(1) Taqlīs is receiving rulers on their arrival with various sorts of entertainment, and also a man’s placing his hands on his breast and bowing. Talqīs is reproaching someone in an exaggerated fashion, i.e., denouncing him and calling him names.
CHAPTER 2: A SALUTATION AND A CONVERSATION
2.2.1
“Good morning, Fāriyāq! How are you and how do you find Alexandria? Have you learned to tell its women from its men (for the women in your country do not veil their faces)? And how do you find its food and drink, its clothes, its air and water, its parks, and how its people honor strangers? Is your head still swimming, your tongue with disparagement of travel still brimming?” Replied he, “So far as the city’s situation is concerned, it’s elegant because it’s on the sea, and the number of foreigners it contains adds to its brio: in it you see some people whose heads are covered with tall pointed hats and others with tarbushes, some with round caps and others with maqāʿiṭ turbans, some with burnooses and others with ordinary turbans, some with aṣnāʿ turbans and others with fillets, some with headgear of a generic nature400 and others with madāmīj turbans, some with sailors’ caps and others with hoods, some with caps and others with bonnets, some with further turbans and others with watermelon-shaped(1) and cantaloupe-shaped caps,401 and others with head scarves large and small, some with judges’ tun-caps402 and others with antimacassars,403 some with undercloths for turbans and others with head rags, some with the turban under the name mishmadh and others with the turban under the name mishwadh, and some with Frankish hats shaped like earthenware jars, or carp, or the creases between the cheek, nose, and eye, or the crevices between the same, or the children of the jinn, or armpit sinews, or white varan lizards, or disreputable demons, or babies’ clouts.
2.2.2
“Some of them have long saggy drawers that sweep the ground behind and before them and some have no drawers at all, so that their anuses are on display and the people pass their hands over what is in front of the latter.404 Some of them have short breaches and some drawers without legs, some of them have drawstrings and some have belts, some have leggings (drawers made of one piece of material) and others have underwear,405 some have boxers and others briefs. Some ride mules and asses, others dromedaries and horses. Camels are on every side, people collide. One moving among them must never slacken in his pious exclamations,406 saying, ‘God protect! God preserve! God be kind! I have put my trust in God! I seek God’s help! I seek refuge with God!’
2.2.3
“As for women’s face veils, if they conceal the beauty of some, at least they relieve the eye of the ugliness of the rest. It is, however, the ugly ones who most often cover their faces, for the pretty ones think it a pity, when they leave their cages, to fly through the markets without the onlookers being able to see their charms’ array, behold their comeliness, and make much ado over the beauty on display, saying, ‘As God wills!407 God be blessed! How mighty is God! O God, O God!’ When such a one returns to her house, she believes that all the inhabitants of the city have fallen passionately in love with her and sits there expecting them to send her gifts and tokens of esteem, verses and sonnets with an amatory theme. Whenever anyone raises his voice in song, she cocks an attentive ear and believes she hears him rhapsodizing over her name, and if, then, she sets off early the following day to the marketplace and finds everyone busy with their work, she’s amazed that they’re still conscious and capable of effort and action.
2.2.4
“She therefore shows off more of her hidden charms, her elegance, and her forbidden fruits. She bewitches them with her gestures and nods, her eye-rolling and her gestures behind her back, her expressive looks and glances, her come-hither winks and cow eyes, her billings and cooings, her haughtiness and conceit, her vanity and coquetry, her playfulness and her turning aside of her cheek in pride, her comings and goings and goings and comings, her demurrals and her mincing walk, her glances to the side and her glances askance, her looks of surprise and swivelings of her eyes, her backward glances of spite or surprise and her angry looks, her peepings through her fingers against the sun to see408 and her turnings to observe what lies behind her, her shading of her eyes against the sun to see and her peering through her fingers against the sun to see, her wantonness and her conceitedness, her staggering and swaying, her tottering and strutting, her bending and bowing, her coyness and bough-like curvaceousness, the trailing of her skirts over the ground as she walks and her sweeping by, her turning of her face aside as she proceeds and her walking with a swinging gait, her stepping out manfully and her walking proudly in her clothes, her ambling and her rambling, her stepping like a pouting pigeon and her rolling gait, the swinging of her mighty buttocks and her sashaying, the insinuating wriggling of her shoulders, her pretty waddling and the way she walks as though she were short, her shaking of her shoulders, her sprinting and her haughtiness (especially in walking), her taking short steps and her sinuosity, her ponderousness and her modesty of deportment, her hastening and her willowiness, her slowness of motion and her looseness of motion, her slow stepping and her skipping from foot to foot, her stretching out her hands as she paces and her walking with short steps, her swaying and her slowness, her walking proudly like a high priest of the Parsees and her sudden startings off the road, her sprightly running and her bending as she walks, her languishing gait and her strutting, her galloping and her striding out, her stalking and her swaying from side to side, her nonchalant sauntering and her walking with the limbs held close to the body, her swaggering, her walking finely and loosely and her staggering as though intoxicated, her walking with her thighs far apart kicking up her feet and her walking with a swing, her striding fast and her rushing, her skelping and her stepping quick, her tripping quickly along with short steps and three other ways of walking, each with a difference of one letter, and her walking nicely, her limping and a fourth way of walking with yet another letter changed409 and her walking making her steps close together, her gliding and her walking slowly, her shambling and a fifth way of walking, with further letters changed,410 her walking with tiny steps411 and her shuffling, her walking with conceit and her walking as though too weak to take long strides, her running with short steps and her walking fast, her disjointed walking and the moving of her buttocks and sides as she walks, the looseness of her joints as she walks and her walking with close steps, her walking with a rolling gait and her slowness and turning in walking, her walking fast with close steps and her close stepping, her walking with steps as close as closely written letters and her walking with steps as close as rapidly uttered words, her hopping like a shackled camel and her rolling walk, her walking with small hurried steps and her moving like a fast, well-gaited donkey, her easy pacing and her twisting and turning, her marching proudly (spelled two ways),412 her walking arrogantly and her tottering, her walking so fast that her shoulders shake and her cleavage rises and her moving like a wave, her walking as though falling onto a bed and her walking proudly like a horse, her walking like an effeminate man and her fast, agitated walking, her handsome way of walking and the same said another way,413 the beauty of her walk and her walking like a dove dragging its wings and tail on the ground, her walking like a pouting pigeon and her floppy walking, her walking with close, fast steps, moving her shoulders, her swashbuckling and stepping like a crow, her nubile grace, her hastening as she sways and her running with close steps, her lion-like pacing and her hurrying, her swaying as she walks and her walking slowly with long steps, her walking finely and the way she drags her skirts behind her, her active way of walking and her racing, her nimbleness and her knock-kneed running, her starting like a scared gazelle and and her leaping, and her jumping up and down in place and her facing forward and facing backward — and all the time her appetite for presents grows. I have composed two lines414 on the face veil that are, I believe, without precedent: