“In sum, the loneliness of separation incites the heart to come up with finely tuned tropes, and the same is true of rejection, abandonment, avoidance, shilly-shallying, reproach, scornful looks, coquetry, aloofness, and prideful behavior on the part of the beloved. The intention, however, is not to seduce the beloved into abandoning his lover as a way to make the latter write poetry, or into deliberately going away as a way of inciting him to describe the longing and agony that he feels, for the best such descriptions are the ones that fate brings, not those we chase after. I now hereby declare my innocence before lovers and married couples alike and say: should any separation imposed by loneliness, or loneliness imposed by separation, or any rejection, coldness, or stubborn dissension, any argument or contention, any hair clasping or grasping,(1) or any wrestling involving tripping, flipping, head drops, pinning the other to the mat, catching-as-catch-can, takedowns, catching the other off guard or doing the same using a shorter word, trick moves, grappling, wrist gripping, hand grasping, headlocks, or leg falls befall you, no rebuke or blame accrues to me.” Here ended the Fāriyāq’s words (and how well he spoke them!).
3.12.13
On the other hand, he omitted to say that when sad he was impatient and infirm, much given to suspicions and misgivings, barely able to plot or plan, inconstant in his views, and incapable of keeping his thoughts to himself. Thus, almost before the island’s shoreline had had time to disappear, he started complaining about women and how they loved to play when their husbands were away. When they heard him, the Bag-man and his wife said to him, “What are you complaining about? You don’t need to worry about interpreting the monster131 for as long as the voyage lasts, and when I reach your homeland, God willing, I shall dream only straightforward dreams.” “It’s not of the monster or of devils that I complain,” he replied, “it’s of the human race, because today I heard such and such and suspected such and such and I may return to find such and such, or not find such and such, or not return and not find at all.” When the Bag-man’s wife heard him say this she said to him, all the fiends of Hell pouring from her nostrils, “Have you become so lightheaded as to cast suspicion on married women?” “Mild and moderate men have suspected as much about them before me,” he responded. “No such propensity exists among us Franks,” she replied. “My husband here would never harbor a doubt about me”—to which the Fāriyāq responded that the master was so preoccupied with his dreams there was no room left in his head for anything else: “Does not your learned Byron say, ‘How treacherous the wife, when her husband’s away?’” She replied, “He’s a poet, and the words of poets are not to be taken into account when judging women, unless they be erotic verses or love poetry.”
3.12.14
Suddenly, while they were thus engaged, the wind stirred up the waves, the ship shook and was violently convulsed, and everyone kept to his room for four days until none of the passengers could tell whether he was coming or going, and after a voyage of twelve days they reached the city of Beirut, hungry, tired, haggard, and near expired, with the Hag-ridden One waiting for the first chance in a long time for dreams to descend. On their entering the place, the first words in the lame dialect of its natives to assail their ears were those of the public crier to the effect that the people of the Mountain had thrown off the yoke of obedience to the viceroy of Egypt and taken up arms against him,132 throwing the city’s inhabitants into tumult and unrest, while the giddiness of sea and separation still had the Fāriyāq’s head in a state of perturbation. He set off upwards in the direction of the Mountain to see his family but on the outskirts of the city ran into an encampment of native soldiers, one of whom terrified the Fāriyāq by firing his rifle, sending half his heart flying from his breast, though adding nothing thereby to that of the terrifier133 (but some people enjoy putting themselves in harm’s way even if they gain nothing from doing so). Then God took pity on him and rescued him from that company, and he reached his family’s home. When news of his arrival reached the inhabitants of the village, they came to greet him in twos and threes and fours, and he looked at them and marveled at how old-fashioned their ways now seemed to him. The women, for instance, would come and sit on the ground in front of him, some squatting on their heels, some with their legs drawn up beneath them, some cross-legged, some with their legs spread wide, some staying at home,134 some on their shanks with their knees open, some placing their buttocks on the ground and resting their weight on their calves, some with their legs drawn up and wrapped in their garment, or resting their weight on their toes with their buttocks pressed against their heels, or with their weight distributed evenly over their thighs, or rubbing their bottoms on the ground, or as though ready to leap up, or sitting on their anuses like apes, while at the same time hiking up their shifts so that the cracks of their vaginas showed through their bloomers, which is a custom they’ve become used to and in which they see no shame; most also display their breasts, be those rounded and perky or long and pendulous or huge and sagging.
3.12.15
That day he was deluged with questions. One woman would ask him, “Fāriyāq, how come you’re so desiccated?” and another would say, “And how come you’re so emaciated?” and another, “What happened to your ugly mug to make it so unanimated?” and another, “And to your face that your looks are so devastated?” and another “And to your teeth that they’ve became so ensaffronated?” and another, “And to your brow that it’s become so pitted and excavated?” and another, “And to the tip of your nose that it’s become so incrassated?” and another, “And to your forehead that its become so striated?” and another, “And to your skin that it’s become so armor-plated?” and another, “And to your lip that it’s become so ulcerated?” and another, “And to your neck that it’s become so suppurated?” and another, “And to your eye that its lids have become so heavy-weighted?” and another, “And to your upright figure that it’s become so corrugated?” and another, “And to your hairs that they’ve become so bifurcated?” and another, “And to your backside that it’s become so exiguated?” and another, “And to your chin that it’s gotten so depilated?” and another, “And to your accent that it’s become so granulated?” The Fāriyāq continued, “I felt I was being jinxed by all these rhymes and thought, ‘All that’s left after their enumeration of all these words ending in — ated is for them to say, “And to your what’s-it, that it got so penetrated?”!’”
3.12.16
Then one of the women said, “Huh! And here’s another trifle that got added to you” and another, “Humph! And here’s something else that’s been subtracted” and they started turning him around and inspecting him like a buyer turning goods over before buying, all saying to one tune, “Fāriyāq! Fāriyāq! Where are the fun times we had with your tambour? Where are your verses on hair ribbons and the ṭanṭūr?135 Have you forgotten the day that… or the night when…?” He went on, “I was happy with their good company and the freedom of their minds from any sin, this being the way the women of our country were created. They have no objection to being touched by a man or approaching them close, or to the meeting of knees, if not of pubes. Despite this, their questions to me were many and they stayed with me for a long time when I was in need of rest and to be alone. In any case, though, it is enjoyable to sit with women, especially if one has just spent twelve days at sea without seeing any, and if they pluck out one’s beard and mustache with their questions after all that time, no harm is done.”