4.3.11
Next he traveled from Marseilles to Paris, where he and his trunk were likewise searched at its customs house. The customs officers of the latter city seemed to believe that their colleagues in the former had gone to sleep while on night duty and the devil had urinated in their ears and as a result their eyes had been made too blurry to see what was in the trunk, or that they’d taken a bribe, like other civil servants. He stayed in Paris three days, in the house occupied by the embassy of the Sublime State,346 where he enjoyed the privilege of kissing the hands of the August Ministers and Honored Marshals Rashīd Pasha and Sāmī Pasha. Then he left Paris for London; these two mighty cities will be described later. From London he went to a village in peasant country, where he hung up his hat and where I too shall now call a halt.
CHAPTER 4: THE RULES FOR RETELLING
4.4.1
In all his life, the Fāriyāq never spent a more unpleasant and arduous time than he did in that village,347 for the villages of England are altogether without places in which to be entertained, to meet, to enjoy oneself, or to have fun; enjoyment and fun are to be had only in the large cities. In addition, such food and drink as are sold in them are no cause for celebration, for anyone who has a chicken or anything special sends it to one of the nearby towns. Anyone who wishes to cut himself off from the world or feels a calling to be a monk should hie himself to them. As for their women, some of them will cure a loss of appetite or even bestow a raging lust, but the outsider is denied access to them. Every cloven hoof stays close to her bull and the only loose, free-ranging beasts are the old ones.
4.4.2
After two months in these calamitous conditions, he moved to the city of Cambridge, wellspring of the clergy and of the science of theology, since most English clergymen go there or to Oxford to learn divinity and apologetics. These two cities are also home to all other students, in all their diversity of class and standing. The celebrated philosopher Newton was the brilliant son of one of the Cambridge colleges. There the Fāriyāq rented, as is the custom, two sets of rooms in a house, where he stayed, translating the rest of the book referred to earlier.348 In the same house there was a full-breasted girl with wide black eyes, which is how most of the maids there are. Every night the Fāriyāq would see her going up to the room of one of the lodgers. Then, after a time not longer than it takes to say “Good evening!” he would hear her produce a kineto-penetrative gasp. The mistress of the house used to see her coming down from the man’s room at ten or so at night but had no interest in her ascents and descents. In the morning, when the girl came to make the Fāriyāq’s bed, he would stare at her and observe her closely but could see no sign to indicate that she was the gasper. He therefore assumed that it was a delusion born of his fervent desire for penetration. Then night would come and the gasp would be there again, and so would his certainty. With morning the staring would be repeated as would the pretence of virtue, and the doubt would be there and so would the confusion, and so on and so forth. Things got so bad that the Fāriyāq’s mind almost became unhinged and started to spoil the translation, which he had long feared might fall victim to shortcomings and mistakes due to some issue related to women.
4.4.3
Here I have to squat down on my haunches and declare: “This feline characteristic (i.e., the ability to take one’s food without being noticed), though its presence may be observed in women in general, is especially pronounced among English women. Such a woman, if distinguished by those features ascribed to the sexually voracious woman in the ḥadanbadā chapter,349 will put on a show during the day of God-fearingness, piety, reticence, and distaste and look at her devotee as though she had no idea who he was, deluding any who are watching her into thinking she is virtuous and has nothing to do with men. She may have memorized religious sayings and devout narrations to fling at people, making them venerate her and believe her to be righteous, and when you enter her home you may find on the table copies of the Old Testament and the Gospels and other books on worship and self-abnegation (the visible edges of whose pages she will sometimes dirty to give the false impression that she studies them frequently) and a man may not be allowed to utter in her presence the name of any of his members. As a result, the pleasure of such women, according to the rule pronounced by the Fāriyāqiyyah, will be incomplete, because it will lack the element of discussion.350
4.4.4
“And we have it on her authority too that any talk of pleasure must be congruent with the reality. If it involves a man of high status at night, it must be discussed with a woman of high status at night, if someone of low status in the morning, it must be discussed with a woman of low status in the morning, and so on and so forth for all the various other times and persons — unless there is reason to fear that the opportunity will be lost: in other words, if it happened at night, for example, but cannot be discussed that same night, it is permissible to discuss it at dawn or in the morning, or if it involves a man of high status but none of his kind is available, it is permissible to discuss it with a man of low status; the pleasure derived from talking about it will not be spoiled thereby. If by any chance she cannot find anyone from any of these categories, she can discuss it with herself. She may do this by inserting her head into an empty water jar, well, pit, vault, or anything of the sort that produces an echo, and speaking with clear and eloquent tongue of everything that happened to her; the responding echo can take the place of an intimate interlocutor. If, on the other hand, the memory is kept in her breast, chestiness and diphtheria are to be feared.
4.4.5
“It is also a rule in her view that the retelling be congruent with the act. Thus, for the pressings, an accentuation of the voice,351 for the jabs, a catch in the airflow, for the movements, a vocalic motion, for the moments of inertia, an inert letter, for the prolongations, a prolongation of the a, for the rushed bits, a gabbling of the recitation, for the softenings of the voice, an apocopation, and for the languorous moments, a slowing of pace. Also, that special attention be given to the doubling of the letter dhāl,352 if the retelling is done in this noble language of ours, and that there be a flirtatious flash to the eyes, floods of saliva, and a moistness to the tongue, and that the hands sketch what the words describe. This being established, you will have gathered that the trait mentioned as present in Englishwomen is an infraction of the rules of pleasure, and it may be said that the pleasure they take in visualization is so strong because it takes the place of two other pleasures, or that they put their heads inside a cask or the like.
4.4.6
“And on the authority of the Fāriyāq, we have it that the beauty that is in women, in all its disparate forms, has ways of speaking, calling out, inviting, pointing, and signaling. For example, there is the type that says to the one who gazes upon it, ‘I’m not interested in little sticks’ and the type that says, ‘Seize your opportunity now!’ or ‘Tarrying has its disadvantages’ or ‘You won’t find me wearied by large numbers’ or ‘Let not the shy-eyed one deceive you!’ or ‘Come hither!’ or ‘O who will bring him to me right now?’ or ‘I see none who can satisfy me’ or ‘The best way to mend a slit is to sew it up’353 or ‘Where oh where is the one who can satisfy me?’ or ‘Where is Ibn Alghaz?’354 or ‘Where is a member of the Banū Adhlagh?’355 or ‘Before me the hard man is humbled’ or ‘After all that effort, who can find fault with you?’ or ‘No conscious effort is entirely wasted’ or ‘Feed and thou shalt be satisfied’ or ‘To taste is to know’ or ‘To touch is to praise’ or ‘The early bird catches the worm’ or ‘If at first you don’t succeed…’356 or ‘Always count twice’357 or ‘Keep in touch with others and others will keep in touch with you.’ There is also the type that looks at you as though to say, ‘Use cunning’ or ‘Make your visits discreet’ or ‘Watch out for the neighbors’ or ‘Slow and steady wins the race’ or ‘Come early as the crow.’”358