Ahmad al-Shidyaq: Leg over Leg: Volumes Three and Four

3.1.36

Remember the day your preacher climbed the pulpit with frowns and scowls , issued threats and uttered disavowals , accused your adversaries of error and misbelief, urged you to fight and incited you to defend the right , then prayed and sought God’s clemency , asked His guidance and proclaimed that you’d surely achieve ascendancy —that day you raided your neighbors and violated all that your brothers held sacred, sundered suckling child from mother , woman from lover , fathers from the offspring they’d sired and all they owned and had acquired ! Remember the day your leader mustered his lieutenants and urged family and friends to betray his liege lord (and what a betrayal!), all because he differed with him over assessments and estimations , interpretations and considerations , conclusions and explanations ! Remember the day you marked yourselves with the tokens of holy struggle , saying, “This is God’s battle ! This is a war for the Lord of Creation ! This is the day to gain reward and from torment attain salvation —so overwhelm the enemy by land and sea and by this pious act win God’s approbation ”! Remember the day you argued over what foods to eat and what drinks to drink, what water to use to wash the dead , on what kind of bedding to lay your head , what clothes to wear, how a certain phrase might best be said , how to arrange table, chair, and bed ? Were you placed in this world only to quarrel ? Were you commanded to fight and squabble ? How come the doctors of mathematics, geometry, and astronomy don’t differ over their proofs , or if they do, don’t set the world to the torch to assert their truths , while you set fire to it at every chance you find , with every fancy that comes to mind ? You’d do better to agree on a single view, as have they , and to the needs of God’s flock attention pay , than to drive them into such a strait and in such sticky matters implicate , to guide them to the straightest path to follow than muddle them in such a murky wallow . Leave them to strive for their daily fare and don’t ask them to grasp what’s over your head and theirs . And you too, work two hours with your hands for every hour you do with your darting tongues, and agree beforehand that, when preferences differ , you’ll be friendly and submissive to one another . Have you forgotten what it says in that Book of Psalms that you canter through and cantillate , that you so adulate , and to which you have for so long adhered : “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard ”? 6

3.1.37

Verily I say unto you, “Do not forbid what God has made lawful unto you by way of good things , and do not seek officiously to uncover other men’s sins ! Do not sell the goods stored up for you in Paradise by being on earth men of idleness and lies ! For a Market-man to marry a Bag-woman is no shame and if a Bag-man marries a Market-woman there’s no blame , for differences regarding the Unknown are matters of surmise and should pose no obstacle to the carrying off of such a prize , 7whose value is by the unschooled as appreciated as it is by the educated . Are you not aware that ‘wombs’ ( arḥām ) from ‘mercy’ ( raḥmah ) are derived , that they were designed that men might, through marriage, be allied , and that the word to ‘ties of kinship’ is applied , 8for brotherhood and harmony were created , to mutual affection dedicated , and for the seizing of fortune’s offerings designated ? Why then do you hold yourselves from such things at a distance , withdrawing and showing resistance ? Why do you all in the ocean of doubt and suspicion wade , why make commerce from surmise and therein trade ? God will never listen to the prayer of you Orientals unless it first be approved by the Occidentals , 9nor will you be to the next world admitted unless your conduct in this world to this model you have fitted . Let then now the towheaded man shake hands with the black , the round-headed-with-bonnet with the cone-headed-with- cap . Let each of you harbor toward his brother pure and loving intentions and fulfill toward him his obligations . Then, since your disagreements with regard to Creation will have ceased , you’ll not differ as to the Creator, for He is Lord of all that’s west and east . It is His desire that the Orientals among you, should they travel to the west , should be welcomed by its people and taken to their breast .” Accept this advice and listen to what comes next by way of choice phrases and witty topoi in the text of this coming chapter which I have named

3.2.1

I mentioned at the end of Book Two that God first afflicted the Fāriyāq with many diseases and more books, then rescued him from them all, and that, believing himself pardoned, he felt great relief and devoted himself to song. Now I must relate how that episode turned out and all that this sinful pursuit brought about . To get down to detail, the house that contained the Bag-men was next door to the house of a merchant who had a daughter 10who loved music, diversion, and the raptures of art, reserving a specially soft spot for singing. Every time she heard the Fāriyāq singing or playing in his room, she’d climb to the roof of her house and listen attentively until he was done, then go back down to her chamber. When the Fāriyāq discovered that she was making the climb for him — for it was not to be imagined that anyone else could have been exhibited to her 11—his soul fell ardently in love with her and felt for her the promptings of desire.

3.2.2

At the same time, however, he was by nature so averse to the idea of marriage that he considered married men the least happy of people, for all that can be seen, in general, of the married state is its trials and tribulations. If ever he was told, “So-and-so has married,” he’d be overcome by pity and would mourn for him as for one swept away by a mighty torrent or afflicted by some other terrible calamity. At that moment, then, the two elements of love and caution waged war within him, the latter in the end coming to outweigh the former in the scale. He therefore decided that it was a better idea simply to look than to make any sign indicating that he was head over heels in love.

3.2.3

The two of them continued in this fashion for a while, he behaving more shyly than the loon, which dives the moment it senses danger, until that day when he saw her wipe her eyes with a handkerchief (whether from the heat of the sun or for some other reason) and convinced himself in the depths of his soul that she was wiping away tears of yearning for him. At this his breast burst the gussets of resignation and emotion drove him to abandon circumspection . To himself he said, “Would any but I confront the tears of a weeping woman by turning away? And behind those tears can there be anything but love? How can they not melt me, when my heart’s no rock , I no knave of low-mannered stock ? I know that the greatest pleasures in life depend on finding a boon companion and sympathetic friend . I am a stranger, in need of one to cheer me when I long for home , a comrade when I’m all alone . Who better to cheer one than a wife , and what benefit lies in bachelorhood once God has provided one with food and the other needs of life ?”