100
given me the precedence and honoured me, when He speaks of me in His holy book! Quoth the Most High, ‘And he brought a fat calf.’[1] And indeed He hath made me like unto an orchard, full of peaches and pomegranates. Verily, the townsfolk long for fat birds and eat of them and love not lean birds; so do the sons of Adam desire fat meat and eat of it. How many precious attributes are there not in fatness, and how well saith the poet:
Take leave of thy love, for the caravan, indeed, is on the start. O man, canst thou bear to say farewell and thus from her to part?
’Tis as her going were, I trow, but to her neighbour’s house, The faultless gait of a fat fair maid, that never tires the heart.
Sawst thou ever one stop at a butcher’s stall, but sought fat meat of him? The wise say, ‘Pleasure is in three things, eating flesh and riding on flesh and the thrusting of flesh into flesh.’ As for thee, O thin one, thy legs are like sparrow’s legs or pokers, and thou art like a cruciform plank or a piece of poor meat; there is nought in thee to gladden the heart; even as saith of thee the poet:
Now God forfend that aught enforce me take for bedfellow A woman like a foot-rasp, wrapt in palm-fibres and tow!
In every limb she has a horn, that butts me in my sleep, So that at daybreak, bruised and sore, I rise from her and go.”
“It is enough,” quoth her master. “Sit down.” So she sat down and he signed to the slender girl, who rose, as she were a willow-wand or a bamboo-shoot or a plant of sweet basil, and said, “Praised be God who created me and beautified me and made my embraces the end of all desire and likened me to the branch, to which all hearts incline. If I rise, I rise lightly; if I sit, I sit with grace; I am nimble-witted at a jest and sweeter-souled than cheerfulness [itself]. Never heard I one describe his mistress, saying, ‘My beloved is the bigness
- ↑ Koran li. 26.
