Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded, with Risible Rhymes. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī

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СКАЧАТЬ heinous acts and so on. Thus what we have said is correct as stated above. End.”

      10.7

      It is said that the most quick-witted and devilishly clever of men are those who have no beard at all. Anyone associating with them must be on guard, because of their great intelligence, breadth of knowledge, and finesse. Thus it happened that a certain king once asked his minister, “Who are the most devilishly clever and quick-witted of men?” and the minister answered, “Those who have no beard.” “I want you,” said the king, “to demonstrate the truth of that for me.” Said the minister, “You must prepare some food and make spoons for the food, each spoon three cubits in length, and order people to come and eat. When the people have come and sat down, order them to eat with nothing but those spoons and tell them that no one may touch the spoon except by the handle and that he may eat in no other way. Then watch what happens.” The king did as the minister instructed him, and the people came for the food. When they sat down, he ordered that they eat only with the spoons and told them that no one should touch any part of the spoon but the handle, as described. They wanted to eat but could not, and they wanted to leave, but the king stopped them and ordered them to sit. One of them would fill the spoon and try to put what was in it in his mouth, but it would miss his mouth and stick out over his shoulder, and no one knew what to do. While they were thus engaged, a man with no beard entered. “How is it that you are not eating the food?” he asked, so they told him the problem. “That’s easy,” he said, “I will show you a stratagem that will allow you to eat without disobeying the king’s command: each one of you will feed the man sitting opposite him, and that man likewise will feed the one who feeds him. That way you will eat your fill with the spoons as they are.” So this man started feeding morsels to that one and likewise that man to this one till all had eaten their fill. The king was amazed at the beardless man’s stratagem and the force of his cunning and his great insight and ordered that he be given a gift and bestowed a robe of honor on the minister.

      10.8

      And once a beardless man stood before a certain king and brought a complaint against an opponent. The king said to him, “I am amazed at your complaint. After all, you are beardless, and no one should be able to get the better of you.” “Pardon, O king,” replied the man, “but my face has the odd hair, while my opponent is completely smooth, without a single hair on his face!” The king laughed and gave the man his due against his opponent and ordered that he be given a gift.

THE ORIGINS OF HIS GOOD FORTUNE IN HIS EARLY DAYS AND HOW FATE CAME TO TURN AGAINST HIM

      10.9

      As for the origins of the poet’s good fortune in his early days and how fate came to turn against him, accounts differ. One says that, when he was grown and had reached ten years of age, he was strong, lusty, and well versed in pasturing flocks, gamboling in fields, and walking barefoot and naked in the heat, and that he would haul wet manure on his head from the field to his house in the shortest time imaginable, so that the liquid released would run over his face, and from this, if he ever got thirsty, he would drink; and sometimes what ran down from it would cover the rest of his body, as is typically the case among country boys. And he would go for a month or even two without giving his face a wash, unless he should happen to get doused in urine by a calf or a cow as he was on his way to or from the fields, in which case he would rub it in with his hand, using it in place of water to wash his face. Despite this fatuous cleanliness, he never passed up an opportunity to beat up the other children, play ball around the village quarters, gambol on the dung heaps and threshing floors, play at dārah and on the drums and zummārah, making a tumult and wild sounds, and beating the hounds, and other crud and crap, to the point that he was the one among his companions who knew best how to make two days of every one and of every month two. As the Bard of the Two Villages⁹ put it:

      10.9.1

      Abū Shādūf from day one’s been cocky—

      Like a puppy he bounces all over

      And goes to Abū Maʿrah’s field and gathers

      Fresh dung on a platter.

      He’ll be naked, with a load on his head,

      And his face like the face of an ogre,

      And the wet dung that’s gone runny

      Will have run down upon him, and there’s nothing brave in his manner.

      He goes for a month without washing his face,

      Or for two, and his body’s still got power:

      10.9.2

      After sweeping the threshing floors all morning long,

      He’ll still dash about like our bitch Umm Ṣarwah.

      How fine you look, Abū Shādūf (when

      He comes to the buffaloes and falls into ordure

      And gets down and wallows there behind them).

      You’d say you were the afreet of some cloister!

      All his life Abū Shādūf’s been pampered:

      Like a puppy dog he grew up among us and scampered.

      Abū Shādūf, God grant him ease,

      Put on a cap and today has a sheepskin fur.

      Today his father’s shaykh of the hamlet and sits

      Knee to sandal with the tax collector.

      10.9.3

      The first says, “Master!” The other, “You pimp!

      Cough up the taxes or I’ll use you others to deter.”

      This is from the likes of Abū Shādūf and his grandfather¹⁰

      And his father and his father’s sister, Umm Faswah’s¹¹ daughter,

      And we close our words with praise for Muḥammad—

      How many a calamity he has swept away, God’s Messenger!

      On him, O Lord, pour blessings and peace,

      As on his noble companions, of knightly order!

      10.10

      Indeed, people used to envy his father for having a son so strong and so smart and such an expert at banging the drum and playing the zummārah. Now, his father had acquired, in the course of his life, a lame donkey, two goats, a share in the ox that turned the waterwheel, half a cow, ten hens with their rooster, four bushels of bran, and two quarterns of barley. He also owned about four hundred dung cakes and a bin in which he stored chicken droppings during the winter, and he had a broken water jug, a striped earthenware water butt, a besom to sweep the threshing floor, and a dog to guard the house. Once he had achieved this state of luxury, he died and passed into the mercy of the Almighty, in keeping with the common rule that the day a poor man gets rich, he dies—a point well made by the poet¹² who said:

      When a thing’s complete, decline sets in.

      Expect extinction when men say, “Done!”

      10.11

      So СКАЧАТЬ