English
The First Session
Curse the Devil and revile the walls, with a curse time cannot hold and an insult the ages cannot bear, the one who joined us with women in the way flesh joins men with boys. So let our horn shake between their thighs, let our pillar grind in the cleft of their mountains, let our pot enter their felt, and send us into their salve-jars. Fill our bowls with sweets and wine, our platters with bread and roast, fill our ears with the sound of harp and rebec, and adorn our gathering with the lights of bright cheeks like moonlight. Press their bodies close to ours upon the dust. Bear witness that no sweetness is more delicious than ruby lips, no color finer than the hue of the ruby, that eating roasted meat is complete only with its sauce, and the belly of the reveler is filled only by nourishment. Bear witness that a coarse fellow in hard times is more useful than a fine stew, that the sound of the lute is sweeter than the scrape of the cotton-carder's bow, and the singer's melodies finer than the tap and clatter of the weaver, and that the iron shield is stronger than the saddler's leather, a testimony that helps only among strangers and is heard only by one whose ear is fit for nonsense. And in the chin-cleft of whoever hears this, a sharp path, huge and huge.
Now then: Abu Sha'sha' al-Kasajani told us, saying Abu Shalqalaq al-Sistani told us, saying Abu Dayyuth al-Jurjani told us, saying Abu al-Baqara, the vilest of men next to the whispering tempter, curse them all, said: coupling on Friday is nearer to piety in a group, and coupling with women by consensus is better than gathering with slave-boys and children. He also said: shaking one's own member for relief, when permitted, in the act of release, is lighter in cost and more delicious than plowing a mere blossom. The one who spoke and the one who relayed it both lied, and I am among the liars, and all of you together are in the lowest pit.
Although the way to begin advice and open speech is not with 'there is no power but in God', which would make the assembly recoil and, at the prompting of this phrase, spit as if pissing in their mouths, still it is certain that the accursed Devil, in imitation of the raven of parting, seeks a distance from these irreligious sinners as far as between the two easts. So it is best that we cling on a while and drop off from the tail like dung; for the prayer of these wretches and the counsel of these sons of whores is this: to the crowd present in this gathering, gazing at the face of this ranting old fool, O accursed one, grant them the enjoyment of one another's private parts, and grant divorce and separation between husband and wife. Grant these wine-drinkers without obedience and these penniless sons of whores full strength in taking and giving, and in laying down and entering, command the world-granting cup, and the pleasure of kisses sweet as sugar from the lips of dear ladies and precious beardless youths, from India to Khujand, with great backsides like Alvand mountain, bring all to their desire. Make the reveling of the witless a feast of the sugar and almond of the beloved's eyes and lips, and keep the ears of these longing ones filled with the discordant song of the nightingale, the gurgling of the flask, and their eyes bright with the sight of luminous faces and rounded backsides. Make blind and deaf the disapproving eyes of rivals and pretenders, and the senseless ears, in seeing these acts and hearing these words. Wherever a sweet-strolling darling is trapped in the hand of some ugly wretch, cast him modestly and decently beneath these longing ones. You wretches, say amen with desire.
O Devil, O accursed one, wherever a penniless man is worshipping, thinking of a lady's parts or a beardless youth, and rouses his member with spit in the furnace of his fist, seek out that harlot and make ready and blessed for him that stump. And wherever a bankrupt sincere fellow has carried off a beloved into a ruined corner or the nook of a neighbor's house, keep him there in that cottage safe from the hand of the stranger. O you who say amen, grant me coupling.
O my dear friend, O mine of farts and belches, lend me an ear and mind for a moment, with a beard in my backside as on nights past, so I may scatter a few farts on your mustache and set you on my knee as at other times. I have read your nonsense; it is a tale like the pact and covenant of a debauchee and a broken-down sodomite, or like a fart from children's backsides settled among sodomites. It is a story like unsound stumps and slack as the drawstring of a harlot's trousers, a saying from the depths of the sea of debauchery and depravity, a rarity fit for these shameless infidels, a riddle from the cottage of corruption, a nudge from the private chamber of stubbornness, a spark from the burning eye of pimps, a fruit joined to us from the deceit-garden of the brethren. It is a burning brand I hammer onto the whiskers of the assembly, a heresy by which I laugh at the beards of my listeners. The interpretation of this nonsense and the meaning of this raving is that coupling on Friday with a group of women, and taking slaps from the rivals, is by consensus of the babbling companions more fitting and pleasing than tearing children's backsides and hauling dung from the corners of their nooks. Beware of foolishly poking a bead into Caesar's palace to mark the slave-boys, and do not lodge the manner of a donkey's staff in the whispering cup of the veiled ones.
Question: Master, spare us, and beware, in your beard is quaking havoc. Come, what nonsense will you rant and what rubbish will you chew? On what proof did you order, and for what reason declare, that we should press our mustaches into the backsides of tricksters, hand our beards to stumps, and set our whiskers on the pimp's parts?
Answer: Know that if a bewildered youth, a debauchee, a merchant, roams about with nothing to trade, seeking some pleasure from him, he grasps his aim with much thought and endless reckoning; and after attaining it, whether entering the willful one with the aid of spit succeeds or not, it may be that he springs up from beneath, or presses his member against her, and acts by this verse: give in and eat the member, the world is nothing more than this. And if with a hundred efforts and struggles he splits it like a hard shell and finds a stump, and if the pimp sends him after some prick, at once with such talk he wins the heart, saying:
With a face like the moon and a form straight as a cypress,
with black tresses and parts and backside like ivory.
Whether you settle in the field of 'whoever descends into it finds rest', or make merry on the mountain of 'whoever climbs it has found rest', now circle the silver dome in pilgrimage, now dive in the sea of the buttock's palace. For a moment blow your horn on the turning mill's roof; for a breath drive the bead into the chamber of the beloved's insides. For an instant push the letter alif into the cleft of the kaf, for a glance the awl into the round hole like a navel. For a while keep moving on the summit of the fortress of 'whoever climbs it is safe from harm', for an hour tremble in the strong citadel of 'whoever enters it, lust dwells in him'. If there is no fault in the object of desire, then by reasonable means both aims are present here, as is told in the books: once a sodomite sent a pimp in search of some object, and at once she produced a virgin girl. The sodomite said, I desire only one who has, beneath, two testicles and a member. The pimp said, then stick a carrot in her private parts and hang two onions on her, if you have no other aim. This other raving I recited rests on this: that a penniless wretch and a sincere vagabond who has no gold to procure a harlot should bring a bit of spit from the jug of saliva, reckon the seed-water as little, and escape the cruelty of the whore and the abuse of the stump, as they have said:
O man of reason, beware, do not
trouble yourself so much chasing coupling.
Do you not, after all, know this much of the phrase,
'ease lies within the palm of the hand'?
***
O friend, whether you are from Ray or from Shiraz,
do you know what coupling without a partner is?
That you sit in a corner in solitude,
and with your own palm make of it whatever parts you wish.
It is time I came down from this height and got busy with these scarred fellows. Convey to all this carrion that tomorrow at dawn he should come here, so he may again enjoy the pale color of our dead member, and bring other harlots with him, and lead astray every fair-faced darling they find, and throw down the well every old highway-robber woman who is with him. Sealed and regretted; the first session is complete.