2.14.6
“Then again, the woman is one of those things that, like the sun or the moon, are so much looked at that the mind doesn’t pay them the attention they deserve. This may be demonstrated by the fact that God, Mighty and Powerful, created woman from man to be a helpmeet to him in his daily affairs and a comfort to him in the midst of his anguish and cares. It seems to us, though, that this underlying intention is so frequently distorted that man’s calamities, care, loneliness, ill fortune, wretchedness, and deprivation, nay even his perdition, come from woman, thus turning that collaboration into a cause of aggravation. In brief, one is born into this world in need of many things required for one’s survival (such as food, drink, sleep, and warmth) and others that are not but that exist rather to rectify one’s nature so that it does not become imbalanced (such as laughter, speech, recreation, listening to songs, and having women). This last, however, while originally created for the rectification of nature (as evidenced by the fact that a man can live for a while without it), has gained the upper hand over all other mundane requirements of life which cannot be foregone. Observe that a man who dreams of a woman gets from her in his dream what he would have had were he awake, while this is not true of one who dreams of eating honey or drinking the best wine, which is anyway something that very rarely happens, even to one who is hungry or thirsty. How often have our friends the poets been content to see the image of the beloved in their dreams! None, however, was ever content to have the object of his eulogies send him a glass of wine or a pot of porridge in a dream. Likewise, if a person partakes of some tasty food, be it of one kind or two, he will remain satisfied with what he’s eaten for a number of hours and give no thought to the cooking pot and its potential contents. Then, when revisited by hunger, he will start thinking again of having another meal. Never, however, has it been heard that one in a state of hunger or thirst, on seeing a bird, would wish for it to fall onto the spit in his house so that he could gulp it down or keep ogling the cooks’, grocers’, and oil chandlers’ shops or peering through their keyholes, the chinks in their doors, or the cracks in their walls at the different kinds of food inside.
2.14.7
“True, in our country ‘the hungry man thinks that everything round is a loaf,’ as the saying goes, and it may be that in some Frankish countries, where they have so many different kinds of food, they harbor similar thoughts about everything round, oblong, or cloven like a sheep’s hoof, but one who is hungry for women has no one shape to fix on. The same goes for drink, for a thirsty man, having once quenched his longing with water, will feel aversion to drinking more, even if a glass filled with the nectar of paradise is brought him. Similarly, one who is cold and needs warmth, once he has put on some clothes to warm himself and cut himself a fine figure in public, will not thereafter stand on tiptoes to peer at every garment he sees displayed for sale in the merchants’ stores. Were he to see, for example, a rainbow or a meadow brocaded with gay flowers, he wouldn’t want the same colors to be on his drawers or his shirt; he would see it and simply find it beautiful without exercising his mind and heart over it or dreaming that same night of an elegant garden or imagining as he lay on his bed that, if it were next to his pillow, he’d feel more comfortable or live longer. The same goes for the sleeper: if he gets enough sleep on his hard bed, the subsequent sight of a luxuriously comfortable bed will be of no interest to him. In sum, everyone has a brain in his cranium that guides him to what will benefit him and what will hurt him and to what will do him harm and what will bring him pleasure, and, in both his stomach and his gullet, there is an accurate set of scales that measures what food and drink he needs and that enables him to grasp the meaning of the saying, ‘One meal precludes many another.’
2.14.8
“Where women are concerned, though, the self-denying ascetic becomes a lustful lecher, the reasonable man a slave to his passions, the clement ruler a tyrant, the well-guided person a lost soul, the wise man an idiot, the scholar an ignoramus, the eloquent a stutterer (and vice versa), the patient man a prey to his impulses (but not vice versa), the young man old (but not vice versa), the rich man a pauper (and vice versa), the lout a sophisticate (but not vice versa), the fat thin (and vice versa), the healthy an invalid (but not vice versa), the steady-going reckless (and vice versa), the miser generous (but not vice versa), the immobile mobile (and vice versa), and all things their opposites (and vice versa, and so on, and so forth). If a man finds a woman who hates him, how often will he fall in love with her, if one who ignores him devote himself to her, if one who avoids him throw himself in her path, if one who flatters him and offers him false hopes become infatuated by her, if one who throws him her bag,551 however heavy, go mad for her — unless he attend a gathering where there’s
a waḍīʾah,
“a woman who is comely and clean”
or a hayyiʾah,
“a female who is comely of form”
or a mukhbaʾah,
“a secluded girl who has not yet married”
or a dhabʾah,
“a thin, cute, jolly girl”
or a jarbāʾ,
“a cute girl”
or a khidabbah,
a female who is “huge”
or a khurʿūb,
“a supple, shapely young woman or a fine-boned, fleshy, stout, soft, white young woman”
or a khanibah,
“a coquettish girl of thrilling voice”
or a raṭbah,
too well known to require definition552
or a sarhabah,
“a tall, stout woman”
2.14.9
or a shaṭbah,
“a shapely girl”
or a shiṭbah,
“a tall, blooming, shapely girl”
or a shanbāʾ,
“having lustrous teeth” (of a female); mentioned under burquʿ553
or a ṣaqbah,
a female who is “tall and full-bodied”
or a ṣahbāʾ,
[“a red-headed woman”] “ṣahab is redness or blondness of the hair; synonyms ṣuhbah and ṣuhūbah”
or a ʿajbāʾ,
“a woman whose beauty is to be wondered at”
or a qabbāʾ,
a female who is “slim-waisted and slender-bellied”