END OF BOOK THREE
(1) dathth means “reviling someone on the basis of reports”; qasm means “that some notion finds a place in your heart, and then you think that it may be true, and then that suspicion becomes stronger until it becomes a truth”; raḍkh means “a report that you hear and of which you are not sure”; tadhaqqaha lahu means “he accused someone of a crime, charging him with something of which he was not guilty”; waghm and laghm mean the same and also “to report something on less than certain evidence”; rasīs means “a report that turned out to be untrue”; ʿams means “to make out that you know nothing of the matter at hand when you do,” synonym jalhazah; ʿasm means “to bring the eyelids together until they touch”; wazm means “to pay off a debt”; jamsh means “to flirt and play”; faghm means “kissing” and daʿm means what follows.
BOOK FOUR
CHAPTER 1: UNLEASHING A SEA
4.1.1
Only one who has traveled the seas and experienced the misery of their tempests and swells can properly appreciate the ease of life on land. Whenever, then, my dear landlubber of a reader, you feel a need for clean water, tender meat, fresh fruit, succulent greens, or soft bread, you must bear in mind that your seafaring brethren are deprived of all such things, that their vessel never stops moving beneath their feet, tossing them, turning them, and throwing them up and down, that before every mouthful of food they swallow they must first choke, and that before lying down to sleep they must first suffer a bellyache.
4.1.2
Likewise, when food of just one kind is placed before you, think only of that and know well that others too are dining at this hour, and perhaps on something more meager still. If you do so, you will find solace and distraction. If, however, you lift your eyes to the palaces of kings and princes and the mansions of ministers and wonder what they are eating and drinking, you will certainly tire and torment yourself to no avail. Do you really imagine that the aged wine drunk by the prince is more delicious than the water you are drinking, so long as you are informed as to the affairs of this world and the next and are proficient in the management of some business of yours that provides for yourself and your family, so long as your wife sits before you or on your right or left while your small child sits on your knee, singing to you one moment, passing you with his sweet hand anything you may have asked your wife to give you the next, and so long as on your departure, they accompany you to the door and on your arrival, take you upstairs and seat you on the best cushion in the house?
4.1.3
As for you, my dear rich gentleman, you would do better to leave your prosperous city to see with your own eyes what you cannot see in your own country and hear with your own ears what you cannot hear there, to experience how other people live and their customs and ways, to discover their morals and modes of thought and how they govern themselves. After that, you may compare the good things in their land with the bad things in ours. And when you enter their country and are ignorant of their language, don’t insist on learning the dirty words from them first or delight in words for the sake of the things they denote, for every language in the universe has fair and foul given that language expresses the actions, deeds, and thoughts of men, which encompass, as all will agree, both the praiseworthy and the blameworthy. I hold you in too high esteem to imagine that you will be like those travelers who learn of other people’s languages only the names of certain parts of the body and other despicable terms. On the contrary, when you arrive safe and sound in a country you must, before anything else, make for the schools, printing presses, libraries, hospitals, and lecture rooms (by which I mean those places where scholars speak on every art and science; some of these are equipped only for public addresses while others contain every instrument and device required for the science in question).
4.1.4
And when you return, by God’s grace, to your own town, exert yourself to write a book about your travels and publicize it among your countrymen so that they may benefit — but without any intention to make money from the sale of it. Would that you might partner too with some of your fellow rich in establishing a printing press on which to print further books that may be useful to men, women, and children and to each category of person so that they may learn what their rights and duties are, whether those books be written originally in Arabic or translated into it. Be careful, though, that in copying from the non-Arabs, you do not confuse the fair with the foul, the sound with the defective. Great cities are as full of vices as they are of virtues.
4.1.5
True, among those people there are some who will refuse to see anyone when they are at table and, if compelled to do so, will not invite him to taste any of what is before them. Others, though, will invite you to their mansions in the countryside, where you may stay for a week, or two weeks, with everyone at your beck and call. True, some will begrudge a response to your greeting, and if you enter the house of one such who is your friend and his salon is full of friends of his who do not already know you, not one of them will bestir himself to stand and greet you or pay you the slightest attention or even turn toward you. On the other hand, there are those who, once they have gotten to know you, will be as solicitous of your welfare when you are absent as they are when you are present, and if you confide a secret to them, will keep it as long as they live. True, there are those who will call you names as soon as they set eyes on your mustaches, beard, or turban and will tug on the skirt of your robe from behind, but there are also those who have a passionate desire to become acquainted with strangers, are happy to be in their company and to do good to them, and think it a duty to aid and protect them. True, there are those who will mock you when they see you making mistakes in their language, but there are also those who will be intent on teaching it to you without charge, either themselves or via their wives or daughters, and on lending you books and other things that may be of use to you and guide you to whatever may serve your interests and success.
4.1.6
True, there are those who will reckon that you have turned up in their country to compete with them for their livelihoods and therefore scowl in your face and look at you askance, but there are also those who will regard you as a guest in their country to be honored, respected, and defended so that you depart without harboring the slightest hard feeling against their countrymen. True, there are those who will use you as forced labor, to translate for them or teach them, and never say, “Thank you, translator!” or “Thank you, teacher!” but there are also those who will regard it as sinful to speak to you without sending you payment for opening your mouth and closing your lips. True, there are those who, if they are compelled to invite you to eat with them and then notice you coughing, blowing your nose, or flaring your nostrils, will tell their wives, “He must be sick; you don’t have to give him a lot of food” so that you rise from the table starving while they make a great show of you among their guests, claiming that in the year so-and-so and month so-and-so, on such and such a day, they held a great banquet for you, treating that night as though it marked the start of some new historical era. On the other hand, there are also those who, on discovering that you are staying in some village in their country where there is no trade and nothing to be obtained by way of green vegetables or fruit, will send you, from their own gardens and orchards, enough to stop your mouth against any complaint. Thus it was with Mr. Drummond,293 when the Fāriyāq found himself fated to reside in one such village and his complaints were carried on the wind to people’s ears.