2.2.15
“And once he wrote to one of the great metropolitans, ‘My request, Your Grace, after kissing your noble buttocks and raising your elevated, sophisticated, delectated, de-germinated, etiolated, uncontaminated, well-soled, much extolled, and often resoled slippers is…’—at which point I asked him, ‘What do you mean here by “buttocks?”’ and he replied, ‘In the usage of the metropolitans, it means “hand.”’ In no time at all, the same metropolitan had sent him back his blessings and a letter praising him hugely for his learning and virtues, of which the following is an excerpt:435 ‘Your sodomitical missive reached me when I was outside the church, and I could read it only after I’d entered my cell and penetrated it. When I came to the shittiest part of it, I realized that you were possessed of excrements, a creator of pestilence, a “congregator” of both the branches of knowledge and its roots, long of tongue and with ’ands too short (to do any wrong), with a broad little brow, deeply in debt, wide of waistcoat, of ideas bereft.’ At the end of it he wrote, ‘May God prolong your life and livery, grant you happiness, and awaken your hopes! In conclusion, our greetings, and a greeting for our conclusion. May the grace of the apostles embrace you, once, twice, and all the way up to ten!’ The man made a habit of showing this letter off to all his acquaintances and especially those who had left him in anger over his interpretation of the word jāmiʿ. In view of the metropolitan’s words, these were thenceforth relieved of all confusion and doubt as to the correctness of how to use it, and the man increased in dignity and venerability in their eyes.
2.2.16
“Turning now to your question concerning the hospitability of this town, in the days of their first forefathers they were exceedingly liberal and generous. However, when they started to excel in the world of commerce and to mix with the people of those Frankish hats that you wot of, they caught from them their reticence, miserliness, bad faith, and avarice; indeed, they’ve come to surpass their teachers. When they find themselves gathered together, the only talk they make is of buying and selling. One will say, ‘Today, a Turkish trooper came to me in the morning to buy something, which I took as an evil omen for the morning and for the start of business, for, as you well know, troopers incur debts but don’t pay them, and if they’re gracious enough to provide the price in cash, they give the merchant only half. So I told him, “I don’t have what you’re looking for, effendi” (showing him the deference of this title solely in the hope that he would treat me politely). No sooner did he hear my words than he entered the store and threw the goods everywhere, taking what he wanted and what he didn’t. Then he left, shouting insults.’ Another will say, ‘I too had a run-in with a Turkish lady. She sailed in early today, wallowing under the weight of her jewelry, approached me smiling, and said, “Have you, sir, any brocaded silk?” Taking a happy omen from her coming, I said, “I have.” “Show me the goods,” she said, so I showed them to her. Then she leaned forward and gave me a slap with her slipper, saying, “Is one such as I to be shown such stuff? Show me something else,” so I showed her something that she liked, and she took it, saying, “Send someone with me to collect the money,” so I sent my young servant, who followed her till she entered a large house, where she ordered her steward to give the boy a sound drubbing. The steward, however, being a Turk and seeing that the lad was comely and smooth, couldn’t find it in his heart to beat the boy, but implemented his mistress’s command in a different way that nevertheless brought him both injury and pain.’ Thus they pass their days in evil ways and their nights in going over them. I think merchants go into ecstasies simply at the mention of buying and selling, even if they aren’t making a profit.
2.2.17
“As to what befell me after my arrival, I put up at the home of a Bag-man who was the friend of my previous friend. I occupied a room close to his and each night would hear him beating his wife with some implement, while she produced moans and groans, sighs and nasal cries. His acts roused the desire in me to give him a hiding, and I often thought of getting out of bed but was afraid that it would be for me as it was for the Persian who practiced medicine and lived next door to a community of Copts: one night he heard one of his neighbor-women screaming. There being so many scorpions in the houses of Egypt, he thought one must have stung her, and, fetching a flask of medicine, placed it under his arm and set off in her direction at a run. When he opened the door, though, he found a man lying on top of the woman and treating her with his finger, after the custom of that people. When the doctor saw this, he was amazed, and the flask fell from his hand and was broken.
2.2.18
“This Bag-man had white skin and blue eyes that were both small and round. His nose had a finely molded tip and went crooked at the bridge, and his lips were thick. I tell you these details only so that they can remain with you as a prototype against which to measure any other Bag-men or others you may see. On the roof of his house he had made a small, pyramid-shaped stack of empty bottles of alcohol, the roof being higher than those of his neighbors. One day it occurred to him to set me the task of composing a sermon in praise of saddlebags that I was to deliver at a small oratory he had hired. When I finished, I submitted it to him, and he took it to Qayʿar Qayʿār. ‘What do you intend to do with this baggish rigmarole?’ the latter asked him. ‘I intend the one who composed it to deliver it to the people. What do you think of it?’ ‘It’s good,’ he said, ‘but it does have one drawback, which is that nobody will understand it except him and me, and we’ve both already read it, so there’s no call to have it read out again.’ Consequently the man gave up the idea.
2.2.19
“It also happened that one delightful summer’s evening when I was staying with him, I went out to take a walk on my own, a copy of the ledger in my hand. My head being filled with thoughts of how I was separated from my family and friends and with memories of my homeland and of how I had been exiled from it not for any reason linked to ordinary affairs but because of a feud between Market-man and Bag-man over polemical matters, I kept on walking until I ended up on the outskirts of the city, to which I had been followed by a man who, having seen the copy of the ledger and recognized it, had privately decided to bring a disaster down on my head. Now he approached me, spoke to me, and led me left and right, distracting me with talk, until we arrived at an empty wasteland, where he left me, telling me that he had to see to some business. I tried to return to where I was staying but suddenly found myself face to face with a huge pack of dogs that had run up, barking at me, and were closing in. I tried to scare them off with the book, but they attacked me like a Market-man attacking a Bag-man and divided my body, my clothes, and the book between them, as creditors might a debtor’s possessions, some biting, some drawing blood, some dragging me, and some threatening to come back for more. I managed, barely, to escape their clutches, though my clothes and skin were torn to shreds, and the ledger too was ripped to pieces, both pages and binding. When I returned home and the Bag-man saw me in this state, he paid no attention to me or maybe didn’t even see me, so preoccupied was he with the bag. When he discovered, however, that I had returned without the ledger, he imagined I must have given it away to someone, and this gave him such immense joy that he wanted to keep me with him in Alexandria for Bag-man business. However, he decided that he should consult his friend first and therefore wrote to him about me. The friend rejected his idea and said he had to send me on to the island, because this was what had been previously decided (though how sweet it can be when decisions are changed!). My host therefore decided to put the plan into action, and here I now am, awaiting the ship.”