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 are how i outwit fate
compare verses mine beat out kumayt s
i only use them when i m played out
like tonight when i crashed the gate
i gave you memories at least to laugh about
Now Abuzeid said good-bye, lighting a fire, an ember burning through his heart.
Notes
The original is called al-Kūfiyyah, “Of Kufah,” referring to the Iraqi city, but also to the Imposture of that name composed by al-Ḥarīrī’s predecessor al-Hamadhānī. For a comparison of the two see Kennedy, Recognition, 262.
“Sahban” in §5.1 is Saḥbān, a proverbially famous orator, apparently a contemporary of the Umayyad caliph al-Walīd I (r. 86–96/705–15), but otherwise practically unknown as a historical figure (see Fahd, “Saḥbān”). Philip Kennedy suggests that in the companions’ assumption of superiority to Sahban is “a warning about rash inadvertence” (Recognition, 261) especially in view of how the episode ends.
Abū Zayd’s poem in §5.2 consists of half-length lines with a single rhyme. The rhyme is double r, which allows him to use a number of unusual verbs that to my mind produce a comical effect. To approximate it, the translation uses a very constrained English light-verse form, the double dactyl—actually, two double dactyls. This form consists of two stanzas of four lines each; the first three must be in dactylic dimeter and the fourth a single choriamb. The first line of the first stanza must be nonsense and the third line of the second stanza must be a single word. (I have ignored an optional constraint, which is that the second line should mention only the subject of the poem.) My use of the form is slightly anachronistic, as it was invented (by Anthony Hecht and Paul Pascal) in 1951, ten years after Woolf’s death.
Section §5.5 contains the first of many allusions to the story of Moses (for an analysis of which see Kennedy, Recognition, 267–70, 272, 276). For “the mother of Moses” I have supplied Jochebed, from Exodus 6:20 and Numbers 26:59. The name does not appear in al-Ḥarīrī’s Arabic or in the Qurʾanic tellings of the Moses story. But using it allowed me to avoid the awkward “the heart of the mother of Moses” in English.
The English of the poem in §5.7 is based on the form of Arthur Guiterman’s “Philadelphia,” from The Lyric Baedeker (1918), cited in Hollander, American Wits, 7–9.
Regarding the relationship between Abū Zayd and his son (whom we may for convenience call Zayd), Abdelfattah Kilito has argued that Zayd’s insistence that he owes nothing to his father parallels al-Ḥarīrī’s wish to do away with his figurative father—namely, al-Hamadhānī, author of the first Impostures (al-Ghāʾib, 46–47). Katia Zakharia argues rather that the attenuated relationship between Abū Zayd and his son amounts to an argument for the superiority of another kind of relationship, that of teacher and disciple (Abū Zayd, 171–79).
I have taken the phrase “hind-locks grew grey in the dawn” (§5.9) from Chenery, Assemblies, 131. “Cash” does not appear in Mrs. Dalloway, but the OED dates it to 1811.
In later episodes, Abū Zayd will appear with a wife and a son—or, at least, with women and children identified as such. His claim here that “barrah s made up and so is zayd” (§5.10) is, therefore, no more believable than anything else he says. The English form of the poem is based on that of the third stanza of Don Marquis’s “mehitabel s extensive past,” from archy and mehitabel (1927), cited in Hollander, American Wits,
