Brains Confounded by the Ode of Abū Shādūf Expounded, with Risible Rhymes. Yūsuf al-Shirbīnī

      He goes for a month without washing his face,

      Or for two, and his body’s still got power:

      10.9.2

      After sweeping the threshing floors all morning long,

      He’ll still dash about like our bitch Umm Ṣarwah.

      How fine you look, Abū Shādūf (when

      He comes to the buffaloes and falls into ordure

      And gets down and wallows there behind them).

      You’d say you were the afreet of some cloister!

      All his life Abū Shādūf’s been pampered:

      Like a puppy dog he grew up among us and scampered.

      Abū Shādūf, God grant him ease,

      Put on a cap and today has a sheepskin fur.

      Today his father’s shaykh of the hamlet and sits

      Knee to sandal with the tax collector.

      10.9.3

      The first says, “Master!” The other, “You pimp!

      Cough up the taxes or I’ll use you others to deter.”

      This is from the likes of Abū Shādūf and his grandfather¹⁰

      And his father and his father’s sister, Umm Faswah’s¹¹ daughter,

      And we close our words with praise for Muḥammad—

      How many a calamity he has swept away, God’s Messenger!

      On him, O Lord, pour blessings and peace,

      As on his noble companions, of knightly order!

      10.10

      Indeed, people used to envy his father for having a son so strong and so smart and such an expert at banging the drum and playing the zummārah. Now, his father had acquired, in the course of his life, a lame donkey, two goats, a share in the ox that turned the waterwheel, half a cow, ten hens with their rooster, four bushels of bran, and two quarterns of barley. He also owned about four hundred dung cakes and a bin in which he stored chicken droppings during the winter, and he had a broken water jug, a striped earthenware water butt, a besom to sweep the threshing floor, and a dog to guard the house. Once he had achieved this state of luxury, he died and passed into the mercy of the Almighty, in keeping with the common rule that the day a poor man gets rich, he dies—a point well made by the poet¹² who said:

      When a thing’s complete, decline sets in.

      Expect extinction when men say, “Done!”

      10.11

      So his son Abū Shādūf wrapped him in a cloak of combed linen and buried him in a grave known as “the grave of Ibn Kharūf” at the acacia trees of Kafr Shammirṭāṭī, or, as some say, at Kafr Tall Fandarūk; but the two statements may be combined, in which case one would say, “He died in Kafr Shammirṭāṭī and was buried in Kafr Tall Fandarūk.” His grave is now known as “the grave of Abū Jārūf,” and the peasants visit it and play ball next to it, and the animals urinate on it from time to time. A country poet elegized him in the following lines:

      10.11.1

      Ah come, good people, to my aid,

      And weep, mushāh, time and again!

      Abū Jārūf today away from us has turned,

      While his goat and cow remain.

      He’s left his father’s brother’s daughter, Umm Falḥas,¹³

      In an empty chamber today to weep and complain,

      And Abū Shādūf bawls fit to burst,

      “My father’s dead and it’s all gone awful again!”

      Gone is the hamlet’s shaykh who ruled

      O’er the brave lads and all those men!

      10.11.2

      And when, to go raiding, he used to mount

      His dog and primp and preen,

      And put his cap atop his head—

      His beard sticking out and looking mean—

      And about him were Jarw Ibn Kharā Inta Falḥas¹⁴

      And the mushāh of the hamlet, none worth a bead,

      You’d have said he was head of a band of musicians,

      Or the buffoon who’d come to plead!

      Gone now is his fart, God bless his bones

      And moisten his head-brick¹⁵ time and again!

      10.11.3

      As to Abū Shādūf, God preserve his youth

      And make him our shaykh, to rule to our gain,

      Like his father mounted, and may his army

      Troop after troop after troop contain,

      And may he buck like a donkey and set off around noon

      And lounge about pompously and sit in the shirāʿah.¹⁶

      Thus we end our words, and God alone endures,

      And death’s a cup from which none may abstain!

      And I’m a smart guy and all my life a poet,

      And I string together verses that shimmer and shine.

      10.11.4

      These I’ve made so all who behold them may mourn,

      And today with my words I’ve sent him off fine,

      And for the rest of my days I’ll praise the Beauteous,

      God’s Prophet, and pray his intercession to gain.

      Now the blessing’s done, so hear what I say:

      I hope you’re all snuffed by a clot on the brain!

      10.12

      And when the wake was over and the dust had settled and Abū Shādūf had received the condolences of the shaykhs and the brave lads, and he had distributed bran-and-barley pastries as alms for the repose of his father’s soul and had plastered his grave with mud and dung, and built the calf’s trough next to it, he put his cudgel over his shoulder and stepped out like a fine steed, and played the shaykh over the hamlet, and every Zayd and ʿAmr¹⁷ obeyed, and he sat on his ass with one knee up and one knee on the ground, and shouted and jumped, both up and down, and sang and made up poetry, of which he was proud, declaiming and saying out loud:

      10.12.1

      Me, Abū Shādūf—O Salāmah¹⁸—

      All my life I’ve made up verses and I’m a bright guy,

      And now my father’s in his grave¹⁹

      I’m shaykh of the hamlet, which none can decry!

      And I rule the foot soldiers and come and go,

      And I wade in the river up to my thigh,

      And I saddle my donkey and mount, around me

      A company like to a candle in the night sky,

      With Abū ʿUntūz and Abū Buzbūz²⁰ and ʿAflaq,

      While Blood-Lick-the-Back-of-Your-Neck and Abū ʿimāmah²¹ are nigh.

      10.12.2

      These days the world doesn’t hold my like,

      And I’ll boss you forever and go on being a helluva guy,

      And with my cudgel