bil-ʿabā (“and wrap myself in my cloak”): that is, “when I am seated in the midst of the women, or next to them, or opposite them, I wrap myself in my cloak (ʿabā), or I lie down after wrapping myself in it, in order by so wrapping myself to rid myself of my fears”—for one who is frightened will conceal himself in anything that he sees, be it a cloak or a robe or anything else that may hide him from sight. He may even go so far as to dress himself as a woman and so disappear from the sight of his enemies and be saved by the Almighty.
11.7.8
It once fell out that a certain king was searching everywhere for a rebellious subject in order to kill him and was told, “He is in such and such a village.” So he sent one of his officers after him with a contingent of soldiers, who entered the village and surrounded it. When the man realized that they wanted to take him to the king, he put on women’s clothing and went out among a throng of women, all of them wailing and weeping and shrieking. “What’s the matter with those women?” asked the officer. “Ask them what they’re doing!” So a company approached them and questioned them, and they replied, “A relative of ours has died in another village and we wish to go to him,” and they allowed them then to pass and they proceeded—the fugitive, unknown to the officer, among them—until the man had passed through the soldiers and gone his way and the Almighty saved him.
11.7.9
A similar incident once befell me when I was in a ship traveling from my town, Shirbīn, to Cairo.256 We were passing by a village called Masīd al-Khiḍr257 when a good-looking youth appeared, handsomely dressed in the uniform of an emir’s servant, who cried out to the ship’s captain, “Take me with you!” and beseeched and implored him in great distress to take him on board. The captain, however, refused, fearing that someone might be coming after him looking for him or following his tracks. At the same time, there were three women in the boat, one of them elderly. “Captain,” said the last, “a young man in distress asks you to take him with you, and you do not accede to his plea or have mercy on him? Pull in to the shore, take him, and I’ll come up with a trick to hide him from those who’re looking for him. I’ll conceal him among my daughters and no one will know who he is!” So the captain did as she said and took the youth on board. Once on the ship, he informed us that he was in the service of an emir and that he had duped him and fled and that he was certain to come after him. “Take off your clothes!” the woman told him, so he took them off. Then she took them and hid them among her things and dressed him in women’s clothes and sat him next to her. While we were thus engaged, an emir appeared riding a horse, spurring it on for all he was worth, men and slaves behind him, till they drew abreast of the ship and he said to the captain, “Pull in to the shore so I can search you! A serving boy of mine has just now fled, taking with him a thousand dinars that he stole.” The woman told the captain, “Pull in and don’t be afraid!” so the captain pulled in to shore and everyone on the ship was frightened at what was going on. The emir and his helpers boarded and searched the ship, while the woman exclaimed, “We saw nothing of the sort! What we did see was a young man in the distance running in such and such a direction.” Propriety and lack of grounds for suspicion prevented the emir from searching the women, so he left the boat empty-handed, but the young man stayed with us on the boat until it reached Cairo, and he went off to his family, safe and sound.
11.7.10
The poet, seeing this cloak (ʿabāʾah),258 enveloped himself in it and wrapped it around himself. Laff (“wrapping”) means enveloping oneself in something and wrapping it around oneself several times. In the language of the country people, the word is also applied to eating: one says, “So-and-so ‘wrapped’ (laff) a crock of lentils” or “a crock of bīsār,” meaning “he ate it.” And one says dāhiyah taluffak (“May a disaster consume you!”), for example. The poet enveloped himself in the aforementioned ʿabāʾah so as to trick anyone who saw it into thinking that it was just a folded cloak and not suspect that there was anyone inside it. The ʿabāʾah is a long, wide garment made of wool with varicolored stripes, which the country people use as something to lie on in summer and as a cover in winter.259 Thus it is well suited to both seasons and is the most sumptuous bedding and covering that they have. The term ʿabāʾ is used in the verse of Our Master al-Ḥusayn, may the Almighty be pleased with him:
Wearers of the ʿabāʾ are we, the five of us;260
We hold sway over east and west!
11.7.11
ʿAbāʾah is derived from ʿabb al-māʾ (“he gulped the water”) because it “gulps it up” (taʿubbuhu) if it is thrown into it, or from the ʿubūb (“billows”) of the river in the days of the Nile flood,261 or from the abū ʿubayyah (“the one with the little cloak”), a nickname that the women of the countryside give to certain small chicks. The paradigm is ʿabba, yaʿubbu, ʿabban.
11.7.12
wa-yabqā (“and (my farts) are”): that is, are while I am in this state in which I find myself, namely, that of having loose bowels and with my sloppy stools running all over me from the insecurity and the terror while I am wrapped and enveloped in that cloak …
11.7.13
ḍurāṭī (“my farts”): that is, the sounds made by the wind resounding harmoniously in the belly as a result of eating lentils and bīsār, when expelled by the pounding of my members and the shaking of my heart, are …
11.7.14
shibha (“like”): that is, resemble the sounds made by the beating of …
11.7.15
ṭablin (“a drum”): meaning a hide mounted on wood or copper beaten during processions and on joining combat; it makes a loud noise and creates great terror and is permitted by religion in all its forms except for the kūbah, which is a small drum with a narrow neck also known as the darābukkah (“goblet drum”), and the ṭabl al-riqq (“tambourine”), which is used by singers—these belong to the category of instruments employed for frivolous purposes. Likewise, all types of wind instruments, except the trumpet, are forbidden by religion.262
11.7.16
ʿanīf (“loud”): that is, beaten hard; one says someone “dealt harshly with” (ʿannafa) another, meaning that he beat him or disciplined him. The meaning is that the sound of that wind that exits from his belly and is called farting resembles the sound of a drum beaten vigorously and forcefully, according to which analysis the adjective would refer to the one beating rather than the thing beaten.263 Or it may be that by “a loud drum” he means a big one, such as the kettledrum or the like, since he knows no other.
11.7.17
To give a brief overview of this word, farts fall into four categories: first, the fart that emerges delicately, with a feeble sound, and is of extended duration; second, the fart that circulates, rumbling, in the belly, then emerges as wind with no sound; third, the fart that emerges mixed with feces and makes a sound like a water pitcher when it is full; and fourth, the fart that emerges violently, with a loud noise that strikes terror into the heart, this last being the one to which the poet so frankly draws our attention. And each of these four categories has a cause by which it is occasioned.
11.7.18
The first is caused by refined airs that are generated in a person’s belly, then emerge, as per their particular state and degree of feebleness, from between the
