1.20.4
The next day, they returned to the salesmen and told them, “You sold us things we didn’t ask for” and gave them reasons and justifications for returning the goods. Said the owner of the handkerchief, “You almost blackened my face in front of my white-skinned beloved, and she would have quarreled with me over the low quality of what I gave her, had she not been anxious to get something better.” The salesmen, however, told them, “We sold you what you requested but ‘over your eyes there is a covering’374 that stops you from seeing the colors or kinds of cloth and from recognizing either quantities or measurements.” “How,” asked the one who had bought a robe, “can a person be ignorant of his height and another know it?” And the man who had the black but had wanted red said, “Look! The robe you sold me is black, and these two companions of mine will bear witness to what I say. See! It’s clear to anyone with eyes.” “You are blind and cannot distinguish colors,” said the salesman. Then he went to fetch some eye-wash with which to treat the man’s eyes, but the other refused, saying, “On the contrary, it’s you who are blind, and stupid, too.” The one who’d bought cotton instead of silk now said, “Suppose the eyes can deceive. Can touch also mislead the blind man?” Thus debate and intransigence did battle between them, and they filled the place with shouting and uproar.
1.20.5
While they were so engaged, a man came up at a run, panting and gasping. His tongue was hanging out, and he was holding his midriff with his hands. He had barely entered the store before he fell to the ground and could move no more, and he started moaning and saying, “Ah my wife! Ah my wife!” Then he passed out for a time. When he revived, he cast looks right and left, caught sight of his foe, and could not restrain himself from leaping up from where he lay and saying, “You wicked people! You pushers of goods that have exhausted their life! You stirrers-up of conflict twixt a man and his wife! You drivers of wedges between father, son, and daughter! You veilers of the eyes of those who can see and cheaters of gullible buyers without quarter! How can you think that it is allowable in God’s sight to cheat me and sell me something of which I have no need? Yesterday I came to you and asked you to sell me meat so that I could make broth for my wife who has been sick for some days, and you sold me crusts of bread and told me they were tender flesh. When I lit the fire to cook them, I found they were bread, and my wife went the whole night without tasting food and when morning came nothing of her moved, except her tongue, which never ceased cursing the wretched hour in which she set eyes on me before we married and abusing the priest who was the cause of our doing so, and she swears that, if she recovers from this sickness, she will give orders to all women to be to their husbands contrarians, excuse-makers, and beddeniers.”(1) As he said this, the blood in his brains apparently boiled, and he leaped up from where he lay and would have beaten the salesman had not some of the workers in the store grabbed hold of him.
1.20.6
When the salesman had wriggled from his grasp, he mounted a pulpit and declared, “Listen, all you adversaries, and do not rush to criticize. Typically, as critics, your eyes have become so clouded you see black as red, your taste buds so corrupted you think meat toasted bread, your minds so enfeebled and jaded you believe jewels to be colored pompoms that have faded. Only the Market Boss can judge fairly between us, so off with us to him, otherwise you must be counted people of unbelief and sin!” When the others heard the man’s words and realized that for him to have them tried before the Shaykh of the Market would be fast practice because the latter, by reason of his extreme old age, was weaker both in sight and judgment than they, they erupted in anger and started overturning the goods, jumbling them, and scattering them, ripping to pieces everything they could lay hands on, stamping on everything they could stamp on, and smashing every implement, box, glass, and cup they could reach. Then they left, heads held high. Next, they agreed among themselves to convene a council that night to arrange matters.
1.20.7
When it was evening, they met and said, “It’s become clear to us that these salesmen are oppressors and cheats and that our senses perceived everything the way it really is. Thanks then to God and to the Lady of the Handkerchief, who guided us to this. Come, let us be independent in our affairs and set up our own warehouses and workshops as they did theirs,” and they found themselves partisans and confidants, friends and assistants, and brought prices down so much that many became well disposed toward them. To these they said, “Our covenant with you is that we will sell you the goods in such a way that your eyes can see them, your hands touch them, and your tongues taste them, and if anyone’s unhappy with what he’s bought, we’ll exchange it for something better.” Then they looked for the price list and published it in all the lands, using a variety of means to that end, and they said to the people, “Behold the clearest of ledgers, the most extensive of registers. Buy from us nothing that isn’t according to the price sheet. Don’t go to the Market Boss; he is beyond redemption in his conceit.” The people, pleased with the conditions these men had set themselves, split off from the aforementioned Market Boss and his party, and each of the two parties took to accusing their opposite numbers of lying, and calumny, calling them stupid, excoriating them, rebutting their claims, accusing them of feeble-mindedness, cursing them out, calling them unbelievers, and charging them with sin and fornication—glory be to Him who makes each of man’s days succeed the one that went before, in never-ending fluctuation.
END OF BOOK ONE
(1) “contrarians, excuse-makers, and bed-deniers”: ḍujuʿ is the plural of ḍajūʿ, meaning “a woman who is at odds with her husband” (I hold the form to be strange, for it derives from ḍajaʿa (“to lie down”) so it ought to imply obedience); mufassilah means “a woman who tells her husband when he wants to sleep with her, to keep him away, ‘I am having my period’”; and manāshīṣ is the plural of minshāṣ, meaning “a woman who keeps her husband from her bed.”
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER 1: ROLLING A BOULDER
2.1.1
I have cast from me, thank God, Book One, and relieved my pate of its burden. I scarcely believed I’d ever get to the second book, the first made me feel so dizzy, especially when I set out upon the waves to pay the Fāriyāq a respectful and honorable farewell. Anyway, I’m under no obligation to follow him wherever he goes, and for a while, after he reached Alexandria and swallowed the pebbles off its ground, my pen just sat there smacking its lips, my inkwell closed.