Impostures. al-Ḥarīrī

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      Woolf at the Door

      In this episode Abū Zayd tells a tearjerker of a story about meeting his long-lost son. Since Abū Zayd tends to lie, his account has a feeling of unreality about it, especially in view of his private comments to al-Ḥārith at the end. To capture that effect in English, he adopts the style of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925), whose stream-of-consciousness narration leaves the reader unsure of what is really happening—or more exactly, perhaps, suddenly aware of how much we rely on the contrivance of the omniscient narrator. The poems are based on various styles of light verse by other authors of the period, as specified in the notes on each section.

      5.1It was Hárith—Hammám’s son—who told us.

      He remembered Kúfa, sitting up till all hours of the night talking; the sky now striking light to the earth, now darkness, the moon a chink of silver, an amulet. The others were wholly admirable, companions in the art of exquisite address, as if they had been given to suck on it since childhood, and could now draw a great sweeping brush across the memory of names as great as Sahbán’s. Everybody owed these men words, but how wonderful to feel no strain, only at one’s ease with them and light-hearted. They went on talking until the moonlight had gone. Even afterwards they sat awake, the darkness now profound; but at last they felt that they must sleep.

      But somebody was rousing the dogs, thumping at the door. Who could it be? What a surprise, to be interrupted at that hour, in that profound darkness!

      5.2A voice, suddenly, from behind the door:

      Knockety-knockety!

      Stygian darkness has

      Forced me to cadgerous

      Pounding on doors;

      Dusty, disheveled, I’m

      Looking for lodging, so

      Philanthropologically

      Let it be yours!

      Knockety-knockety!

      Rolling has rounded me:

      Now, consequently, I

      Grin like the moon;

      If you allow me, I’ll

      Repay your kindness by

      Double-dactylically

      Chanting this rune.

      5.3The effect was extraordinary—a sonorous voice sounding, and a promise of depths beneath the surface agitation. Now they were throwing open the door, welcoming the stranger in, calling to the servant boy to bring out the cold meats.

      “No, no,” the stranger was saying, vowing that, as God had brought him to them—and it was God who had led him to that house and no other—that he wouldn’t taste anything they offered him unless they were quite sure he wasn’t a burden to them, that they wouldn’t take the trouble to prepare a meal. It was true, wasn’t it, that food one feels awkward about eating turns sour in the belly so that one misses his next few meals altogether? “The worst sort of guest is one who causes fuss and bother for his host,” especially the sort of bother that affects the digestion and brings on illness. “The best dishes are eaten in daylight”: what did that familiar saying mean, except that the evening meal should be taken as early as possible, and dining at night was to be avoided, for it weakens the eyesight—unless of course one felt so awfully hungry that sleep was impossible?

      5.4It was wonderful how the stranger had known their feelings, had understood without their speaking. Of course they accepted his condition, put him at his ease, offered their compliments on his amiable manners.

      Now the servant came with the dishes, lit the lamp. Now Hárith examined the stranger’s face, and—“What a guest we have,” he told his friends, “he is delicious even served cold!” To see Abuzeid suddenly—what a surprise; as if the stars had shifted in their courses to make room for his star of poetry, or the constellations fled when the pale moon of his prose broke the surface of the sky. They glowed with expectation, their eyes kindled with pleasure. Sleep was forgotten, beds forgotten, the playthings of the mind—put away only a moment ago—pulled out again.

      Abuzeid just sat there, eating. At last he asked the servant to take up the table. “Tell us your stories,” Hárith asked, stories about adventures far away, stories for all hours of the night.

      5.5Things happened to Abuzeid that no one had seen or heard the like of. One of the oddest, he said, had happened that night, before he came to them, came to their door unexpectedly. What had he seen, wandering so late? He’d been tossed about, he said, by the storms of the world, and been spat out on this shore; hunger, misery, his bag hollowed out, utterly empty within: Jochebed’s heart when she lost Moses. When darkness fell he rose, footsore as he was, to seek a house, a host, a crust of bread; and starvation, or fate, the Begetter of Wonders, drew him along to that house, the house where he improvised, chanting:

      5.6I hope my visit finds you well.

      Now let me bless this house:

      May Plenty smile on all who dwell

      Within, and round about.

      Endless weary roads I’ve walked

      Without a crust of bread;

      One more night of cheerless dark

      And dawn will find me dead.

      If any be within, oh speak!

      How sweet if I could hear

      You say, “Come in, put down your stick,

      And take your supper here.”

      5.7Then a boy came out of that house, a boy wearing a sort of smock, and answered him.

      For our Abrahamic father

      It was clearly not a bother

      Feeding all the guests who’d turn up at his door;

      But we haven’t got a mouthful

      For us, much less a house-ful,

      So tell me: can the starving feed the СКАЧАТЬ