3.10.5
Now it happened that a certain misguided poet was passing by at the time and when he heard him say that and saw that he had no one to listen to him, he stopped and said, “Who can have put this madman at the top of this staircase and where are his brethren whom he is addressing? Or could it be that he is speaking with the jinn in the air? Verily, there is something wondrous here!” Then he shouted to him, “Come down, man, and do not expose yourself to scorn and derision, for not one of God’s slaves is listening to you!” The preacher, however, paid him no attention because he was gazing toward Heaven. The man therefore decided that he must be touched in the head and wanted to get him down by any means possible and set about cutting the pegs and ropes securing the staircase and before he knew it, the staircase had disintegrated and fallen down and the preacher and his notebook had fallen down with it onto the head of the man, which is to say onto the head of the poet, and both were smashed and broken into little pieces.
T
HE
I
NTERPRETATION
3.10.6
“A preacher shouldn’t be a chatterbox and if our long-winded master persists in his chatter, he will not escape a fall that will break his neck — though God knows best.” This interpretation was more hurtful and vexing to the man than those that preceded it because of its abstention from prolixity and its brevity of expression.
3.10.7
A few days later, the master brought him a piece of paper bearing the following: I dreamed that one of my friends gave me a cauliflower of the sort that grows on Jordan’s plain. I had it for dinner, went to sleep, and dreamed that I smashed the walls of a city in the air that resembled the city of Jericho in the sturdiness and impregnability of its fortifications. The Fāriyāq wrote next to it
If a glutton eats cauliflow’r for dinner,
From the siege-tower of his anus he’ll pelt the air with balls of clay,
Only for those to be recast as bullets
Once the holes in his nose have become clogged with the spray.
3.10.8
The man showed this to his wife, who said, “The man seems now to have become acclimatized to this country: I note that he has begun to hit the target and that that vehemence in deed and word that he previously displayed has left him. I, now, shall myself try him out concerning a dream I saw last night.” Then she took a piece of paper and wrote on it, “Madame Ditzia, wife of Flummox son of Lummox, dreamed that she held a polished, glossy lock with many keyholes in her hand while in her husband’s was a rusty key with a single hole.” Beneath this the Fāriyāq wrote
Husband and wife tend alike
To passion and depravity
But while the key of the first is all worn out
The latter’s still good as a cavity.
3.10.9
When she’d inspected the contents, she told her husband, “The same had occurred to me before he came up with this interpretation. How close he now is to accuracy! Take him this additional sheet of paper.” So the man handed it over to the Fāriyāq, who found written on it, “Madame Ditzia dreamed that she wrote on her husband’s brow a figure 2 and when he saw himself in the mirror he tried to wipe off the two strokes108 but she was too fast for him and grabbed his hand and he managed to wipe off only one, though the other was no longer clearly readable.” Below this the Fāriyāq wrote
It’s a husband’s religious duty to pleasure his wife once each night
While a supererogatory act on top is often considered polite.
Should he swap, though, rafḍ for farḍ,
You can be sure she’ll swap ʿirḍ for ʿarḍ.109
3.10.10
She admired the lines greatly and handed her husband a further sheet on which she had written, “Madame Ditzia, wife of Flummox son of Lummox, dreamed that with her right eye she saw black as white and with her left eye white as black.” Beneath this the Fāriyāq wrote
How hard it is to please a wife,
Especially once she’s laid eyes on an eloquent preacher!
Thenceforth she’ll think your every beauty a blemish
And his every blemish a comely feature.
3.10.11
The wife found these lines witty and told her husband, “I find that he interprets the short dreams of women very well. Dream me now a short dream, my dear, and write it on a sheet of paper and I’ll give it to him to see whether he proceeds in the same fashion with you.” The next day, then, she brought the Fāriyāq a sheet of paper with the words “The dreamer saw in his sleep something elongated, which then seemed to the dreamer to turn into something rounded, and then again into something elongated, and then again into something rounded, and so on.” Beneath this the Fāriyāq wrote
I once thought the world like the vulva
For both are shifting in shape.
I said, when they claimed it’s more like the anus
In its circularity,110 “Each doth the other ape.”
3.10.12
When he showed these lines to his wife, she laughed and said, “I see that he only minds his manners with me and that he has a fine nose for the understanding of women’s affairs; he must be a true lady’s man. However, why not try him with a further dream and then we can decide what to do with him?” So the following morning, the master brought him a further sheet, on which was written, “I dreamed that a hand drew a figure 3 on my temple and then vanished. I put my hand to my temple to rub it off and it erased the two teeth, so that what was left formed a crooked figure 1.”111 Beneath this the Fāriyāq wrote
My wife tasks me with three but I can’t take
More than one tumble — a weakness in “it,” not in me.
My heart and eye, like her vagina, ne’er tire,
But that thing will just never agree.
The man took the response and hurried off with it to his wife. After perusing it, she laughed and said, “With you, he just gets crazier and more impudent. You should leave him alone for a while now and get down to some tumbles.” So they set to, and the Fāriyāq took a few days off.
CHAPTER 11: PHYSICKING THE FOUL OF BREATH
3.11.1
Now it had reached the ears of the island’s ruler that the Fāriyāq had arrived there to interpret dreams and that he was a great expert in that art. He had also heard that he had a talent for treating those with bad breath. One day, therefore, he sent a chamberlain to him to tell him, “The ruler has summoned you to come to him today on a matter of importance, so you must attend him.” At the appointed hour, the Fāriyāq made his way to the ruler, apprehensive lest he might have dreamed some grand sovereign dream that would be difficult for him to interpret, for great men dream only great dreams — they know nothing of cauliflower cannonballs, worn-out keys, “tumbles,” and other such low stuff as befits only vagabonds.