من لعين تجود بالهملان — Alwasani

Who will console an eye that pours out tears,

and a heart bewildered and distraught?

My two friends, cease reproaching me;

pity my misfortune and have mercy on me.

Whenever I recall the feast of the

sons of whores, harlots, and adulteresses,

pluck out my beard and shear my mustache,

and greet me with a privy slipper.

What drove me, to my ruin, toward

my death? What destroyed me, and what befell me?

Who will vindicate me against a feast that weakened

my bones and shattered my supports with its terror?

I had respite and enjoyment away

from it—but who can trust the turns of time?

My gluttony sprang up and stirred against

my soul a calamity I had never reckoned on.

My life was clear; it was muddied by

my intimates, the sons of Abu Safwan.

Pity me, people, for my

suffering, my long idleness, and my ordeal.

The trumpet sounded in Damascus, and they proclaimed

my misery throughout all the lands:

“To arms! To arms! With cavalry and

foot soldiers, to impoverish this young al-Wasani!”

They mustered hosts against me, cavalry from

Jilan and Farghana as far as Daylaman,

from the Romans, Slavs, and

Turks, and multitudes from Bulghar and the Alans,

from India, foreign-speaking peoples, and the

Berbers, al-Kiljuh, and Baylaqan.

Of those I named from the world's

regions, they left out neither Muslim nor Christian,

nor the desert peoples from the Hijaz to

Najd, its Ma'addites together with the Qahtanites.

Every sort: tall men and

short hunchbacks, the cross-eyed and the one-eyed,

old men like chicks, and

young men with spacious jaws and intestines,

stomachs starved for thirty days,

armed with bristling weapons of teeth:

Marand, Takin, and

Tarkhan, Kisra, Khurd, and Ta'an,

Khummar, Zirak, and Ajib,

Badi', Faris, and Juwan,

Jarih, Nar Qusta, and

Yunan, and Barhafthiya Yuhannan,

Tirad, Juhayl, and Ziyad,

Shihab, Amir, and Sinan.

A rabble assembled, with neither minds

to restrain them from me nor religious scruples.

Have you heard of people who mustered

horses and marched with foot soldiers and cavalry?

They left their houses on the night of

Marfa', all for a free meal,

racing the post-road for nine

miles at full gallop and a brisk trot:

cold-blooded gluttony and eagerness for

eating—for we are a band of libertines.

We noticed nothing, being among the safest in the

world, until the lookout's cry:

“Help me! Here are the blazes of the

horses, and brown spears swaying like ropes!”

I cannot forget my calamity, or the day they came

to me, filling both valleys.

They descended upon us on Thursday night

with an army filling the heights and bends,

advancing like a flood, its

two ends unable to meet, so widely did it spread.

They glared at me with eyes striking

fire—narrow eyes, slanting toward the enemy.

They surveyed my crops, my

firewood, and a house filled with its bounty:

sour milk and plentiful bread,

pots boiling on the dadakan,

roasted kids, fattened

chickens, and the choicest lambs,

and drink sweeter than a visit from the

beloved after rejection and estrangement.

Its fragrance and flavor put roses to

shame, and its color resembles anemones.

Their armies, on the day they came

to me, recalled the enemy's armies at Raghban.

Leading the people was a Hashimite with a gaping

mouth, spacious intestines, and a long tongue.

He is the mongoose of chickens, ducks, and

geese, and the wolf of ewes and lambs.

The two sharifs appeared amid the

horses, in a procession of Abyssinians,

a dark multitude so immense it covered the earth,

and horses plunging like male ostriches.

Abu al-Qasim the elder rode a

bay steed, lean-bellied as a wolf.

His younger brother crossed among the

horses on a mature stallion with a broad chest.

Both drove on with whip and

foot, hastening toward what would grieve me.

What heart can bear to abuse the sons of the best

of creatures and the noblest of women?

Yet on Judgment Day I shall complain

of them to the noble, chaste, dignified woman,

and cry, “Daughter of the best of

prophets! Mother of the noblest young men!

What did you do to your two sons, that

they raided me among the Zanj and the Sudanese?”

And al-Sari, who marched with armies

that weakened me and shortened my rein,

with a hideous mouth and a spacious jaw,

and a hand swinging like a polo stick;

and his brother al-Fadl, whose excessive eating

made my losses plain to the world;

and al-Shamuli, built like a

shield-bearer, broad-shouldered and stout-flanked.

I cannot forget him kneeling, his

eyes bulging, scowling like an angry man,

like a famished eagle hunting

meat and swooping upon the table's birds.

And the man of letters on whom I used to

rely raided me, to my ruin, among the raiders.

Likewise the scribe who had been my neighbor,

my friend, and the confidant of my sorrows.

Time changed him until he came to me

hungry, to my misery, after two years.

The sharifs' friend ravaged my

wine and drained what was in my jars by gulping.

Whenever he tore at it, zealous and easy of

mind, what troubled me did not trouble him.

He pressed on like moths in wool in

summer, with a heart empty of faith.

I said, “Tell me, Ibn al-Mubashshir, what is your

business among those who raided and disgraced me?

This is not appetite for food; this

comes from hatred and spite.”

I said to the philosopher when he plunged into

eating—I mean the son of Abu Adnan—

and urged on cups of undiluted wine without

mixing, bent over like a thirsty wanderer:

“Would that I knew: was it from the writings of

Hippocrates that you learned this, and from hearing Ilyan?

My friend, through this

deed you gain knowledge of the spiritual world!”

Nor forget what I endured, and what passed

to my misfortune, from al-Farghani's army.

Foreign of tongue, more eloquent than

Quss when tipsy, and than Sahban,

he said, “G-get up! Bring us bread and meat,

and wine crimson as purple dye,

and a handsome singing boy whose

figure resembles a moringa branch.”

Farghan was entrusted with nothing but

emptying my wine jars and pouring them into bowls.

Among the greatest calamities, my

people, is my affliction with that braggart:

a man like a breeding camel, a dullard without

sense, tall and shaped like a devil,

stark white as a pillar, delighting in

slaps, with a head hard as an anvil,

overgrown in body, deficient in mind and

religion, thick-naped like a hulking brute.

He swallows delicacies without

chewing, and gulps wine like a serpent.

Do not let me die until I see him

shortened by two spans of his excessive height.

They brought me a piper whose piping

resembled the farting of slaves and shepherds,

and a singer whose singing loosened the

bowels and brought vomiting and nausea.

These bands descended upon

Hamraya to dishonor, humiliate, and torment me.

I asked, “What is your business?” They said, “Feed us!

We have tasted no food for eight days.”

They settled upon us—what a

grim, grievous, clamorous day!

They occupied my chamber, and the

horses were loosed among the green fodder and cut barley.

It was a flourishing pasture for only an hour

before I saw the crops like ploughed fields.

They impoverished me and left me without a

house, an estate, or an orchard.

They bewildered and maddened me, until I

became dull as a stupefied drunkard.

In my distraction, speech sounds like buzzing;

it is speech flowing without meaning.

They left me, people, poorer than a

chick, and barer-backed than a serpent.

They ate two thousand of my

flatbreads, with bann, which both jaws crave.

They ate unrecorded multiples of them

and turned to the baker's fine flour.

They ate thirty of my kids

in aspic with vinegar and saffron.

They ate twice as many roasted, and twice

that number cooked in every kind of dish.

They ate my tabalah, which ravaged my

mind, with ten fat chickens.

They ate my mudirah, which doubled my

suffering, with kids' heads and stuffed intestines.

They ate my kashkiyya, which wounded my

heart and stirred my grief at its loss.

They ate seventy of my fish from the

river, fresh and among the largest fish.

They ate a sack of my salted, roasted

fish, steeped in vinegar and asafoetida.

They ate my Quraysha and

Barni, Ma'qili, and Sarafan dates:

a thousand sacks, besides syruped dates and

Bardi, Lu'lu'i, and Sayhani dates.

They ate my pickles and

walnuts together, and khilat and cheeses,

and eggs and pickled foods in quantities

the villages of Hawran could not gather.

They chopped up my quinces and

apples, Raziqi grapes, and pomegranates,

and fragrant herbs for which I had pawned

my robe with Ahmad the fruit seller.

They trampled my violets and

narcissi, whose like is not found in gardens.

Against my will, people, they slaughtered

eighty of my goats and sheep.

The village sheep already consumed did not

suffice them, so they ravaged the bulls.

They slaughtered them while tears ran down my

cheeks, streaming like strings of pearls.

They ate everything held by my right hand

and my left, and everything my neighbors possessed.

Then they said, “Bring something!” So I called

my servant: “Get up, damn you, and hide my horse!

Your bellies, sons of the clitoris, have left me

nothing but him and this striped Yemeni sword.”

They banded together against me, abusing and cursing,

and violated my honor with every tongue.

Those able to compose verse satirized me,

and the tongue-tied reproached me.

As though I were the one who had ruined

all good things and altered the form of living creatures!

Then came those following behind, from the

grooms, attendants, and slaves.

I saw spitting, slapping, and

shoving, and biting of noses and ears.

They nearly destroyed one another with slaps; from the

people rose a cloud of farts and rank sweat.

Then, when they had consumed everything,

they crowned my ordeal by breaking the vessels.

Then they turned to pellet bows and

sparrowhawks, muhaddiqat, and blowpipes.

I saw pigeons piled one upon

another, and some cast upon the branches.

I saw chickens in the middle of the

village, cast down with broken legs.

They ate what I have described, and used up,

my trusted friends, a kurr of my washing alkali,

and seven jars of mahlab perfumed with

moringa, and camphor water.

They drank twenty containers of my

wine, delicious in taste and deep crimson.

They kept their grooms and

muleteers working until I heard the call to prayer,

carrying firewood from wherever they found

it—and in a flash my two groves were gone.

A walnut tree whose crop was the finest

of crops, and whose boughs gave ample shade:

in its courtyard I had a spacious

and elegant dwelling bordered by two streams,

and meadows like patterned robes, covered with

dew among yellow daisies and chamomile,

with birds singing among them

in every language and melody.

It was my refuge and my shelter from

heat, and my reserve against time's calamities.

They burned it, people, while leaping

about and setting the firewood ablaze.

They broke the sluice; I was distraught, and they said,

“How can you remain without a fountain?”

They cut almond and quince trees into

firewood, and turned it against my servants.

They stretched out the watchmen and beat them

furiously with sticks and rods.

They demanded sex of me late in the

night, and a gathering of women and beardless youths.

“Get up, hurry! Some of us want beardless

youths, and others are infatuated with beauties.”

I thought it a joke, but they were serious.

I said, “This is a kind of delirium!

Nothing remains for the widows of

Hamraya but to be handed over to the guests.”

Had you heard, people, in the darkness of

night, the weeping of women and children,

calling to one another with howls and cries of

woe behind doors and walls,

saying, “Woe to us because of Abu al-

Qasim, this boastful blusterer!

His enemies descended on him and took possession of us;

we became captives with no guarantee of safety.”

They forced wine down my throat by the ratl until

I walked like a chess counselor.

When I was drunk, they robbed me of my

money belt and tore the strips of my taylasan.

At the beginning of the day it had been on my

head; by evening it was on the singing girls' heads.

Then, after things grew quiet, they went into my

house and left nothing but the walls.

I had bedding and every fine furnishing;

above it lay a cushion of Maysani cloth,

and a carpet among the finest carpets, set

aside for a wedding, a feast, or a circumcision.

They drenched it with oil, urine, and

vomit, until it was worth two droppings.

They burned our oil recklessly, without a

measure to measure it or a scale.

My brothers, I thought my house the congregational

mosque on the night halfway through Ramadan.

They stole my robe, my sword, my

knife, my boots, my socks, and my leggings.

Then, when their severe

surfeit overcame them, they collapsed upon their chins.

They dozed an hour, like the dozing of a

frightened man, terrified in a foreign land.

Then they rose at night, when the

Eagle had inclined and al-Simak and the Two Farqads had set,

shouting, “Morning wine, master of the

house!” They made my eyes weep and terrified my heart.

They dragged me from inside my house on my

face, as though I were summoned before the ruler,

with hearts hotter than

embers and harder than flint rock.

I said, “Have pity on that child,

Maymun! Do not orphan him, my brothers.

A meal is not worth killing a stranger

with dependents, far from his homeland.”

They hung me by one leg from the

ceiling, and I was tortured all night with smoke.

Had my father and mother seen me on my

head, my two legs being struck with a stick,

they would have wept for me and bought me

from their hands with everything they possessed.

My two friends, the blows fell upon a

body already ulcerated by whip and stick.

I said to al-Fadl and al-Sari, “Help me!

Death has come upon me—rescue me!

Remember my companionship, affection, and

sincerity; be tender toward me and spare my life.

If you two kill me, by

God, for a meal, you will regret it.

What have you left for my weakness?

Yesterday I suffered quite enough.

Make me swear that I have nothing to

drink, nor even two mouthfuls in my pantry.”

Both flared up in anger at me, and

al-Fadl said, “Tell me, how do you regard me?

We would be the most ignorant of all creatures

if all we obtained from you were oaths.”

They cut the rope; I fell upon my

head and back, and two of my ribs broke.

Then, when despair took hold, they left

me and turned to packing up the straw.

My hired man was forced to carry the

straw, naked, in abasement and humiliation.

He wept, and I said, “Poor fellow, what are you

doing with straw after the ox-team's death?”

They stole the saddle, the lamps, the

oil, our cups, and all my bread.

They drew off the wine and seized it

at night's end, like water-drawing camels.

They provisioned their grooms and

muleteers with it, in jars and pitchers together.

Had you seen al-Fadl carrying on the

saddle a shirt with its sleeves sewn shut,

stuffed with meat, birds, and

seventy of the largest loaves!

They stole the wine in wineskins and departed

with food stacked upon trays.

They sorted their horses, leaving every broken-down

and wounded, saddle-galled, mangy beast.

They left it to graze what remained of my crops,

grazing without fear or hesitation.

Only al-Mubarak pitied me for my

suffering, and that short, stocky fellow.

They eased me and lightened my burden,

so both are safe from my reproach.

And al-Sari, truly noble as he was

named, also spared me his belly.

Have you ever heard of a

person whom a feast afflicted as it afflicted me?

Join me in mourning, my brothers and trusted friends,

with tears flowing from your eyelids.

My brothers, who will console one whose tears pour down,

sorrowful, dejected, bewildered, and distraught,

wandering in thought, sleepless at night, with a weeping

eye, failing strength, and a feeble heart?

This conjunction brought nothing but my ill

fortune—woe to me for that unlucky conjunction!