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hundred and fifty dinars?’ She looked at him and seeing him to be an old man, with a dyed beard, said to the broker, ‘Art thou mad, that thou wouldst sell me to this worn-out old man? Am I cotton refuse or threadbare rags that thou marchest me about from graybeard to graybeard, each like a wall ready to fall or an Afrit smitten down of a [shooting] star? As for the first, the poet had him in mind when he said:
‘I sought of a fair maid to kiss her lips of coral red, But, “No, by Him who fashioned things from nothingness!” she said.
“Unto the white of hoary hairs I never had a mind, And shall my mouth be stuffed, forsooth, with cotton, ere I’m dead?”[1]
And how goodly is the saying of the poet:
They say that hoary hair is as a shining light, The face with venerance and lustre that doth dight;
Yet, till the writ of eld appear upon my crown, I hope I may not lack o’ the colour of the night.
Although the beard of him, who’s hoary grown, should be His book[2] i’ the world to come, I would not choose it white.
And yet goodlier is the saying of another:
A guest unhonoured on my head hath stolen by surprise, With my side-locks the sword than he had dealt on milder wise.
Begone from me, O whiteness foul, wherein no whiteness[3] is! Indeed, than very darkness’ self thou’rt blacker in mine eyes.
As for the other, he is a reprobate and a lewd fellow
- ↑ Alluding to the Muslim custom of closing the apertures of the body with cotton wool, before burial.
- ↑ The Muslims believe that to each man will be given, on the Day of Judgment, a book containing a record of all the actions of his life. The book of the righteous will be white, and they will receive it in their right hands; but the wicked man’s book will be black and he will receive it in his left hand.
- ↑ A play on the double meaning (“whiteness” and “lustre”) of the word beyads.
