3.18.1
When the Fāriyāq was left with no more dreams to interpret, he was charged with the translation of a book198 on behalf of the Committee199 in the land of the English, so he translated it for them into this language of ours, according to its proper rules. It so happened that at the same time Metropolitan Atanāsiyūs al-Tutūnjī the Aleppine, author of Al-Ḥakākah fī l-rakākah (The Leavings Pile concerning Lame Style), traveled to the same country on some pot-scraping business and got to know the aforesaid Committee, whom he proceeded to inform that the Fāriyāq’s language was utterly corrupt because of his failure to observe the conditions that he had laid down for translators and Arabizers in the abovementioned book. He also told them that the Christians200 loved disorderly, disarranged discourse, that he had been raised in this craft since many a year, that he had trained many others at the school of ʿAyn Tirāz and elsewhere,201
And that the books of the church have their own method
Which differs from that of the rest of mankind and is at variance with it,
And that there is blessing in the lame phrase
And good fortune for a people whose shame is conspicuous
And that the richness of their solecisms in speaking is to them
Like a song sung to a rhythm and the common factor is obvious202
And that the use of al-Mawlā203 in reference to God is an abomination
And that all should be on guard against saying wallawu l-adbāra204
And that tukāh is to be found as the plural of muttakiʾ205
And that maṣūn is rare compared to muṣān206
That shaʿb is more common than qawm207
And great sins lie in saying malak and not malāk208
And that ʿabīd, when preceding “God,”
Is more proper than ʿibād,209 and that is a judgment no one can deny
And that the plural of ʿadhāb is of the pattern of rakākāt,210
And that sāʾir is not a synonym of bāqī211
And one shouldn’t say wāʿiẓīhā but mūʿiẓīnahā212
And that any who says addaw rather than waddaw213 is a renegade
And from radda say, if you wish, that the active participle may be formed as
muridd;214 so say the Christians of the latter days.
And as to yaẓharu, cancel it and take yabānu215 as its equivalent
And ṣirnā banīnan bi-tadhakhkhur216 is common
And likewise “a maṣaff gathered glorifying God”217
And that a wāw immediately follows ka-mā used as a conjunction218
And that idh must take the jussive219
And that the use of the relative adjective alladhī after the dual is an impeccable tradition220
As is writing imperative —ī with the weak verb,221
As told him by that modern, the priest of Choueir,222
And that retention of the nūn of — ūna following kay
And an223 is widespread — so Zākhir insists.
And that after yuʿṭā to put the subject supplying the agent in the accusative is
A necessity,224 just as the omission of fa- in the conditional clause is common,
and asked the aforementioned Committee to entrust the Arabization of the abovementioned book to him, so that it might find acceptance among the Christians, which if they didn’t, it wouldn’t. When they saw that he had a beard and, especially, that he was adorned with the charisma of a metropolitan — a metropolitan being of necessity to them a man of learning and merit — they believed that he must be possessed of merit and learning and handed the work over to him. For this reason, specifically, the Chamber closed and all that remained to the Fāriyāq was his salary from his job of treating the foul of breath.
3.18.2
Here it must be noted that no people in the world accord more importance to titles than the English. If someone visits them from a foreign country bearing the title Emir, or Shaykh, or Metropolitan, he receives their utmost consideration, especially if he speaks French. The title of metropolitan is one that in their eyes relieves its possessor of the need for any further recommendation or reference, since they translate the word by the equivalent in their terms, which is archbishop, and any who reaches that rank among them has an income of four thousand golden guineas. Where beard length is concerned, this is no indicator among the Arabs of understanding or distinction, as is clear from the story of al-Maʾmūn and the jurisprudent ʿAllawayh.225 Arabs and non-Arabs, however, differ in their ways.
3.18.3
When the Fāriyāq’s vacation from treating the foul of breath — the three months of summer each year — arrived, he resolved that he would travel to Tunis and embarked on a ship whose captain was one of those natives of the island who are between the Market-men and the Bag-men, and sometimes between the latter and the philosophers.226 After a voyage of twelve days, each one full of peril and suffering, they reached Ḥalq al-Wād. During the voyage, some of the sailors had claimed that it was taking so unusually long simply because the captain had, contrary to the custom of all other ship’s masters, set sail on a Friday — something they never do, either out of respect for that day or because they view it as ill-omened.227 The Fāriyāq, however, knew the real reason, which was his own inborn ability to hex, just as he knew that the goal of any voyage he might undertake, be it near or far, could not be reached in anything less than twelve days. However, he kept this from them.
3.18.4
Declared the Fāriyāq, “As for the city, its markets are cramped and its shops small. Its air and its food and drink are, however, good and it has a great variety of fruits. Its inhabitants are kindhearted and generous and they honor guests and love strangers. It has many singers and instrumentalists, most of them Jews, whose women are fat and white and have large, dark eyes. This is despite the Christians’ claim that God cursed and transfigured the Jews following their crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus, peace be upon him, stripping them of all inner and outer beauty. I think though that if the priests were to catch sight of one of their statuesque, plump, heavy-haunched women, they would call the propagator of this point of view a heretic and confute him; only those among them who spend all their time with Christian women and see no others could make this claim, it being a known fact that the appetite favors what is to hand and present over what is missing and absent. Or perhaps they mean that this transfiguration befell only the men and spared the women — a point on which they should be interrogated. Moreover, many of these untransfigured women are by no means without willowiness and grace, and it is a habit of theirs to walk with their faces unveiled and their calves exposed.”