Читать книгу Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded - Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī - Страница 17

THE AUTHOR EMBARKS ON A DESCRIPTION OF THE COMMON COUNTRY FOLK

2.1

Let us now then embark on what we promised in advance and the occasion for all this song and dance—for a man’s knowledge and craft must make themselves heard, and “the piper doesn’t hide his beard.”¹¹ Before wading, however, into the ocean of this verse, and others like it or even worse, we will tell of things that befell the commoners of certain of the people of the countryside, with a description of their vulgarity, scurrility, and personal puerility, of their names that are arsy-varsy and their hats that are topsy-turvy, of their shifts all frayed and their verses disarrayed, and of their disquieting womenfolk with the calamities and disasters they provoke.

2.2

Thus we declare: the baseness of their morals and their lack of refinement are the result of spending so much time in the company of beasts and cattle and of constantly hauling mud and dust, not to mention their lack of contact with the refined and their frequent intercourse with the coarse. They and the beasts are as though created from the same raw material, leading the poet to say:

Befriend not the peasant, be he a musk pot of fragrant bouquet!

Their oxen have let out the secret, that they’re both of one clay.

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Indeed, they never escape their condition of uncouthness, because they spend all their time with the plow and the shovel-sledge and shaking their caps around the threshing floors, or rushing about in the swamps¹² and the fields, or bustling around after the crops, or jumping about harvesting and reaping, or plunging into dung and mud, while devoting little time to prayer or religion. For the only things a countryman knows are belts and cudgels, cows and plow-shaft pins, waterwheels and drover’s whips, hauling mud and dung, shouting and screaming, drums and pipes, his leather sandals slung behind his neck, his lance and the shaking of his robe, his palm-fiber belt, straw and net sacks, his tattered garment and tatterdemalion form, his grubby cap and filthy turban, rushing off on raids, disasters and calamities, walking barefoot in the heat and through the esparto grass, and crying out loud in the dark, “Clan of Ḥarām!” At this the war bands gather around him and attack the villages of their enemies, be they Saʿd¹³ or Ḥarām, and turn out against them to the last man. Thus war and stubborn confrontation arise among them, and villages are ruined at their hands. They block the roads against friend and foe, leading to evil consequences and depriving their villages of benefits.

2.4

All this is due to their lack of intelligence and overwhelming ignorance, the baseness of their morals and their contentiousness—for while all of them in outward show are Muslims, murder to them is no different from debt. Furthermore, they cannot be trusted to keep their word and have no sociability and good cheer. They will not repay a loan and cannot tell what the Law demands from what one is free to decide on his own.¹⁴ If you do business with them, they devour you. If you offer them advice, they hate you. If you try to enforce the Divine Law with them, they will have nothing to do with you, and if you show them kindness, they repay you with malice. To them a scholar is nothing, while a tyrant is a hero. Their ways are contrary, and they are of use to none. To them the tax collector is dearer than an uncle.¹⁵ Their faces are black; if done a good turn they don’t pay it back. As the poet states:

Be not generous to the peasant, ever,

For that brings repentance in its wake!

They yell when neither beaten nor hurt;

Black of face, if not oppressed, others their victims they make!

2.5

When they put on a wedding, it has to be with shouting and screaming, with commotion and calamity, and often enough with breaking of pates and brawling. We have observed many of their weddings and all the futile nonsense that goes on at them, and a description of their nuptials and of their unseemly behavior towards their guests will follow. As for the entertainment they show their guests, it consists of shaking their robes and hats and sitting on benches while preening their beards and moustaches. If they are compelled to provide a meal, it is of lentils and bīsār and sour wheat groats with fava beans, or other kinds of stewed beans and herbs.

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Even were one of them to reside a while in Cairo and Dimyāṭ, he would not acquire an ounce of refinement, and should one of their great men, the cynosure and patron of all, go to Cairo to meet with the emir or to settle some business with the vizier, he will be seen wearing fine clothes but, for all that, walking barefoot, innocent of shoes; there is no order to their affairs, and they exist in a state of hubbub and hullabaloo. Their devotion before dawn is to meditate on the cattle and sheep, and their magnificat in the dark is “Fetch me my belt and staff!” and “Put out the fodder and bring in the feed!” As the poet says:

Don’t live in the country if you seek higher things,

For abjection in the villages is something bequeathed.

Their Gloria is “Fetch the fodder, put out the feed!

Hitch up your ox, the plow’s arrived!”

2.7

They have no compassion for the young and no respect for the old. They expose their privates when they wash at the waterspouts after defecating, and their garments are rimmed with filth. They gather in the mosques to calculate their taxes, but not one of them makes a prostration or says a prayer. Their children go naked; if you saw them, you’d think them lunatics. Mercy among them is scarcely to be found and any kindness they show is paltry—as it is written in charms for the efficacious expulsion of ants, “Be gone, ye ants, as mercy is gone from the hearts of the village shaykhs!”¹⁶

2.8