments, and thus be relieved of their corruption, be it but for a couple of days.
1.17.7
What would have escaped its notice, however, is that many of these same people make use of one instrument to instrumentalize another, or several others. An example of the first would be the rich man who sits cross-legged in his tub, wraps himself in his fur mantle, and says to his servant, “You there! Off with you to such and such a store and bring me an instrument with which to heat my bed tonight!” so that the servant treads the mire and snow while his master’s foot stays clean. An example of the second would be if the master is open-handed and liberal and sends his servant in a vehicle either belonging to him or hired off the street, or, if he’s a sovereign emir and wants to keep his secret from his servant (it being ever the pleasure of servants to slander their master’s good name and pretend that they are worthier to be served than he), in which case the master will make use of another, or a couple of others, or of several others, in place of his servant, he having sent them, ahead of time, via his servant, a gift as a way of showing his generosity or perhaps having given it to them with his own hand. Whatever the case may be, the falling of snow will have been the cause of heating and warmth, for, if the latter be regarded as due to the action of the master, it would be the cause of his having made use of the instrument, and if it is regarded as being due to the action of the servant or others who might take his place, it would be attributable to envy, which is one of the most effective stimulators of warmth and heat.