2.4.16
In sum, when this veil-passion was laid and hatched in the Fāriyāq’s head, the little birdies therein twittered to him that he should get himself a musical instrument, and, in no time at all, he had returned from the market with, under his arm, a small tambour, which he began playing at a window of his room that overlooked the house of a Copt. Now, the Bag-man had a Muslim servant, who had fallen in love with the Copt’s daughter, and the tambour made him jealous, so he denounced the Fāriyāq to his master and said, “If the passers by in the street hear the sound of the tambour coming from your house, they will think it’s a tavern or an inn or a thuknah (‘headquarters and gathering place of soldiers under the banner of their commander,’ etc.), not a Bag-men’s abode, because this instrument is used only by the Turks.” The Bag-man thanked him for this, accepted that what he said was true, and instructed the Fāriyāq to get rid of the instrument, which he did, while at the same time starting to think of how he could escape the hands of this band whose bane never ceased to get at him through every window, on island and on mainland. A few days later the servant fled with the girl and he married her, after she had converted to Islam, praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds.
CHAPTER 5: A DESCRIPTION OF CAIRO
454
2.5.1
Many an ancient historian toward Cairo has bent his gaze and on it hosts of poets past have lavished praise, and here now stand I, to describe it and to praise it as did no scholar in former days. Thus I declare: Cairo is one metropolis among metropoli, one city among cities, one settlement among settlements, one borough among boroughs, one seat among seats, one town among towns, one citadel among citadels, one village among villages, one urban center among urban centers, one capital among capitals, one locality among localities, one territory among territories, one land among lands, one township among townships, one region among regions, one thing among many things. Its people, though, would say, “It is the metropolis among metropoli, the city among cities, the capital among capitals, the thing among all other things” and so on, and I do not know how to account for the difference. However that may be, it is indeed a city replete with permissible pleasures, bursting with boundless appetites, answering to the needs of hot-humored men (contrary to what ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī has said).455 There the stranger finds amusement and accommodation, in it he forgets family and nation.
2.5.2
Among its curiosities456 is that what leaves the bodies of its men enters the bodies of its women, and the women are therefore as fat as cottage cheese and clarified butter eaten on an empty stomach, while its men are like dry bread with sesame oil eaten on a full. Another is that its markets in no way resemble its men, for its inhabitants are full of refinement, sophistication, literary culture, and wit, qualities pleasing and morals pure, while its markets are utterly without such things. Another is that its water in no way resembles its bread, which they call ʿaysh, for the first is sweet while the second is worthless. Another is that its scholars are scholars, its jurisprudents jurisprudents, its poets poets, its profligates profligates, its lechers lechers. Another is that its women walk sometimes on the ground like other women and sometimes on the ceiling or the walls.457
2.5.3
Another is the treatment of the feminine as masculine and of the masculine as feminine,458 even though its people are masters of scholarship (and what masters too!). Another is that, in their bathhouses, they constantly recite a sura or two of the Qurʾan that mention “glasses” and “those who pass around with them,” so that one emerges in a state of simultaneous ritual purity and impurity.459 More amazing still, many of the city’s men have no hearts, such men substituting for them two pairs of shoulders, two backs, four hands, and four legs.460 And further, many of the girls who launder their shifts in the channels of the Nile, make them, once washed, into turbans, which they place on top of their heads; then they walk about stark naked. Another is that a tribe of them once heard that women in China use — or, more accurately, have used upon them — iron forms to reduce the size of their feet to below that of the norm, so they took to lopping off their fingers in the belief that if the hand has only four fingers, it will work more dexterously and be more useful to its owner.461 This was despite the fact that they have no custom of covering their fingers and palms that would impose additional expense on them, unlike Franks, who leave no limb uncovered, either out of a desire to magnify the glory of those and show them off, or to guard against infection.
2.5.4
In addition to these (to these curiosities, that is, not these limbs), girls employed in public works to carry bricks, plaster, dirt, mud, stones, lumber, and so on, do so on their heads, and do so joyfully, energetically, gallopingly, canteringly, cantabulatingly, celebratorily, and merrily, not sighingly, dejectedly, stumblingly, sinkingly, frowningly, or weepily. She to whose lot fall bricks will compose for them a brickish mawwāl or, if plaster, will sing to it a plastery song, as though walking in a bridal procession. And further, there are there two great offices, each called the Domestic Services Office. The first is presided over by a man and provides men with whatever they need to cool their beds by way of hes, the second, of lower standing and status, is presided over by a woman and provides them with whatever they need to warm them up by way of shes. The founder of the first is of Persian origin and has now became so well-known and respected among the Arabs that you hear him mentioned with praise everywhere, and hardly a social, musical, or literary gathering is without his presence.
2.5.5
And further, the Frankish bonnet grows there and expands, gets thicker and huger, widens and lengthens and broadens and deepens to the point that, when you see one on its wearer’s head, you think it must be a grain silo. Said the Fāriyāq, “I often used to wonder at this and say, ‘How came it to be considered right and proper, or seem acceptable to the eye, that heads so misshapen, meager, and miserable, so vile and contemptible, so ignominious and meet to be condemned, so strange and so ill-omened, so evocative of filth and so emetic, so ugly to look at and so pathetic, so disgusting and repulsive, despicable and convulsive, should bear these most noble bonnets? And how could the air of Cairo have made them develop so and grow, when as long as they were in their own countries they weren’t worth a bottle of bubbles or a fountain of frittilaries? And how can it be that there they were like dust, and here they’ve been metathesized into diamonds? O air, fire, water, dust of Cairo, turn this tarbush of mine into a Frankish bonnet (even if the former be better and of greater élan in the sight of God and man, more imposing and correct, to the eye more brilliant and perfect, to the head better fitted, to the body better suited, not equipped with horns that truckle for tucker and that the birds have to shit on if you’re to find succor)!’ But my cry helped not at all — the tarbush was on my head to stay, fate had turned to look the other way.”