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

To make it wide enough for the words and forced it to be hollowed out.

I pieced it together and cobbled it up by hand. Say then,

“What a well-pieced-together and cobbled-up book it is!”

I emptied into it every sort of ink that might make it appealing

And for it I sharpened thousands of pens.

One might almost say that with my very hands I shaped it, down to the last detail,

So that it came out tightly constructed and compactly built.

I composed it on a night black as pitch

Which is why it emerged so filled with animus and darkling allusion.

0.4.3

Outdoing the best of cooks, I seasoned it for you with pulicaria

Plants, for these will dispel the bad breath of fasting from your mouths 20

And set right whatever misfortunes may afflict you and whatever

Sets your teeth on edge; after which you’ll be ready to gobble up the pellicle of a date stone.

It will allow you to dispense with doctors’ lies and their fees—

Nor on its account will you have to face a struggle to feed your children.

From the clayey ground of its lines has sprouted

A meadow, and gardens excelling in luxuriance.

From them will come to you the scent of statuesque girls, 21

Ruddy-colored, whose beauty charms the comely youth.

0.4.4

At her side you will see tall plump girls

And well-endowed ones, white and tall, and tall smooth women

While behind them and to their fore are smooth girls whose flesh wobbles

And fair women, ever proud.

And should there emerge before you from among its letters

Heavy-haunched women, fat and ready to be bedded, then propose

marriage to a girl whose saliva is sweet and vagina dry.

Should you lack what it takes to do so and excuse

Yourself from this obligation, you will find, hot on their tails, slim-bellied lasses;

So choose, God guide you, what you desire

And be not lazy in pursuing and realizing cunsummation. 22

0.4.5

Other describers of such things have made their categorizations,

But did not do so well,

For what they said was trite and not one

Among them studied minutely what was to be described.

My book, however, or I myself, have done the opposite:

We save the enquirer the task of delimiting and defining.

We have no blemish, though you will not find

Any like us in our art nor any co-worker.

For this art is an orphan to find whose brother is impossible,

And it is unique, so be well disposed toward it.

0.4.6

To me and to the author of the Qāmūs must go the credit

Since it is from his fathomless sea that my words have been scooped.

Unlike a woman, my head was pregnant with it

For a year, and the whole year was a season of storms.

But it took only three months to be born

And quickly it learned to crawl and grew into a delightful youth.

I could not tell if my head gave birth to it feet first or blew it out of its nose or

Spat it out or dumped it there at the latrine.

I suffered over it in groans, may the Lord protect

You, suffering such as cannot be measured haphazardly

And cut its umbilical cord to suit only the people of discernment

To whose name alone it is dedicated.

0.4.7

It had no wet nurse other than

My thoughts, and even so I thought it too well suckled.

From days of old, my soul had craved it, like a pregnant woman, and

Its longing could not be distracted

And I sweated with pleasure just before it was born,

So much so that when I ejaculated the book, I was left drained.

I fathered two sons for myself, not for you, O Reader, then this one

Which is for you — a third, not for me, so lend it your ears.

My behest to my two true sons is that they should emulate

Its style and make a ritual circuit around its covers

So that they make keep it safe from burning, should any

Grow hot with anger against it, because of its spiciness.

I wash my hands of the doings of both, should they turn aside

From it and take an ally against it.

0.4.8

Any who longs to find it will be granted success,

Or if not and he loses his way and is stricken,

At night he will hear a burbling sound coming from it

That will sweeten his slumber with its unceasing gurgling—

And how many a shining light will appear if

You find yourself faced with it on a gloomy day!

How many a one large of belly has given up on it in dudgeon!

How many a murderous killer recoils from it, now weak!

To him like elusive mercury it seems and he cannot

Grasp any of the wool on its nape.

0.4.9

It falls like the wind in the valley when

Stirred up, and wears the mountain peak down to a bump.

It is the best of levelers for any who has found no humming top

Among Fate’s toys and games to please him.

If you recite it, the beauty of its sound, like a gazelle calling to its young, will delight you

And if you seek to drown it out with your talk, it will give out a

musical sound to which you will have no choice but to hearken.

In it you will find a winter refuge in the cold; then,

When the burning wind of summer gusts, a summer resort.

0.4.10

If you grow tired of food and other things,

You will find in it relief for your boredom

And if you acquire a garden, plant there

Little words from it that will give you yet more posies

That will relieve you of having to erect a scarecrow in it;

Should even Shiẓāẓ 23come to steal them, he’ll be affrighted.

I guarantee 24you will find it so absorbing that you will lose all interest in sex,

But no one thereafter will think you’re strait-laced or no longer able—

No indeed! — nor that you’re one who doesn’t want to sleep or is kept awake

By insomnia, or because he suffers thirst or hunger.

0.4.11

Make not bold to mount life’s challenges

Unless you are ready to take them as your companion and pillion rider,

So that, should you be shaken in your seat, it may protect

You from slipping and so missing… summation. 25

Well I know, and common sense instructs me,

That Your Honored Self finds monks frightening.

Scare them yourself, then, using every cutting character 26

That’s in it inscribed, and any monk will pull back from you blinded. 27

It is sour grape juice in the eye of its calumniator,

Whose eye, if its title is ever mentioned, will weep and weep.

It is the sharp cutting steel that

Slices bones and cleaves cartilage.

0.4.12

If you wish to dress yourself in it, despite its shortcomings,

Then enjoy it; if not, then leave it be, still clean.

I have licensed you to swallow it whole or to lick it

Or, if afraid of vomiting, to take it diluted.

Beware, though, lest you add to it or

Think of using it in abbreviated form,

For no place in it is susceptible

To abbreviation, or to addition, to make it better.

0.4.13

If an inanimate object may be fallen in love with for its beauty,

Then all humanity will be enamored of it.

After I have bidden mankind farewell,

They will find their way to it, wherever it be, in droves.

And if two liars quarrel, the hair of the beard

Of the more unjust will end up plucked out

And finally the hair on both their jawbones will be like

Mattress cotton, smooth and carded.

By the life of your head, my head knows that

I’ll never benefit from it by even a loaf—