Ever the Twain Shall Meet

      In this episode, al-Ḥārith meets Abū Zayd for the first time. Al-Ḥārith’s voice is based on that of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884), particularly Huck’s description of the two con men, the King and the Duke. Abū Zayd’s pious poem combines two nineteenth-century temperance hymns. His verses at the end are a tribute to Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher,” first recorded in 1931.

      1.1That A-rab feller told us all about it:

      I hadn’t got any money, so I made up my mind to leave my loved ones behind, and sling a leg over the back of beyond, and see what luck I’d have. I had some adventures, which throwed me this way and that and th’ other, but after a long time I landed in Sana, which is in the kingdom of Sheba. By the time I fetched up there, I was a sight to look at, without a cent in the world, or crumbs enough in my feed-bag to bait a fish-hook with. So I shoved off into town not knowing where I was going. What I was after was a fellow with a good heart in him, a fellow who’d help me, or leastways cheer me up with poetry and tales, and not look down on me for being so poor. So I walked up and down them streets and lanes and back alleys till my wits got addled. But then I reckoned I’d ask directions; and pretty soon I was in a big open place packed with people crying fit to bust.

      1.2I pushed and shoved and got up there to the front to see what all the fuss was about. There in the middle of the circle was a dried-up cretur dressed in rags with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, like a hermit from the woods, and a voice ever so sweet and saddish. He’d begun to preach, and begun in earnest too, and it was kind of grand to hear it, he done it in such a rousing way, scolding his crowd and warning them that if they didn’t repent they’d go straight to perdition. Well, them folks closed up around him as thick as they could jam together, their necks stretched, trying to see; and I wormed through the crowd to get a good place so’s I wouldn’t miss a word. By and by the preacher began to rip and rave and swell up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any preaching ever I see before.

      1.3The first thing he done was tell us we was a gaudy sight, capering in silk and lace and ruffles, but we had no business prancing around with our noses in the air, because we warn’t nothing but low-down humbugs and frauds. Did we intend to march on looking mighty proud and satisfied, while the path we was going down didn’t lead nowheres but shame and misery? Did we s’pose that God, who could hoist us up by a lock of hair, and knew what we was thinking before we did, couldn’t see how wicked and low-down and ornery we was?

      It was funny, he said, how particular we was about keeping secrets from our families and our slaves; but how we didn’t care a cent that God could see every one of our trans-creshuns clean and clear. Maybe we reckoned them airs we was putting on would help us when the undertaker came a-knocking, or the money we’d saved could buy us a ticket out of hell, or we’d have our relations there to comfort us when the last trump blew. Well, it was all hogwash! That day we’d be sorry, but it would be too late.

      1.4Then he told us what to do: “Oh, come to the straight path! come, sick and sore! come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart!” And so on. Then he told us that we was all going to die; there warn’t no doubt about it; if we didn’t believe it, why, all we had to do was look at our white hairs, or think about all our relations that was already buried. Was we prepared to die? Was we ready to face God and explain why we’d been so wicked? Warn’t nobody else going to explain it, that was for certain.

      Then he said he didn’t understand why folks never took no notice of the signs. Why, anywheres we looked was the plain hand of Providence slapping us in the face and letting us know that our wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in Heaven. Besides, he said, him and his brother preachers had worn their throats sore trying to get that same notion in our heads. But it warn’t no good: folks just rolled over and went on sleeping, or allowed they couldn’t see what was plain as anything. One thing he knew, being too scared to look Death in the eye warn’t a-going to make Death knock off; and if we was planning to get some good works to our credit, we better do it now, because we was all goners.

      1.5He warn’t done yet. Instead of living right, he said, and going to worship and giving alms and saving up rewards in Heaven, he saw folks chasing up profit, and eating dainty grub, and building palaces forty miles long, and dressing up in clothes that cost heaps of drachms. Blamed if they didn’t take more stock in silks and julery, and silver plate, and