2.10.6
“Next day, the doctor returned with an armful of medicinal plants. ‘What are those plants for?’ I asked. ‘An enema,’ he replied. ‘One will be enough for me,’ I said. He replied, ‘The emir says you have to take enemas, if not for your sake, then to do him honor.’ ‘There’s no harm in honoring him with an enema,’ I thought to myself, ‘but once again he’s going against custom, which is that the person visited should adjure the visitor by the name of God and the names of His angels, His apostles, His books, and the Last Day and the Resurrection, to take something to eat or drink for his sake, but here it’s the visitor, and he’s insisting on flushing me out!’ Then I took the enema. The next day, he showed up again, carrying a small pot. ‘What’s that in your hand?’ I asked. ‘A laxative,’ he replied, ‘of the kind I make specially for the emir.’ So I swallowed it down.
2.10.7
“Then the following day he came to me carrying nothing, so I rejoiced and told him, ‘The laxative was so powerful it’s drained me of all my strength.’ ‘Today,’ he replied, ‘you have to take the hottest bath possible, so that you sweat. I have tried it before on the emir’s family and found it to be most beneficial.’ He undertook to heat the water himself and made me get into a bathing tub that I’d bought. When I got in, the heat struck me with such force that I fainted, though it had time to scald my skin first. I was pulled out at my last gasp, and my servant ministered to me with pungent herbs until I recovered.
2.10.8
“The day after that he came to me carrying nothing, and I was again delighted and thought, ‘Maybe he’s exhausted his box of tricks and the bath was the last thing he had up his sleeve.’ He asked me how I was. ‘As you see,’ I responded. ‘Sick?’ he said. ‘Sick indeed,’ I answered. ‘You have to be bled,’ he said, his words falling on my ears like ‘a rugged boulder hurled from on high by the torrent’495 and I said, ‘It seems you’re going back to what you began with. When will this cycle end?’ He replied, ‘One of these giaours (plural of cure)496 is bound to get rid of what you have.’ ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘As for the first named, that’s you, and as for the second, that’s my blood or living spirit,’ and I stood firm and refused, saying, ‘Tell the emir that I am, thank God, a bachelor, so why is he trying to send me away from here so quickly?’ but he didn’t get it.497 ‘I want to bleed you,’ he said to me, ‘not be your messenger.’ ‘But I don’t want you to,’ I said, ‘so grant me rest, may God grant you the same.’
2.10.9
“At this he showed me his back and departed, sending me soon after his bill, in which he demanded of me five hundred piasters, for he claimed to have people in the countryside among the peasants who collected those medicinal plants for him, even though they were the same that sprout from the walls of Cairo’s houses. Not content with this, he threatened that, if I was as reluctant to pay as I had been to get bled the second time, he’d bring a case against me in his consul’s office.498 I paid him, therefore, the aforementioned sum in full, saying to myself, ‘God damn the hour that showed us foreigners’ faces, and their backsides!’
2.10.10
“Now here I am today, feeling much better, and I’d like to meet with your friend. Before the visit, though, I must do him some honor”—and he ordered his servant to select a trunkful of fine clothes and take it to the Fāriyāq, who at the time was dressing as a Frank. Then he wrote him a short message with a few lines of verse inviting him to his salon the following day, details to come in the following chapter.
CHAPTER 11: THE FULFILLMENT OF WHAT HE PROMISED US
2.11.1
The Fāriyāq had a friend from the Damascene lands who used to visit him, and he was with him when the servant arrived with the letter and the set of clothes. He told the Fāriyāq, “I shall go with you to see Khawājā Yanṣur, for I have often heard him mentioned and would love to meet him.” “But,” the Fāryaq said, “turning up with another (al-izwāʾ)(1) may be considered a discourtesy to the person visited, for it is inappropriate for an invitee to bring a companion with him.” “Forget about that,” said his friend, “for it’s the Frankish way. In Egypt, on the other hand, a guest may bring anyone he wishes, and his companion too, should he come across any acquaintance on the way, has the right to bring him along with him, and the latter too has the right to bring along another, and that other another, till they turn into a chain of friends, the only condition being that none of the links be female; all of them, without exception, talk to the person being visited, are treated to his hospitality, and are welcomed by him. He can’t question one of them and say, ‘You! What do you want, what letter of introduction do you have, and what are the names of your wife and your sister, and how old are they, and on what street do they live?’ like your Frankish friends. Have no fear that the man will receive us harshly. And anyway, we have literature to commend us to him, and that will relieve us of the need to invoke pedigree.”
2.11.2
So the Fāriyāq agreed to his request, and they set off to see the man together, the Fāriyāq strutting along in his new clothes; he had also got himself a large turban that made him think of his turban in Lebanon and his ill-fated fall.499 When they’d settled down in the aforementioned salon and been greeted and received with warmth and welcoming faces, and once “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you” had been followed up with “You bring us good cheer,” and “You bring us good cheer” had fallen fast on the heels of “We’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” and after the salutations of kindly men had followed hard on the kindliest of salutations, as is the custom among both elite and commoners, the Khawājā said to the Fāriyāq, “I am delighted with your arrival in these lands and that God, Glorious and Almighty, has granted me His blessing in allowing me to make you my partner here, for as the poet has said,
Sexual congress, they claimed, is the most desirable thing
But that, I replied, is clearly misguided.
A favor done to one in need
Is more gratifying, of more lasting effect, and easily provided
“—which doesn’t mean I’m saying that you’re in need of me, though I did infer from your complaint that you require a doughty friend to keep you in good cheer, or shore up your spirits, or share your sorrows; and the duty of keeping your spirits up so long as you are preoccupied, whether by providing consolation or offering advice, has fallen to me, especially as it’s clear to me that you are new to the pursuit of knowledge and interested in rhyming. Notwithstanding this, there are things in your writing that I might criticize you for, though this is not the time for criticism or the listing of faults. I would like to ask you, however, what books of literature you have read.”
2.11.3
Here his friend took the lead in anwering in his stead and said, “He’s read the Baḥth al-maṭālib (The Discussion of Issues).”500 “You were too quick with your answer!” the Khawājā replied. “That’s a book on grammar, not literature, though you students from the Mountain reckon that any who’s read it has effectively imbibed all that the Arabic language has to offer and feel no need to complement it with any of the books on the lexicon or literature, or the commentaries. When one of you students wants to pen a book or a speech in high-flown style, he uses a few hackneyed rhyme words with no vowel on the rhyme consonant, for fear of getting confused between — u and — a.501 They strain to produce a few mediocre metaphors and rigid similes that they’ve stuffed with feeble phrases and faltering figures without any knowledge of which verbs, triliteral or qadriliteral, should be used, or which should be used with a preposition to make them transitive.” When the man said this, the Fāriyāq remembered how the metropolitan had written to Qayʿar Qayʿār “wa-awlajtu fī-hā”502 and he mentioned this to the aforementioned Khawājā, who laughed so hard he scuffed the ground with his foot.