What 'Isa ibn Hisham Told Us by Allen Roger al-Muwaylihi Muhammad

Author:Allen, Roger, al-Muwaylihi, Muhammad
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781479895113
Publisher: Library of Arabic Literature
Published: 2015-06-16T16:00:00+00:00

ʿĪsā ibn Hishām said: These stupid jokes and vulgarities set me all aquiver, so I stopped listening and looked round in other directions. I saw all the clerks talking and joking with one another. One was crushing opium in his hand, another rolling his majoon between his fingers. Sometimes the assistants busied themselves with their papers, at others they shared jokes. Meanwhile the poor people who had entrusted their affairs to them were being upbraided and pushed aside with promises and delays. I overheard one clerk arguing with a litigant about terms: “How can you give the assistant such a paltry sum?” he asked. “Do you think he’s your slave? Do you expect him to record and work for you when he has no wage or salary from the court and gets no profit from it? How utterly incredible!” When the judge’s messenger came in searching for one of the head clerks, he found him sound asleep. Some of them suggested waking him up, but others advocated letting him be, pointing out that for a long time the clerk in question had made a habit of staying asleep till the opium was circulating in his veins alongside the blood. They all agreed that the messenger should go back and say he hadn’t been able to find the Shaykh where he was supposed to be, but then he had heard that he’d gone down to the Records Office. A while later, the sleeping clerk woke up, yawned, and stretched himself. He then resumed his slumber, reciting the lines of al-Maʿarrī as he did so:

The primary virtue of sleep is that it takes the sleeper

out of this world, one molded in suffering.101

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