Leg over Leg. Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq

انك ملأت عينى قرة * وانى اراك احسن الخلق * وانّا ليغبطنا الناس * وانك تغنينى عن الغنى * وانى بقربك سعيد * ويبعدك عميد * وانّا نكون ابدا كما نحن الان * وانك ذات ملاحة تشغل الخلىّ * وانى اغار عليك من النسيم يفيّئ شعرك هذا الدجىّ * وانّا لجسمان فى روح واحد او روحان فى جسم واحد * وانك لترين منى كل يوم محبّا جديدا * وانى لارى فيك كل وقت حسنا حديثا * وانّا نكون قدوة للمتزوجين والعاشقين * الى غير ذلك من الكلام المتعارف عند امثاله *

      Thus, should he lay eyes on a married man, he’d call out to him and sing as follows:

      On the racetrack of marriage, I’m the front-runner

      While you’re the also-ran last-placer.

      My shaft soon will take the prize

      While your luckless stick’s a failure.¹⁸

      Or, should he see a bachelor, he’d tell him:

      Bachelors, the creed of the single man

      I have renounced, so do as I have done.

      There is no wealth but marriage, so have at it, friends:

      Enrich yourselves and gain what I have won.

      And one day, infatuated with the idea of creating something strange and new, he became obsessed with the idea of composing a collection of poetry that would consist entirely of single verses.¹⁹ He wrote four and then gave up. They were:

      Like a month is an hour of separation from you, but a year

      In your company passes like an hour.

      I spend the long night gazing at the stars enamored—

      My contemplation being of heavenly bodies that are rounded.

      My heart beats unbidden whene’er the east wind rises,

      And the bright moon recalls to me your countenance.

      Would I might know how long a heart that melts as it endures

      Can suffer from separation in its many modes.

      It would be officious of us to say here that he used to tell his fiancée, “You are the delight of my eyes, and I believe you to be the best of humankind. We are the envy of others and with you I have no need of riches. When close to you, I’m glad, when far, I’m sad. We shall always be as we are now. Your beauty distracts the unwed and I’m jealous of the breeze that ruffles the jet black tresses on your head. We are two bodies with one soul or two souls with one body. Each day you’ll find in me a lover new and all the time I’ll find fresh charms in you. We shall be the paragon of spouses and of lovers,” and so on in the usual vein adopted by such as he.

      3.2.11

      قال خير ايام الانسان فى حياته هى المدة التى تتقدم الزواج والتى تليه * قلت ومبلغها عند الافرنج شهر يسمونه قمر العَسَل وهو بعد الزواج * ومبلغها عندنا معاشر العرب شهران يقال لهما قمرا العَسْل * حتى اذا امتلات الخليّة عادت كل نحلة زنبورا ورجع كل شى الى اصله * واقول ان المحبة هى مما غرس فى الطبيعة البشرية من يوم الوضع فى المهد الى يوم الوضع على النعش * فلا بدّ لهذا المخلوق الآدمى من ان يحب ذاتا من الذوات او شيا من الاشيآ او معنى من المعانى * وكلما زاد حبه فى قسيم منها نقص فى قسيمه الآخر * وقد يكون احدها سببا فى زيادة حبّه للاخر * مثال ذلك مَن كلف بالشعر او الغنآ او التصوير فكلفه هذا يكون باعثا له على حبّ الذات الجميلة * ومن كلف بالعلم والقتال والفخر والسيادة فلا بد وان تقل رغبته فى النسآ بل ربما لهى عنهن بالكلية * ومن كلف بالخيل المطهَّمة والسلاح النفيس فقد يكون كلفه هذا شائقا له الى حب الذات أوْ لا * وعدّ بعضهم من هذا النوع السراباتية وهم المنظّفون للمراحيض * واسقطه غيرهم بدليل انها حرفة يحتاج اليها الانسان لتحصيل معاشه لا كَلَف من هوى النفس *

      Another thing he said was that the best days of a person’s life are those immediately preceding and following marriage. I note: according to the Franks these number a month, which they call “the moon of honey (ʿasal)” and which follows the wedding. According to us Arabs, however, they number two, are called “the two moons of intercourse (ʿasl),” and last till the hive has been filled, every bee has reverted to being a hornet, and everything has gone back to the way it was. I note further that love is something planted in our human clay the day we’re placed in the cradle and that lasts till the day we’re laid on the bier. The human must inevitably therefore feel love for some person or other, some object or other, some abstraction or other, and the more his love grows in the area of one of these loci, the further it declines in another. At the same time, one of these loci may become a stimulus to his adding love for another. An example would be a person who devotes himself to poetry, singing, or painting and whose devotion to these things becomes a spur to his loving a beautiful person. One who devotes himself to scholarship or fighting or honor or the exercise of power must inevitably lose some of his desire for women; indeed, he may be too busy to think about them at all. One who devotes himself to purebred horses and fine weapons may find that this devotion is an incitement to love of another or not, as the case may be. Some count among this last kind the sarābātiyyah, who are the latrine cleaners, but others exclude them from it on the grounds that they practice a profession that people are forced to undertake to make a living, not a pastime that people undertake because it suits them to do so.²⁰

      3.2.12

      فهذه ثلث حالات متسببة عن ثلثة اسباب * وهناك ايضا ثلث احوال اخرى باعتبار القلّة والكثرة وما بينهما * الاولى متعادلة وهى ان يحبّ المحبّ محبوبه كنفسه * فلا تطيب نفسه شى ولا تهنئه لذة الا اذا كان محبوبه مشاركا له فى تلك اللذة * وذلك صفة الرجل قبل زواجه وبُعَيده * ولا تخلو هذه الصفة عن الرشد والبصيرة * الثانية المتعدية اى المجاوزة للمتعادلة * وذلك كاَن يحب المحب حبيبه اكثر من نفسه * وذلك صفة الاب والام فى حبّ ولدهما وصفة بعض العشاق * اما الاب