key while typing letters (Hollander, American Wits, xxiii). “Kumayt” is al-Kumayt (d. 176/743), a poet renowned for praising both the Umayyads and the Alids—an odd choice, as the two great political families were deadly enemies.
Bibliography
“Double Dactyl.” Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_dactyl.
Fahd, T. “Saḥbān Wāʿil.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1960–2007.
Hollander, John, ed. American Wits: An Anthology of Light Verse. [New York]: Library of America, 2003.
Kennedy, Philip F. Recognition in the Arabic Narrative Tradition: Discovery, Deliverance, and Delusion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016.
Kilito, Abdelfattah. Al-Ghāʾib: Dirāsah fī maqāmah li l-Ḥarīrī. Casablanca: Tubqāl, 1987.
Woolf, Virginia. Mrs. Dalloway. Orlando: Harcourt, 1925. Full text at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200991.txt.
Imposture 6
Plain Anglish
This Imposture is the first of several that require Abū Zayd to produce a piece of constrained speech or writing. Here the challenge is to compose a petition in which every second word consists of letters written with dots, and the remaining words of letters written without dots. (He fudges on the feminine ending -ah, which he counts as undotted, as it often is in manuscripts.) To produce something comparable, the translation takes the two largest groups of English words, those of Germanic and those of Romance origin, and uses them in alternation. This constraint produces a language comparable to al-Ḥarīrī’s: meaningful, but odd-sounding. The prose narration, which in the original is constrained by rhyme, in English uses only words of Germanic derivation.
6.1Harald Hammamson told this tale:
Once, having hied to the moot in Maraaghah, I fell upon a gathering where the talk was all of speechcraft. Reed-reeves and tongue-wielders were grumbling that no living wight could trim the lore’s unruly bough, or twist words about his finger as eretide-folk once did. Could anyone (they asked) still blaze untrodden word-ways, or hammer out a leaf-writ that forbad being twinned? No, they whined: no reed-reeve of latter days, not even a cunning one with Sahbaan’s tongue in his head and show-speech’s reins in his hands, could do better than tear a leaf out of his elders’ book.
6.2Sitting on the crowd’s ragged edge, amid the hangers-on, was a man of middle years. He was sitting hunkered down, as if nocking an arrow or gathering himself to strike. Whenever a mooter overshot the mark, or drew from wit’s carry-bag a palm-apple that seemed withered, the outsider looked at him asquint and lifted his nose in scorn. At last, when the speakers had emptied their quivers, a stillness fell where once the winds had roared. Then the man pounced.
6.3“‘You have said a dreadful say,’” he cried, “and wandered well awry! When you worship dry bones and grovel before the dead, you give short shrift to nowen men—the nowen men who are bound to you by liking and by birth.
“You sifters of speech, high priests whose doom is law! Have you forgotten the yearlings and the upstarts? What of their well-hewn words and biting rimes, their clever kennings, and the leaf-writs they spin, as if from golden thread?
“Go scrut the elders and their lore! Are their pools not choked with mud, and their stock a-stumble on a hobble? Yes, the first to draw from a well is more thought of than the ones who follow. But no one is deem-worthy merely by dint of being dead!
“Among the nowen men, moreover, I know of one whose writs are gilded worm-weave, every stroke as bold as a stripe across a cloak. His word-craft, whether of the clipped kind or the fulsome, leaves all others speechless, and drives the elders from men’s thoughts. Even when he spins offhand, he dazzles; and when he says a thing anew, he breaks the old words and leaves only shards behind.”
6.4“Who is this word-splitter of yours?” asked the head of the Maraaghah moot-hall, who was a man of high standing.
“He sits before you,” came the answer, “and you’re talking to him now. Send me for a run around the ring, and bewonder what you see.”
“See here,” said the head of the Maraaghah moot-hall. “You can call a finch a falk if you like, but it’s a finch all the same. In this land we have a knack for telling falks from finches, or calkins, or winches. None go unbruised who strike at us, and lucky are they who flee unscathed, once the fight-dust starts to rise. So take my rede and fly before you shame yourself.”
“Who knows my arrows better than do I?” said the man of middle years. “Call no man beaten before the race is run.”
At that the reed-reeves fell to whispering about a trial and a harrowing.
6.5At last one of them spoke up. “Leave this man to me!” he said. “I have a happenlore to sink him like a stone and tie his tongue in knots.” The gathering granted him the headship, as if they were the Breakers-Away and he their Aboo Naamah. To the man of middle years spoke he thus:
“I wait upon the reeve, living by my show-speech. In my own land, I had wealth enough to meet my needs. But my offspring fell to teeming and my stream dwindled to a trickle. My hopes then fell upon the reeve, and I left my home to seek him. I beseeched him to wet my root and stir my sap. He welcomed me and showered me with kindness. But when I sought his leave to leave, he said: ‘I swear no more to house and feed you, nor let you join your kin, until you write a writ that tells your life-tale. But of every two words, one must be Anglish, and Frankish the next.’
“I gave myself a year to do what he asked, and for a twelvemonth racked my brain. But nothing came forth and now my mind is barren. When I asked the speech-sifters for help, all of them frowned and backed away. Now here you are, crowing about your word-craft. ‘If you are a truth-teller, bring us the proof.’”
6.6“For a heartbeat there I was worried,” said the man of middle years. “I thought you might ask for something hard. But I was weaving word-shifts before anybody was.” He paused to tug on the udders of his wit. When the flow began, he said: “Take seed-wool and plug your flask of book-black. Then take up your reed and write:
I pray God prolong your felicity and repulse the malicious! Giving adorns men; stinginess demeans them. Liberality will gratify others; pinching pennies disappoints. Warm hosts make visitors welcome; avaricious householders—alas!—drive travellers away. Cordial greetings inspire thankful responses, while grudging, halfhearted salutations will provoke bitter resentment. Give graciously; don’t promise and fail to deliver. A benediction makes fealty clear; praise sweeps doubt aside. Courtesy means admitting debts, for ingratitude is base. To abuse a respectable man amounts to folly; to deny a petitioner’s wish implies bad judgment. Who except a fool would choose greed? Conversely, who except a miser is qualified to act the fool? Only misers hoard; piety
