5. Al-Jahiz and Mahfouz al-Naqqash
One night Mahfouz al-Naqqash and I came out of the Great Mosque together. We got close to his house, and, as it was nearer to the mosque than mine, he suggested I might stay the night with him.
“Where do you think you’re going,” he said, “in all this rain and cold? My house is yours. It’s dark and you don’t have any lantern with you. I’ve some buttermilk you couldn’t beat anywhere, and some first-class dates, just right for you.”
So, I went off with him. He left me waiting for a while, then back he came with a dish of buttermilk and a plate of dates.
“Abu ʿUthman,” he said, as I stretched out my hand to the food, “buttermilk lies on the stomach, and there’s no chance of getting any real exercise at night. It’s a damp, rainy night, too, and you’re not as young as you were, always complaining about your arthritis. And you’re thirsty all the time, not used to proper dinners. Now, if you take a little of this buttermilk, but not too much, it will be as if you hadn’t eaten and hadn’t gone without either. You’ll have taken the edge off your appetite but resisted the temptation to eat something you find really tasty. If you eat too much, though, we’re going to have a wretched night trying to take care of you. We haven’t any liquor or honey ready for that sort of crisis. I’m saying this now so you won’t start going on about it tomorrow. I’m in a real quandary. If I hadn’t brought you what I promised, you would have said I was a miser. But if I’d brought it without giving you any warning, without making clear what it might lead to, you would have said I was being uncharitable and hadn’t given you the proper advice. Well, now I’ve cleared myself of both charges. The choice is yours: a mere meal that’s going to kill you, or a bit of self-discipline, then a nice sound sleep afterwards.”
I never laughed as much as I did that night! I ate up all the food, which I reckon must have been digested with the help of sheer laughter and jubilant delight. If there’d been anyone with me to appreciate the wonderful talk we had, I would have died laughing. But laughing on your own isn’t like laughter shared by comrades.
6.
Once in a while Ibn al-ʿAqdi might invite his friends to his orchard, but I don’t think his heart was in it. One day I questioned some of his visitors.
“Tell me something,” I said, “about those visits.”
“Will you keep this confidential?” one of them asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “As long as I’m in Basra.”
“He’d buy unhusked rice for us,” the man said, “and bring it along. Nothing else under God’s heaven, just that rice. When we got to his orchard, he’d tell his laborer to husk the rice in his own hand mill. He’d winnow the rice, and sift it, then he’d husk, all over again, any grains that had escaped the mill. When he’d finished with all the husking, winnowing, and sifting, then the extra rehusking, plus the extra winnowing and sifting, he’d tell his laborer to crush it, using his own ox-driven mill. Then, when the rice was crushed and milled, he’d tell his man to boil some water, gather firewood, then knead the ground rice, which would rise better with the warm water. Then he’d tell his man to bake it. He’s been known to ask his visitors to set up fishhooks and block the exits for small fish so they wouldn’t escape into the water channels. After that they’d run their hands among the rushes and roots, and any fish that was caught he’d cook under the baking plate of the fire so he wouldn’t need extra firewood. And we’d be there like that from noon till nightfall, tired and hungry, and still waiting. All for a supper of black rice bread. And he wouldn’t have given us that if he could have thought of anything worse.”
7. Al-Makki told me the following anecdote:
I once spent the night at Ismaʿil ibn Ghazwan’s house—he’d asked me because he knew I’d eaten supper with Muwais and I had a cask of wine with me. When it was past midnight, I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, and I lay down on the rug, resting my head on my hand. There was no bedding in the house except his prayer rug, a mattress, and a pillow. He handed me the pillow, but I refused to take it and gave it back to him. He insisted, and I refused again.
“How can you lie there like that, with your head on your hand,” he demanded, “when I’ve a pillow here for you?”
So I took the pillow and put it under my head. But I couldn’t sleep in that strange place, on such a rough bed. When my host thought I’d fallen asleep, he crept softly up to me and pulled the pillow out from under my head. When I saw him going away with it, I started laughing.
“Did you have to do that?” I asked.
“I only came,” he answered, “to put the pillow in a better position under your head.”
“But,” I told him, “I didn’t say a word till you were going off with it.”
“I did mean to do it,” he replied. “Only, when I had the pillow in my hand, I forgot what I’d come for. I reckon drink makes you forget everything!”
8. Here’s another anecdote I heard sometime ago:
A certain person was, it seems, an utter miser and somehow managed to become an imam in a mosque. Whenever he got hold of a dirham, he’d address it in a reverent, friendly way, holding it there in his hand.
“How many lands you must have passed through!” he’d say to the coin.
“How many purses you must have left behind! How many humble people you must have raised up! How many prominent people you must have brought down! You’ll never, I promise, be exposed or sacrificed.”
With that he’d drop the coin into his bag, saying:
“Live there in God’s peace. In a place where you won’t be insulted, or despised, or disturbed.”
Once he’d dropped a dirham in his bag, he never took it out again.
One day his family pressed him to spend a dirham on some food they desperately needed. He tried his best to head them off, but at last he went out, carrying a single dirham. Then, on his way to the market, he saw a snake charmer who was ready to put the snake on his body if anyone paid him a dirham.
“Am I,” the imam said to himself, “going to squander something for which a life can be lost, just to eat and drink? Here, surely, is a divine lesson I need to learn.”
With that he returned to his family and put the dirham back in his bag. His family was distraught at this. They wanted him just to die so they could be rid of him and live on without him.
When he did die, and the family thought they were rid of him at last, his son came to take possession of the money and the house.
“What,” he asked, “did my father butter his bread with? Bad habits usually start with butter.”
“He’d always,” they said, “have a little cheese with his bread.”
“Show me where it is,” he said.
They did as he told them, and he found a hollow in the middle of the piece of cheese where the bread had been rubbed against it.
“Why is it hollowed out like this?” he asked.
“He never cut the cheese,” they told him. “He’d just rub against the edge of it. That’s where this hollow came from.”
“This,” he said, “is what reduced me to the state I’m in now. If I’d known about this, I would never have prayed behind his coffin.”
“So what are you going to do now?” they asked him.
“I’m going,” he replied, “to set the cheese up somewhere, a long way off, and point to it with a piece of bread!”
9. Abu ʾl-Hasan al-Madaʾini told the following story about a date merchant:
There was a date merchant in Madaʾin who grew worried when he saw his servant going into the shop and spending some time there. He was afraid the servant might be eating some of the dates.
One day he taxed the boy with this, and the boy denied it. So he called for a piece of white cotton and told the boy to chew it, which he did. When the boy took it out of his mouth, it looked yellow and sweet.
“So,” he said to the boy, “this is what you’ve been up to, is it, day after day, and I knew nothing about it? Out of my house!”
I was once at al-Dardarishi’s house when a beggar came to the door asking for alms. Al-Dardarishi shouted at him. Then came another, and he shouted at him, too, in a furious rage this time. I went up to my host.
“Why,” I asked him, “do you hate beggars so much?”
“The fact is,” he answered, “most of these people are richer than I am.”
“I had an idea that might be why you hated them,” I said.
“If any of these people,” he said, “had the chance to pull my house down, or take my life away from me, they’d do it. If I’d listened to them and given to them whenever they asked, I’d have ended up like them long ago. How do you expect me to feel about people who feel that way about me?”
11.
Abu ʾl-Hudail once took Muwais a chicken as a gift. It was cheaper than the gifts Muwais usually received, but he was so courteous and good-natured that he made a show of marveling at this plump chicken with its delicious meat. He was well aware, though, how miserly the other man was.
“How did you find that chicken, Abu ʿImran,” Abu ʾl-Hudail would ask from time to time.
“It was absolutely wonderful,” the good man would reply.
“But do you know,” Abu ʾl-Hudail would continue, “the breed of chicken, and its age? A good chicken’s known by its breed and its age. Do you know what we used to fatten it, and where we’d feed it?”
And so he’d go on, and his host couldn’t stop laughing, for reasons that are clear enough to us, though Abu ʾl-Hudail suspected nothing. He was an innocent, quite artless and naive. Whenever a chicken was mentioned, he’d ask: “How does it compare with that other chicken, Abu ʿImran?” If a duck or a kid, a lamb or a cow, was mentioned, he’d ask (for example): “How does this lamb, if you put it alongside other lambs, compare with that chicken alongside other chickens?” If a particular fowl or cow turned out to be plump, he’d say: “But not as plump as that chicken!” If any fat thing was called tasty, he’d say: “There’s taste in beef and duck, in fish and chicken, and especially in that breed of chicken.” If the date of someone’s birth was mentioned, or the date a particular person arrived in the place, he’d say: “That was just a year after I gave you that chicken.” Or: “That was just the day before, or the day after, the day I gave you that chicken.” The chicken served as a point of reference, and a date, for everything!
12. Ramadan told me this anecdote:
I was once on a boat with an elderly man from Ahwaz. I was at the back of the boat and he was at the front. When it was time for lunch, the old man took a chicken and a small chilled bird out of a basket and started eating and talking without offering me anything, even though there were just the two of us on the boat. He saw me looking, now at him, now at what he had in his hand, and realized I wanted a share of it.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” he said. Then he went on. “If somebody has something, he eats, like me. And if somebody doesn’t have anything, he stares, like you.”
Then he looked at me, just as I was looking at him, and said:
“Oh, how I’m enjoying this! I’m a man who eats well, only the best for me. But I don’t like that jealous look in your eye. An eye like that’s quick to strike. Stop looking at me, will you?”
I flung myself at him and grabbed his beard with my left hand and his chicken with my right. Then I went on hitting his head with the chicken till it fell to bits. He moved over to my side of the boat and wiped his face and beard.
“Didn’t I say,” he remarked, “you had a jealous look in your eye? Didn’t I say you’d make trouble for me?”
“Where do eyes come into all this?” I asked.
“The evil eye’s a misfortune,” he answered. “And your eye’s brought me a big misfortune!”
I laughed as I’d never laughed in my life, and we went on talking as if he’d never said anything amiss, and as if I’d never treated him so roughly.
13. Ibn Hassan related this anecdote:
We knew a man who was poor but had a rich brother, an utter miser and thoroughly pretentious. The poor brother said to the wealthy one:
“Shame on you! You know I’m poor with a family to support, and you’re rich and don’t have any dependents. And yet you never help me out with my livelihood, or use any of your wealth to support me, or give me a hand when I’ve a problem. I’ve never seen or heard of anyone more miserly than you are.”
“I assure you,” his brother said, “things aren’t that way at all. I’m not as rich as you imagine, and I’m not the miser you seem to think. By God, if I had a million dirhams, I’d offer you five hundred thousand of them. Oh, you good people! How can a man offer five hundred thousand, all at one go, and still be called a miser?”
14.
“I’ve only ever enjoyed eating dates,” Ibrahim ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz would say, “with blacks or Isfahanis. A black man never picks out dates when he eats them—not like me. And an Isfahani grabs a handful and doesn’t look at what’s in front of him, or eat anything there, till he’s finished his handful. That’s fair enough. But, as for choosing, that’s all wrong. If someone picks and chooses the dates in front of him, just how are the ones that are left any use to the family?” He’d also say: “It’s not polite to run your hands over the plate. You should only pick up the dates you want to eat.”
15. Sari ibn Makram, a nephew of Moussa ibn Janah’s, reported the following:
“Moussa used to tell us to stop eating when one of us was drinking water or asking for it. When he saw we weren’t taking any notice, he called for water one evening, drew a line with his finger in a plate of rice we had in front of us, and said: “That bit’s mine. Don’t touch it till I’ve finished drinking my water!”
16. Ibn Abi Karima reported as follows:
Al-Kinani, the singer, was given an empty cask as a gift. When he was ready to leave, the cask was put down at the door for him to pick up. But he had no money to pay a porter to carry it, and, being haughty like most singers, wasn’t prepared to carry it himself. So he started kicking the cask along—the harder he kicked it, the further it rolled. Each time he kicked it, he’d hide by the side of the road so no one could see him and watch to see how far the cask had rolled. Then he’d come out, give it another kick, and off the cask would go while he took refuge again. And so he went on till he got the cask home.
17. Thumama ibn al-Ashras related the following regarding the miserly ways of people in Marw:
All the roosters I’ve seen, in any town, spit out the seeds in their beaks for the hens to take—all except the roosters in Marw. In Marw the roosters won’t let the hens have any of the seeds in their beaks. When I saw that, I realized what natural misers the people there were. There must be something in the water, because even their poultry was affected.
When I told this to Ahmad ibn Rashid, he added as follows:
“I was visiting an old man in Marw, and he had a child playing there in front of him.
“Give me some of your bread,” I said to the child, as a joke, to try him out.
“You wouldn’t like it,” he said. “It’s bitter.”
“Give me some of your water then,” I said.
“You wouldn’t like it,” he said. “It’s salty.”
So on I went, saying give me some of this, give me some of that. And he kept saying, you wouldn’t like it, it’s such and such. Then I asked for a lot of other different things, and he wouldn’t give me any of them—there was always something wrong with them.
“It’s not our fault,” the child’s father said, laughing. “Here’s what taught him all those things!” He meant that miserly ways were rooted in them, in their very nature.
18.
Some of our friends reported how a group of Khorasanis shared a room in a house, and patiently did without a lantern at night. Finally they agreed to share the expense of a lantern—all except one man, who refused t
o pay his part. So, when it was dark enough to use the lantern, they used to tie a kerchief around his eyes so he couldn’t see the light. They’d keep him like that till it was time to go to bed. Then they’d extinguish the light and uncover his eyes.
19. Abu Saʿid Sajjada told a story about some people in Marw.
They only, he said, wore slippers for six months of the year; and when they did wear them, they walked on their toes for three months and on their heels for the other three. That way they really only wore their slippers for three months, and the soles didn’t get worn or pierced.
20. A friend of mine told me the following:
I paid so-and-so a visit and found the dinner table hadn’t been cleared, even though the guests had finished eating. I stretched out my hand to take some food.
“Finish off the wounded,” our host said, “but don’t go near the sound!”
What he meant was: “You can eat some of the chicken that’s partly eaten already, or the small bird with just one leg left, but don’t touch a whole chicken. And feel free to take any of a loaf smeared with broth and half-eaten.”
21. This same friend added:
We once ate at the same person’s house, and his father was there. A little boy was going in and out of the room, noticing that we were still eating.
“You’re eating too much,” he piped up at last. “May God not let you have enough!”
“By God,” the grandfather exclaimed, “that man’s my son all right!”
22.
I’ve never seen anyone to match Abi Jaʿfar al-Tarsousi. He once visited some people who made him most welcome, perfuming his upper lip and mustache with rare scents. Then his upper lip started itching. So he stuck in his finger and scratched the inside of his lip, for fear his finger might scrape off some of the perfume if he scratched the outside.
Incidents like this are wonderfully funny when you see them with your own eyes. Written down in a book they lose much of the extra detail, and something of the essential flavor, too.
Classical Arabic Stories Page 32