Impostures. al-Ḥarīrī

somebody was rousing the dogs, thumping at the door. Who could it be? What a surprise, to be interrupted at that hour, in that profound darkness!

      5.2A voice, suddenly, from behind the door:

      Knockety-knockety!

      Stygian darkness has

      Forced me to cadgerous

      Pounding on doors;

      Dusty, disheveled, I’m

      Looking for lodging, so

      Philanthropologically

      Let it be yours!

      Knockety-knockety!

      Rolling has rounded me:

      Now, consequently, I

      Grin like the moon;

      If you allow me, I’ll

      Repay your kindness by

      Double-dactylically

      Chanting this rune.

      5.3The effect was extraordinary—a sonorous voice sounding, and a promise of depths beneath the surface agitation. Now they were throwing open the door, welcoming the stranger in, calling to the servant boy to bring out the cold meats.

      “No, no,” the stranger was saying, vowing that, as God had brought him to them—and it was God who had led him to that house and no other—that he wouldn’t taste anything they offered him unless they were quite sure he wasn’t a burden to them, that they wouldn’t take the trouble to prepare a meal. It was true, wasn’t it, that food one feels awkward about eating turns sour in the belly so that one misses his next few meals altogether? “The worst sort of guest is one who causes fuss and bother for his host,” especially the sort of bother that affects the digestion and brings on illness. “The best dishes are eaten in daylight”: what did that familiar saying mean, except that the evening meal should be taken as early as possible, and dining at night was to be avoided, for it weakens the eyesight—unless of course one felt so awfully hungry that sleep was impossible?

      5.4It was wonderful how the stranger had known their feelings, had understood without their speaking. Of course they accepted his condition, put him at his ease, offered their compliments on his amiable manners.

      Now the servant came with the dishes, lit the lamp. Now Hárith examined the stranger’s face, and—“What a guest we have,” he told his friends, “he is delicious even served cold!” To see Abuzeid suddenly—what a surprise; as if the stars had shifted in their courses to make room for his star of poetry, or the constellations fled when the pale moon of his prose broke the surface of the sky. They glowed with expectation, their eyes kindled with pleasure. Sleep was forgotten, beds forgotten, the playthings of the mind—put away only a moment ago—pulled out again.

      Abuzeid just sat there, eating. At last he asked the servant to take up the table. “Tell us your stories,” Hárith asked, stories about adventures far away, stories for all hours of the night.

      5.5Things happened to Abuzeid that no one had seen or heard the like of. One of the oddest, he said, had happened that night, before he came to them, came to their door unexpectedly. What had he seen, wandering so late? He’d been tossed about, he said, by the storms of the world, and been spat out on this shore; hunger, misery, his bag hollowed out, utterly empty within: Jochebed’s heart when she lost Moses. When darkness fell he rose, footsore as he was, to seek a house, a host, a crust of bread; and starvation, or fate, the Begetter of Wonders, drew him along to that house, the house where he improvised, chanting:

      5.6I hope my visit finds you well.

      Now let me bless this house:

      May Plenty smile on all who dwell

      Within, and round about.

      Endless weary roads I’ve walked

      Without a crust of bread;

      One more night of cheerless dark

      And dawn will find me dead.

      If any be within, oh speak!

      How sweet if I could hear

      You say, “Come in, put down your stick,

      And take your supper here.”

      5.7Then a boy came out of that house, a boy wearing a sort of smock, and answered him.

      For our Abrahamic father

      It was clearly not a bother

      Feeding all the guests who’d turn up at his door;

      But we haven’t got a mouthful

      For us, much less a house-ful,

      So tell me: can the starving feed the poor?

      5.8Nothing to be done, Abuzeid thought, with such barren soil, in a house so degradingly poor. But what was the boy called? His cleverness was charming. “My name is Zeid,” he said. Zeid, from Feid. He’d come to town only last night with his maternal uncles, men of the Ábsi family. “Tell me more,” said Abuzeid, wishing him a long life, a happy life. The boy’s mother Bárrah—her name means “reverent”—had, in the year the raid happened in Mawán, married a nobleman of Sarúj, of the Ghassán family. But then Bárrah was expecting a baby, and then her husband ran away, without a word to anybody, the rascal, and never came back. Was he still alive, and would he return, or was he dead now, buried in a lonely grave?

      Why, it was obvious, Abuzeid thought: this boy is my son. But he could not bring himself to tell him: he was too poor for that, he had nothing to give him. He turned away; and was overcome with grief, the tears running down his cheeks.

      Had they, he asked, in all their experience heard of such a chance as that?

      No, they assured him, swearing by Him who knew the Book before it was revealed. An event to record for posterity, to register in the rolls of marvellous surprises, for nothing like it had ever happened in the world. Bring a reed pen and ink-pot, they said, and write down the story just as he told it.

      But what did he mean to do about the boy? If he had some coppers in his pocket, he would take charge of him. Would twenty dinars be enough? Collect it, collect it at once! Yes, of course it would suffice, he said: he would have to be mad to fling away such a sum as that.

      5.9Kindly, obligingly, everyone put in his share, wrote a note for some amount. “Thank you,” said Abuzeid, thank you, thank you, he went on saying, expressing the keenest gratitude, until one felt his praise was out of proportion to the trifling sums he had received. Then he was talking, his night-tales unrolling like strips of figured silk, spangles, ribbons, putting the striped gowns of Yemen to shame, all through the perfect blackness of the night, the perfect joy of the night, until up came a wavering phosphorescence, washing the sky; the hind-locks of darkness grew grey in the dawn, the sunbeams striking now here, now there, leaping like gazelles.

      “Shall we go cash my cheques?” he said. He was about to split asunder: the longing to see his son was so terrific. Hárith took his hand and walked with him, helped him collect his money. As the coppers went into his purse, joy flushed his face. It was so very kind of him to have come, he said; farewell, he said.

      Now Hárith wanted to meet that fine son of his. Of course he would have ideas about everything. But Abuzeid was laughing, tears running down his cheeks, looking at him as if to say, you poor fool.

      5.10harith did you believe what i said

      i didn t think they would take the bait

      barrah s made up and so is zayd

      stories