4.2.17
“‘What are we to think of men who marry two, or three, wives?’ I asked. ‘It’s against nature,’ she replied. ‘How can that be,’ I asked, ‘when it was the custom of the prophets?’ ‘Is this a discussion about religion,’ she responded, ‘or about natural phenomena? Do you not observe that those animals, such as the rooster and the sparrow for example, that have been granted the capacity to live with a multiplicity of females have also been granted the capacity to satisfy them all? The others live with only one and are satisfied with her. Given that a man cannot satisfy three, he is not qualified to possess them. To return to the matter in hand — why is a woman forbidden to marry three men?’ I replied, ‘A multiplicity of women for a single man results in the multiplicity of offspring on which the world depends in order to thrive. This wouldn’t apply in the case of a multiplicity of men for a single woman, though I have read in some book that such a custom continues to be observed among certain savages.’ ‘Gently, gently!’ she said. ‘Are they really the savages while you’re the civilized and sagacious ones? As for your claim concerning the multiplication of offspring when there’s a multiplicity of wives, are the inhabitants of the earth now so few? Is not its surface already too confined to hold them? Do not its innards groan under their weight and is not its skin ripped open? What motive is there then for this increase other than hubris and greed?’
4.2.18
“‘You’ve reverted to heaping blame on men, so let us revert to saying farewell. I shall depart from you today and leave my heart in your keeping, so that if anyone visits you I shall sense his presence.’ ‘How will you sense anything when your heart’s not with you?’ she asked, ‘for people say it is the heart alone that has the capacity to feel and perceive, be joyous and grieve.’ ‘My sense of feeling,’ I said, ‘is in my head.’337 ‘Where in your head?’ she asked. ‘At the tip-top of my head,’ I answered. ‘Naturally!’ she responded. ‘There is sympathy between things that resemble one another. But where will you leave it?’ ‘On the doorstep,’ I replied, ‘so that no one may set foot on the latter.’ ‘And what if he jump over it?’ she enquired. ‘In the bed, then,’ I said. ‘And what if he’s in some other bed?’ she went on. ‘In you, then,’ I said. ‘That,’ she responded, ‘is the best place for it. I promise that I will abide by the love and affection that we have shared from the time of “the roof” till now. The moment, however, that I sense and feel, from here, that you’ve switched your roofing feelings for a roving eye, I’ll match every deed of yours with one of mine, and “the initiator is the more unjust.”’ I said, ‘You’re much given to suspicion and very jealous; what’s to make sure that anything you sense isn’t generated by suspicion?’ ‘On the contrary,’ she said, ‘any suspicions I may have are more likely to be the result of what I sense.’ I said, ‘We’ve come full circle,’ to which she replied, ‘Try then to break it.’338 ‘It is a duty,’ I said, ‘and must be performed,’ to which she replied, ‘And it is a performance that must be demanded as a duty.’ ‘Will it seal our covenant?’ I asked. ‘If such contracts can ever be sealed,’ she replied. ‘I reject such a characterization,’339 I said. ‘I wish,’ she said, ‘that someone would tell me what such a characterization means.’ I said, ‘Was the contract over the condition?’340 and she replied, ‘And was the condition without a contract?’341 I said, ‘We’re as mad as that lunatic,’342 to which she responded, ‘But for madness we would never have married.’ I said, ‘That is true of most people.’ ‘Many a person’s off his head,’ was her response to this, at which ‘Praise be to God, Lord of the Worlds,’ I said.”
CHAPTER 3: ASSORTED PLEAS FOR MERCY
4.3.1
Those who are by nature mendacious and given to slander, or who know nothing about women, will be suspicious of this farewell and attribute it to the embroidering and hyperbole of a poet. But who can gainsay one who has made it her habit, practice, custom, convention, utmost goal,343 wont, way, fashion, and observance to riposte, jest, banter, chaff, rally, sally, and respond with alacrity? Often, indeed, two or three of his friends would gather with the Fāriyāq and take on a topic on which she would rise to their challenge, keep pace with them, oppose them, and out-argue them. No speaker, however persuasive, should she oppose him, could find his tongue, and any master of rhetoric, should she enter the lists against him, would tremble, learning by experience that a woman’s answer is faster than a man’s and that one who has dedicated himself to scholarship may be slower to answer than one who has not, for the former will only venture to answer after cogitation and deliberation.
4.3.2
That said, the utterances that I have reported above from this woman so persuasive (despite her having read not a word in the art of rhetoric) fall far short of the original, for I was incapable, in reporting her words, of reporting likewise the gestures she made along with them and of picturing for the reader eyes that flirt and eyebrows that hint, a nose aquiver and lips that shiver, cheeks that flush, a neck that twists and a hand that gestures, breathing that rises and falls, and a voice that dips low and soars high, to which may be added the wiping of the eyeball to indicate incipient tears, a succession of sighs to symbolize sadness and joy, a display of foolishness to give notice of regret, a movement from side to side to announce grief and pain, and other things of that sort that lent power and rhetorical force to her words. This is the second time you’ve made me regret my ignorance of the craft of photography, the first being in Book One, chapter 14, when fair women in all their diverse beauty were discussed, and I may yet feel the same regret a third time.
4.3.3
Here I have to stand up straight and request permission from the powers that be to declare that it is the custom of all governors and kings, with the exception of the king of the English, to invite no one to enter or exit their lands who has not first paid to their ministries or their agents known as consuls a sum of money in keeping with the fertility or barrenness of their possessions. They do this on the pretext that if a traveler spends one or two hours in their country he is bound to see their spacious palaces and ever-victorious armies or their thoroughbred horses and luxurious vessels, thus putting him on a par with one who enters some place of entertainment, which no one would do without paying a fee.
4.3.4
If anyone objects, saying, “In a place of entertainment we hear the voices of the singers, male and female, and the sounds of the musical instruments, see the decorative lights and varied decorations, the shining faces of the lovely ladies and their dazzling displays, laugh with them when they laugh, are transported when they dance, and fall in love with them when they flirt, but we see none of these things when we view one of your cities; indeed, as soon as we enter them we are fleeced by your merchants, meaning that what we gain from our coming in is but little compared to what they gain in terms of their incomings,” they will tell you, “Your arrival in our country may coincide with a musical performance by our soldiers, and that can be in lieu of any transports you may experience in that place of entertainment. As far as women are concerned we give you permission to enjoy any of them that takes your fancy and run after any of them you wish, so long as you have ready cash. It’s not right, however, for you to liken our cities, graced as they are with our presence, to some place of entertainment, especially as the payment of these fees is an ancient custom followed by our ancestors (God bless the sod!) that has been practiced for so many years and eons that it can no longer be changed. If the king commands something, that thing becomes custom and law, as witness the words of the psalmodist when he says, ‘The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord,’344 meaning that whenever the king thinks of something the hand of God renders his judgment infallible with regard to it. This is how the divines in our country explain this verse and the reward of any who disagrees is crucifixion.