3.17.5
“‘Enough banter,’ I said. ‘Give me a ruling on this madman.’ ‘Take him back,’ she said, ‘to the Chamber. I hate the idea of his staying with us for long because I’m afraid that if I get pregnant, the child will come out like him.’ ‘By what means,’ I asked, ‘would madness be able to get into a fetus?’ ‘Aren’t children born white and bonny,’ she enquired, ‘when their fathers are hideous? If the mother’s eye didn’t have some special influence during her pregnant cravings, it wouldn’t be so.’ ‘That’s a view,’ I said, ‘that will lead to unbelief and absurdity. Unbelief because you are claiming that women are participants in the creation of mankind and absurdity because if women had some special influence over that, sons would either all look like their fathers or all be bonny.’ ‘Responding to your accusation of unbelief,’ she returned, ‘it is unquestionable that God, Mighty and Majestic, has created this feature in women, and He is the prime mover, meaning that the esurient power placed in her by the All-Capable Creator has an impact on the child’s environment. Responding to that of absurdity, the last thing women ever want their children to look like is their fathers, and any son you see who looks to you like his father is likely to be her eldest.’ ‘May God produce many more like you!’ I said. ‘You must have done your theology181 in the school of “the Hairy One”!’182 ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We’re talking here about hairy ones, not shaven or plucked ones.’ ‘The potty one!’ I cried. ‘Tell me what to do with the potty one and enough of your potty tongue! You’ve almost driven me mad as well with your seminary183 talk!’ ‘And since when,’ she answered, ‘did you hate semen? It’s all you care about. As for the madman, it must be as I said. Take him off to the Chamber and leave him there without telling anyone.’”
3.17.6
The Fāriyāq continued, “So I took him off and put him in one of the rooms there and locked the door on him. When he got hungry, he kept trying the door to see if he could get out and the servant heard him and let him out. The wife of the master of the Chamber managed to send him back to where he came from and she decided to take her husband back to her own country. Another man from his country came to deputize for him where oneiromantic matters were concerned but didn’t stay long, for reasons that will be explained.184 Before revealing these, however, we must close this chapter with the verses composed by the Fāriyāq when the master of the Chamber was inciting people to take off their clothes. They go as follows:185
3.17.7
You want us, then, friend, to go crazy
And take our clothes off today
And not sleep tonight when it gets dark
Or harbor suspicions about women
And not see when Ḥannā186 comes
And, if he doesn’t, say, ‘He must be sick, depleted’!187
And if some lecher188 comes to us and his joints go weak,189
We’re to mount him on horses, so he be not distressed
And make the wife a shield for him,
To protect him from any tormentor who may hurt him190
And not care if we see that a horn
Has appeared on our temples, dinging and donging—
For you have seen that the mind exhausts the body
And denies the free man what he hopes for
And none will attain good fortune in serenity
Unless he display what he has concealed.
3.17.8
Shush, you old man who has grown long in the tooth!
What have you to do with the whickering doe, the snickering buck?191
You get into difficulties and you suffer
And do not care should you find yourself feeble.
What did you meet with from a preacher who went mad—
And from one who goes around here — and who wept?192
You appeared before us in an ill-omened month that crushed
The loving couple193 so we said, ‘Verily,
No abode we have stayed in with you
Has been without some evil upset that occurred.
Every one among us who has dependents complains of you.
You have brought a specimen of every misfortune—
Madmen who have exposed their willies,194
One afflicted with fever who suffers from a lingering disease,
And a sickly invalid who moans195
Till even his enemy would mourn for him and feel sorrow.
Enough! Slow down! You have ignited sorrow in us
And burdened the city with a worry that has preoccupied it utterly.
Be off, God guide you, and depart from us
Before you cut off our supplies of flour
And dry up the water and drive away good fortune
From a town that previously was secure,
And choose some other place to hole up in
Where you can take refuge, in comfort and quiet.
3.17.9
It won’t matter if you are sold short there
And repulsed as harshly as an orphan or if you are flung aside
Or if you came prattling and boasting vaingloriously
And thinking that all that’s ugly in you is comely
So that you will never see your like
Or an enemy who harbors a secret grudge against you,
Just as here you did injury to a crabbed little man196
Whose molars and then his other teeth turned a rusty color because of you.
Were he able, he would make you a guest in prison
Where you would be a pawn to disasters.
His devil197 has accused you of a crime:
He says he’s grown old from your tobacco.
You have put in the house of prayer an oven
Whose smoke has gone everywhere and blinded the heedless.’
A company said, ‘His spittle has turned smelly
And his mistakes in Arabic amount to an injury to us,
So let him seek a friend in some other abode than there
And it matters not to us if he is generous or miserly
Or if he weeps at his misfortune or sings
Or calls sincere blessings on us or curses us
Or roars with hunger and humiliation and wails
Or says, “We have become [nothing] after we were [something]!”’
You never loved us, conceited one,
And never spoke to us in Arabic and never pleased us,
So may God not reward you with good fortune on our behalf!”
CHAPTER 18: A DRAIN