2.9.5
After pondering the matter, it seems to me that these protuberances and skin flaps do great injury both to those whom they adorn and those who are devoid of them. The first argument in support of this is that a person who bears one believes, in the depths of his heart, that he is better than others, physically and morally. Thus, he looks at the other as a ram with horns does at one without and contents himself with this external feature instead of seeking to attain praiseworthy qualities and meritorious inner traits, and this allows it to lead him in the direction of moral torpor and vicious pleasure. The second is that, should Saturn’s noose get caught round his neck one day and drag him into the orbit of its adversities, if he fails to find a woman with a second skin like his, he’ll be unable to withstand those adversities with any other; and it may happen that he fall in love with a beautiful serving girl who works in his house, in the kitchen or the stable, and his father, or his father-in-law, or his other relatives, or his emir, may tell him to have nothing to do with her, in which case beautiful girls will be left high and dry, which is regarded by Islamic law as reprehensible — nay, the scholars have all asserted authoritatively that it is absolutely forbidden.
2.9.6
The third is that it might happen that he marry a woman with a second skin who is as badly off as he and not well-heeled. Then, if she bears him children, he will lack the means to bring them a shaykh to teach them at home and he’ll be too embarrassed to send them to the local school to learn along with everyone else’s. Should this be the case, his children will grow up unlettered, and the process will repeat itself with their offspring for as long as God wills. The fourth is that both protuberance and second skin impose upon those who bear them devastating expenses and catastrophic costs, driving their owner to excessive outlay and profligacy, to collapse and imminent bankruptcy, which may even lead him, in the end, to the noose of a palm-fiber rope. The fifth is that humans in their native state have neither protuberance nor second skin and to add them at a later stage is contrary to nature, or at least a form of meddling or recklessness. Other arguments exist, but I have decided not to mention them here for fear of going on too long. At least it must be clear to you by now that the Khawājā in question was possessed of neither protuberance nor second skin, though perhaps, had it not been for his natural inclination toward poetry, he might have acquired one or the other. But everything has its drawbacks.
CHAPTER 10: A DOCTOR
2.10.1
May God relieve you — or shrive you or deceive you,491 following those who read ṣirāṭ or sirāṭ or zirāṭ or those who say “Demand the choicest of camels as your ransom!” and read the last word as either buṣāq or busāq or buzāq—of your sickness, Khawājā Yanṣur! You left the Fāriyāq in a state of unease and apprehension, waiting for an answer from you, morning and evening, in a state of tension. Replied the poet, “It grieves me greatly that your friend’s letter should have reached me while I was feverish and had a headache, thus preventing me from responding quickly. I would have liked to do so, despite my sufferings, had not the doctor, envoy of ʿAzrāʾīl,492 forbidden me to move. But you must hear the story of what happened to me with that cuckold.
2.10.2
“One day, I got indigestion from eating bulgur that I’d bolted down, lock, stock, and barrel, so that the next day I was ill and nauseous. It so happened that I was visited that morning by one of those emirs to whom, when they insist that something is thus and so, you have to say ‘Yes’ instead of ‘No’ and when they insist that it isn’t, you have to say ‘No’ instead of ‘Yes.’ Seeing me in that state, he asked, ‘What ails you?’ so I told him what had happened. ‘You must let my doctor see you right away,’ said he. ‘He is the most skillful of all doctors because he just arrived from Paris a few days ago. Were it not so, I wouldn’t have taken him on as a physician for me and my family.’ ‘It is my custom,’ I said, ‘to endure minor illnesses for a few days, and seek to cure them through dieting and precaution, for this may render medicines unnecessary. I find that doctors treat illnesses by conjecture and guesswork, and, by the time they arrive at cause and effect, one’s soul is almost coming out of one’s gullet, for they try one medication this time and another the next.’
2.10.3
“‘If the disease hadn’t already got to you,’ he replied, ‘you wouldn’t be talking this way. We must bring him now,’ and he kept on at me until, shame-faced and embarrassed, I sent my servant to him. Then it occurred to me that, among us, a host, from an excessive sense of hospitality, may force a guest to eat and even sometimes feed him with his own hand something the other cannot stomach but that I’d never heard of anyone doing the honors by forcing another to take medical treatment, so I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. ‘What’s making you laugh?’ he asked. ‘Nothing,’ I responded. ‘No one laughs at nothing,’ he said. ‘There must be something going on.’ I said, ‘I thought of the doctor who visited a sick man and said to his family, “God recompense you for your loss!” “He isn’t dead yet,” they replied. “He will be soon, God willing,” said the doctor, so I laughed.’ ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said the emir. ‘This doctor isn’t like that one, and anyway you’re a bachelor and don’t have any family he could say that to.’
2.10.4
“Presently, the servant came back with the doctor, who was sicker and thinner than me, for it seems he had no work that would take him out of the house. When he entered, he felt my pulse and looked at my tongue. Then he furrowed his brows and looked down at the ground, soliloquizing (which means ‘talking to himself’). Next he raised his head and told my servant, ‘Bring the basin.’ ‘What do you want to do?’ I asked. ‘It’s my body. Shouldn’t you consult me?’ ‘Either I bleed you or it’s the tomb,’ he said. ‘God guide you aright, old man!’ I said. ‘All I did was eat bulgur with meat — what people call kubaybah.’ ‘I know that,’ he said, ‘I know. You Levantines — you all die of eating that kubbah stuff.493 I must have buried a hundred cases when I was in your country. It’s definitely the kubbah.’ ‘A kubbah up your patootie, God willing!’ I said. ‘There’s no kubbah whatsoever in my patties!’ he replied.494 I turned to the emir and laughed, but, as far as I could tell, he didn’t get it either.
2.10.5
“To keep it brief, he and the emir kept on finding fault with my opinion until I surrendered myself to destruction and put out my hand, and he worked away at it with his scalpel like someone cutting a watermelon with a knife and out came the blood, spurting everywhere, some of it even getting into his eyes, which made him let go of my hand and go off to wash his face. When he returned after a short while, I had fainted, so my servant ministered to me with orange-blossom water and other things, while the emir gazed at the smoke made by his tobacco and the doctor whispered in his ear. When I revived, he bandaged my hand and left with the emir, the two of them telling me to look after myself and that they’d come and visit me soon, while I said, under my breath, ‘May God never bring you back!’