Ahmad al-Shidyaq - Leg over Leg - Volumes One and Two

2.16.63

arnabānī ,

“blackish silk-wool”

and sinnā ,

“a kind of silk”

and ardan ,

“a kind of silk-wool”

and ṭārūnī ,

another kind of silk-wool; ṭurn is silk-wool

and qatīn ,

“bleached white silk-wool”

and birs ,

“cotton or something similar to it, or papyrus flock”

and sharīʿ ,

“high-quality linen”

and qazz ,

“that is, ibrīsam (‘a kind of silk’), which is the same as dimaqs (also pronounced diqams and midaqs )”

though once more the pen has carried me away: underdrawers ought to have come first, so as to give them a place in the list appropriate to the underlying gist . 635

2.16.64

Next, if you take her off to the city’s open spaces and marketplaces, where people gather, as soon as she claps eyes on some handsome well-built young whelp, she’ll say, “That one would make a ladies’ man and be good for riding fine steeds, buckling on a sword, bracing a spear between leg and stirrup, and thrusting”; or if she sees a blooming boy, she’ll say, “That one ought to go to lady-killers school, to realize his potential”; or if an older man, “That one ought to stay at home and take up the composition of love lyrics and saucy songs to prepare for the needs of the pupils of the aforementioned school”; or an old man, decrepit and decomposing, “And that one is fit to give counsel on those matters that perplex its still green graduates; let him exert himself to the utmost in setting them straight, and if no pertinent opinion is to be had from him, let him be rolled up in a shroud and buried.” All this, and your thoughts are still preoccupied with the donkey, or its saddle.

2.16.65

As for the argument that sleeping with her inside her slip is more fortifying, this is because it has become the custom for any of those whose commands and prohibitions must be obeyed, who is growing old, and whose blood had dried and flesh shriveled to the point that he can no longer get warm by cloaking himself in his clothes, to sleep with one of these smooth-skinned beauties inside her slip, thus substituting her warmth for that of cloak, fire, and hot spices, the best for such purposes being a virgin. There are differences of opinion over the cause and point of origin of this warmth. Some claim that it is the breath from her mouth that warms the chilled, while others object that that same breath must inevitably become embroiled with his mustache and thus cool down. Others would have it that the outlet is obviously the pores, from which sprouts the hair; thus the rising of warmth from a woman, whose pores are open, must be less impeded, in contrast to the situation with a man, whose pores are blocked by his hair.

2.16.66

To this, response was made that the beardless boy is like the woman in terms of his pores being open, but no one has ever claimed that to sleep with one of them inside his slip is more fortifying. Some believe that the breath must come from her nose, while a certain paronomasia-obsessed school claims that it comes from some other place, saying that in the Qāmūs it states that “‘the man takawwā (“cuddled”) with his wife’ means that he sought comfort in the ḥarr / ḥirr 636of her body.” I have to point out that, despite the care the author has taken to collect rare and strange vocabulary items, he fails to mention a verb that means “the woman sought comfort in the warmth of a man’s body.” It is for this reason — i.e., because the woman’s body possesses a warmth not to be be found in the man’s — that the lightest of coverings is enough to warm her even in the coldest weather, while at the same time the man is blowing on his fingers and shivering and shrinking, his teeth chattering. Equally strange is the fact that she eats less than a man but has more flesh than he.

2.16.67

Schoolmen have claimed — and skilled physicians agree — that among the gifts that God, glory be to Him, has bestowed on women is the power to persuade their opponents to their way of thinking and lead the misguided to His true religion. As testimony to this, they advance the story of the Muʿtazilī and his wife, when a certain celebrated scholar of this group, who claim that the acts of mortal men are not of God’s creation, was debating with certain Sunnis and put to them such arguments and proofs in support of his view that they were at a loss to respond. At this point a sharp-witted Sunni woman upped and said to her co-believers, “Marry me to him and I’ll defeat him in a single night, God willing.” He spent that night with her as a free-thinker, until such time as he had performed his marital duty, after which he performed a further, supererogatory act, and then an additonal, voluntary, good deed, believing that by so doing he’d earned heavenly reward and deserved a wink of sleep. “And what,” said the woman, “of the fourth, fifth, and tenth, you flaccid poof ?” so he pulled himself together for one more go, after which he said, “There’s no more milk left in the milk-skin now, so no blame and no reproof .” “Such an excuse is very poor, sir ,” replied the woman, “when you claim a mortal’s acts are not the creation of the One, the Enforcer !” Said the man, “You have brought a fool to his senses, guided one misled to the proper path . I hereby relinquish my former way of thinking; God has guided me to the road that averts His wrath .”

2.16.68

For my part, I declare that a reading of the history books teaches that to women should go the lion’s share of the credit for the introduction of Christianity into the lands of the Franks. A certain witty litterateur once said, “If a woman wants to buy something or requires a service, she has no need to pay the seller or the provider in cash. She can just pay him in kind with a look that’s kind, which is why this word has meanings of two kinds.” 637It’s a different case with the man: if he wants to get anything, no matter what but especially if it involves any untying of drawstrings, he has to dissolve the knots with puffs 638of silver and gold.

2.16.69

A further peculiarity of women is that, if one of them craves something she likes when she’s pregnant, the image of what she craves will appear on the child, and a father must therefore inspect his offspring to find out what particular shape appears on their bodies, though if he finds something unacceptable, he’ll just have to hold his tongue over it. Further, the woman’s creative power is so great that it confers on plants and many other forms qualities that please her eye and bring her comfort if she sees or touches them. Men have none of these peculiarities.

2.16.70

Another is that a single woman in a gathering of twenty men can bewitch each and every one of them, charming this with a word, that with a look, this with a wink, that with a blink, this with a squint, that with a look through narrowed eyes, this with a nod, that with a sigh, this with a turn, that with a twisting of the neck, this with a sniff, that with a cocking of the head, this by biting her tongue, that by sticking it out, this by moving it back and forth, that by pressing together or parting her lips, this by showing off her profile, that by loosening her hair, this with a smile, that with a laugh, and this with a guffaw, so that all leave well disposed toward her; a woman is at her most brilliant when seated amongst a company of young men who are flirting with her, joking with her, and flattering her.