4.4.7
The beauty of Englishwomen is of the sort that falls under the heading of “Where is Ibn Alghaz?” “Where oh where is the one who can satisfy me?” and “Before me the hard man is humbled.” You see them turning disdainfully to one side,359 shying, flying, starting, bolting, flinching, fleeing, proudly turning, racing, baulking, jibbing, bounding, leaping, escaping, like a mirage dissipating, while running full tilt, head high, nose in air, chest out, back straight, and even though the divine creative power has uniquely blessed them with buttocks ample and copious (or so it is reported), yet they apply bustles to these, using the latter to make the former large enough to stop any who lies in wait in his tracks, as though dumb-founded by a head-on encounter, after which he cannot stop his knees from knocking together in wonder and awe at such aggrandizement, his teeth from smoking, his tongue from lolling, his uvula from wagging, his neck from twisting, his jugulars from swelling, and his eyelids from reddening, or himself from being overcome by lust and assaulting her, and the said person is taken by an agitation,360 a trepidation, a commotion, a flutteration, a trembling, a shaking, a quaking, a shuddering, a shivering, a quavering, a rocking, a jolting, a jarring, a jerking, a bobbling, a wobbling, a fainting, a giddiness, a dizziness, a light-headedness, a twitching, a tottering, a teetering, a staggering, a faltering, a languorous folding, a stiffening of the joints, a chattering of the teeth, and a rattling of the jaw, and the four humors set him ablaze, each mix361 demanding its own bustle. Ideas and misgivings bombard him, hopes and fears pull him this way and that, choking passions make him splutter, he trembles with lustful emotions, and he doubles over with yearning and desire, in accordance with the words of the poet
I knew you as one celebrated for your generosity,
And the throbbings of longing and hope swept me to you
and he remains so confused and at a loss, speechless and flabbergasted, perplexed and bewildered, astonished and amazed that, when he returns safely to his house, he believes everything that pops up before him there is a bustle, or that thing that lends the bustle its bulk.
4.4.8
Whenever the Fāriyāq left the house and beheld these well-endowed mounds, he would return to his refuge with a thousand poetical images crowding his head. A poem he recited in honor of one such enchantress went as follows:
Wonder of wonders! Let every man, “Wonder of wonders!”
Exclaim, of those who love with women to tussle,
“Not a mound’s to be seen
In this place that isn’t a bustle!
No indeed! And not a dip
That isn’t accompanied by its own little hump—
No indeed again! — and not a euphorbia fruit362 to be bought
That isn’t a high-breasted woman’s pink bump.
Longing makes me boldly approach each big-bottomed waddler
Who invites the celibate to play,
Yet fear of impotence induced by too much lust
Keeps me away.
What must people say of him who
Roars from a bursting milk skin that absence of opportunity plugs,
Or how can the stomach of an Arab
Be too weak to drink deep from those great jugs?
O for a spigot that I might fill the cup
From my counter-levered love pail!
O for a bustle like one of those domes
Of which I might myself at night avail!
O for a palpation of one of those
Bummikins in my home!
This, I swear, is the way of those starved
Of sex and this same practice is my own.”
CHAPTER 5: THE SUPERIORITY OF WOMEN, INCLUDING A DESCRIPTION OF LONDON ON THE AUTHORITY OF THE FĀRIYĀQ
4.5.1
Just as the women of this country are distinguished by this characteristic, so its men are distinguished by that of kindness to the stranger, once they have been introduced to him. Before he’s been introduced, however, if he greets one of them, the response will be a sidelong glance or a brisk nod of the head. Thus it was that one of their students of Arabic, having learned of the presence of the Fāriyāq and having been informed as to his noble pedigree and plentiful property, came to visit him and invited him to go with him to his house, which was some distance from Cambridge, and to stay there as an honored guest. The Fāriyāq accepted the invitation because the inhabitants of the city, despite the large number of schools and places of learning there, were exceptionally unwelcoming to the stranger, especially if he differed from them in dress; they made so much fun of his red cap, for example, that he often hid in his room and would leave it only at night.
4.5.2
On this topic, he wrote
Cast by the tempest on Cambridge’s shore,
Lest I be seen and mocked by the rabble, I kept to my house.
Then, when night had driven me mad,
I’d go out in safety, like a flittermouse.
Similarly, since the dogs too would sniff at his fur coat and follow him around, he wrote of them
I’ve got a fur coat that the dogs all come to sniff at
But when I repel them not one retires.
They snarl as they rip into my skin and the coat’s—
You’d think I’d had it made from the skins of their sires.
And because the people of the house where he was staying would take a share of his food and not allow him access to their persons, he wrote about them
In Cambridge I’ve got dependents undisclosed
Who partake of my food when there’s no one there to watch—
All I know of my lady guest is that her name is So-and-so
And all I know of the man is that his name is Such and such.
Likewise, because he couldn’t find a way to be alone with one of those “domes,” he wrote of them
What’s the use of a comfy mattress
If there’s no sex to be had on it for all its softness?
What use a nightdress without a cunny
Or a nice bit of quim if you can’t find a cubby?
What use is life with no snatch in your bed?
No matter how long you live, you’re better off dead.
4.5.3
They took the railway together and arrived at the house at night, and no sooner had the Fāriyāq entered the room that had been prepared for him than he decorated it with the following:
What an excellent thing is the railway! How many a bottom
On its seats spreads wide, while breasts there quiver galore!