3.18.10
The Fāriyāq continued, “I told her, ‘While the man may be at fault in this, the woman is not innocent either, for believing him and allowing herself to be led by him.’ She said, ‘She believes him because her heart is pure, her feelings uncorrupted. The honest person doesn’t doubt the words of others and the noble man is easily deceived. If people were to hear that a married woman had fallen in love with someone other than her husband, they would view her with the greatest disapproval and regard the matter with the greatest disgust. Drums would be beaten, heads nodded, books written, and there would be no one left in town who did not have some tale, or lie, to tell about her. If, however, they were to hear that a man had fallen in love with someone other than his wife, they’d put what he’d done down to sickness and make excuses for him, accusing his wife of withholding her favors or of being no good in bed and wetting it, or of defecating while being fucked or of keeping him out of her bed, or of whinnying through her nostrils or of being ghabūq [?]242 or of spraying water during intercourse and making a noise with her vulva, or of having a hernia and making a sound with her vagina, or of having a hole too small to admit the penis and being given to farting, or of being insatiable in intercourse and having a mons veneris that both squeaks and passes wind, or of snorting like a madwoman during intercourse and having lopsided breasts, or of having no flesh on her thighs and a bottomless tunnel, or of having smelly foreparts and a loose vagina, or of leaving her anus half washed and stinking and having privates on which no hair grows, or of having breasts that do not develop and never having a period, or of coming as soon as a man plays with her and having a tiny “thing,” or of menstruating through her anus, or of having a vaginal fistula and being unable to hold her water, or of not menstruating, or of having no flesh on her thighs, or of not having been circumcised and having a wide space between her anus and her vagina, or of having a flabby vagina, or of having thighs so tightly pressed together there is no gap between them, or of having sweaty foreparts and body, or a cold vagina, or long pubic creases and a soft wide vulva, or a large wide vagina, or of suffering from leucorrhoea, or a vaginal hernia, or a slanted slit, or of being wide-woofed, or straddle-thighed, or quick to conceive, or of being given to miscarrying, or not having periods, or having never-ending periods, or of putting kohl on one eye only and wearing her shift inside out, or of having a mutilated nose, or foreparts that produce much fluid, or buttocks that are skewed and raised, or of not conceiving for years even though she is not barren, or having a rectum and vagina that form a single passage, or of having a long clitoris, or wide sexual organs, or of being one who, having the vagina and rectum as a single passage, loses control of her bowels during intercourse, or of having thighs that rub against one another, or of other flaws, while seeing nothing revolting in what he had done, even though a woman has more reasons to go astray than a man.’
3.18.11
“‘Pray state them so that I may avoid them,’ I said. She said, ‘The first is the husband’s failure to provide his wife with her full rights, meaning her marital rights for the sake of which she abandoned her father and mother, her family, her home, her country, and, not infrequently, her religion.’ ‘Dear God,’ I said, ‘I beseech Your indulgence and forgiveness! What next?’ ‘Others are his neglect of her affairs and lack of interest in anything that might bring her ease, give her pleasure, or raise her spirits, or in entertaining her, distracting her, giving her enough to drink, adorning her, warming her, perfuming her, consoling her, strengthening her, taking her for walks, taking her to lunch, encouraging her, lastingly delighting her, gladdening her, or preserving her.’ ‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘and in making her strip, drip, secrete, spot, undress, caress, and reveal!’ ‘Indeed,’ said she, ‘all that and more, seeing that she’s the prisoner of his house throughout the day, serving him and looking out for his affairs, while he roams the town from place to place and moves from market to market, and then, when he finally comes home, falls to the ground like one in a swoon and says that overwork has exhausted him and exhaustion overworked him and that this occurred to him and the other befell him, though it was he who exposed himself to the first and chased after the second. Other reasons are the softness of the woman’s heart and the compassion that the Almighty Creator has made one of her innate traits, such that she is incapable of meeting a man’s love for her with anything but affection or his flattery of her with anything but interest and encouragement, to say nothing of the common origin and formal similarity of the words raḥim (“womb”) and raḥmah (“mercy”).’
3.18.12
“I said, ‘Even more amazing than the etymology that you have adduced in evidence is the conformity of the meanings of kays (“cleverness”) — in the Qāmūs, its author says, “Kays is the opposite of ḥumq (‘stupidity’) and denotes ‘sexual intercourse, an intelligent man skilled at his work,243 generosity, the mind, and victory achieved through cunning’”—or between sirr (“secret” or “heart”) and surūr (“joy”), or basṭ (“delectation”) and sharḥ (“gladness”),244 or buḍʿ (“vulva”) and biḍāʿah (“commodity”), or shuʿūr (“sensation, feeling”) and mushāʿarah (“sleeping together within a single garment”), or lamj (“nibbling” or “sexual intercourse”) and qamṭ (“tasting” or “sexual intercourse”), or, especially, between Abū Idrās (“the vagina”) and Abū Idrīs (“the penis”), may their concordance long remain, in form as in meaning!’ At this, she laughed out loud and said, ‘God honor our language, which brings together sense and shape!’, to which I responded, ‘though on occasion this may require the offensive or the inappropriate, as in the case of arra, which means both “to have intercourse with” and “to expel one’s excrement,” or jannaḥa, which means both “to piss” and “to screw (one’s slave girl),” or maʿaṭa, which means “to have intercourse with,” “to pluck one’s hair,” and “to fart,” or jalakha, which means “to have intercourse with,” “to flay (someone’s belly),” and “to chop (a chunk of flesh off someone with one’s sword),” or matakha, which means “to have intercourse with” and “to expel (one’s excrement),” or malakha, which means “to have intercourse with,” “to drag something in one’s grip or one’s teeth,” and “to waver pointlessly,” or malaqa, which means “to have intercourse with” or “to strike with a stick,” or jaẓẓa, which means “to have intercourse with,” “to chase away,” “to throw to the ground,” and “to oppress (someone, with a surfeit),” or khajja, which means “to have intercourse with” and “to expel (one’s excrement),” or lakhaba, which means “to have intercourse with” and “to slap (a male),” or matara, which means “to have intercourse with” and “to expel (one’s excrement),” or jalada, which means “to have intercourse with” and “to beat (a male) with a whip and injure his skin,” or ʿaṣada, which means “to have intercourse with,” “to twist,” and “to force (a male) to do something,” or ḍafana, which means “to have intercourse with” and “to expel (one’s excrement),” or maḥana, which means “to have intercourse with” and “to strike,” or mashana, which means “to have intercourse with” and “to scratch,” or aswā, which means “to fornicate,” “to dishonor,” and “to insert (the penis, into a woman),” and likewise ḥashaʾa (“to have intercourse with” or “to whip”), haṭaʾa (“to have intercourse with” or “to defecate”), ḥalaʾa (“to have intercourse with” or “to strike [with a sword]”), khajaʾa (“to have intercourse with” or “to strike [with a stick]”), raṭaʾa (“to have intercourse with” or “to expel [one’s excrement]”), zakaʾa (“to have intercourse with [one’s young slave girl]” or “to strike”), or lataʾa (“to have intercourse with” or “to shoot”), plus innumerable others.’ She replied, ‘Every other difficulty pales into insignificance next to such things,245 and “he who gathers honey must bear the stinging of the bees.” In addition, I gather your drift to be that such verbs are too many to count in our noble language and that most senses have numerous words, which scholars call, as you once told me, “assy-nonymous.”’246 ‘I didn’t say assy-nonymous,’ I responded. ‘I said “synonymous,” and I told you that this act alone has more than two hundred words pertaining to it, for every word that denotes pushing, pricking, pressing, or inserting denotes it too.’ She said, ‘And can you cite me a single term that pertains to abstention from women, out of chastity and God-fearingness?’ I said, ‘No such term has come my way, or I would have memorized it, for I dote on every term that has to do with them. It seems the Arabs were unaware of any such thing, though tabattala and bakuma each denote it in one of their senses.’ ‘That counts for little,’ she replied.