What 'Isa ibn Hisham Told Us. Muhammad al-Muwaylihi
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into Damascus riding a donkey during the caliphate of Abū Sufyān ibn Hishām; he had objected to his procession and the way it contravened a sense of equality.17
Minister of War In which book did you find that story?
Undersecretary I didn’t get it from a book; I don’t have any time to read such things. I heard it from the Minister, and he in turn heard it from his teacher, Shaykh Ḥaddād.
Minister of Finance (looking right and left over his bicycle)
“For all the things you’ve mentioned,
there are several you’ve overlooked.”18
There is something else which goes far beyond the benefits we get from merely complying with this idea of equality. If we ride on trams, the price of shares in the tramway company is bound to go up. People will start crowding each other out so that they can all ride on trams and have an opportunity to see us and copy everything we do. The price of shares will rise; people who are lucky enough to own shares in them will make a large profit.
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ناظر الحربية نعم الفكر ونعمت الفائدة لو أنّ شركة الترامواي تعجل باستحضار ما وعدت به من مركبات الدرجة الأولى لنأمن فيها من مخالطة العامة وسماعها ما عساه يجري بيننا في ركوبنا من مداولاتنا في أعمال الحكومة السرية.
وكيل الحقانية والمركبات من الدرجة الأولى لابد من الزحام فيها أيضا.
ناظر الحربية إنّ الذين يركبون في الدرجة الأولى هم من الطبقة العالية ولا بأس أن يقفوا معنا على بعض هذه الأسرار، إنما الخوف من العامة الذين لا يقرؤون الجرائد.
ناظر المالية أرى أنكم كلما وقفتم على فائدة أغفلتم أخرى ألم تعلموا أنّ ركوبنا في الدرجة الأولى يزيد عن أجرة الدرجة الثانية وحسن الاقتصاد يحرم هذا الإسراف.
ناظر الحربية لا تظن أننا نسينا هذا الاستدراك وعندنا مثال في دوائه وهو أنّ سعادة فخري باشا ناظر الأشغال العمومية والمعارف العمومية كان إذا ركب سكة حديد الرمل في الإسكندرية قطع نصف تذكرة فإذا سأله مفتش القطار في ذلك أفحمه بقوله إني ناظر ولي الحق في الركوب بالنصف والمعافاة من النصف الآخر ولا شك أنّ شركة الترامواي تكون أخضع في هذا الباب من شركة سكة الرمل.
Minister of War If the tramway company did what it has promised to do and introduced first-class carriages, that would be fine. Then we wouldn’t have to mix with common people and run the risk of their hearing our conversations about secret government matters while we’re riding with them.
Undersecretary The first-class compartments would be bound to get overcrowded as well.
Minister of War People who ride in first-class carriages are from the upper class. It doesn’t matter if they hear some of the secret business we’re discussing. The people to worry about are the common folk who don’t read newspapers.
Minister of Finance Every time you come up with a way of making a profit, you miss another one. Don’t you realize that it costs more to ride in first class than it does in second? Sound economics won’t allow such extravagance.
Minister of War Don’t you think we should forget this whole idea? After all, we already have an example of a way to remedy it. When His Excellency Fakhrī Pāshā, the Minister of Public Works and Public Education, used to travel by rail from Ramla to Alexandria, he would cut his ticket in half. If the inspector asked him, he completely nonplussed him by replying that he was a minister. As such, he was entitled to travel at half fare and to be exempted from the return half. I’m sure the tramway company here will be more amenable on this point than the Ramla Railway Company.
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قال الراوي ولما دنا وقت الافتراق نزلت ونزلوا وانصرفت وانصرفوا وتركتهم في آمالهم من الربح والتزلف والاقتصاد. وتركوني بما سمعته من محاورتهم فائزا بالغرض والمراد، من امتياز الشاتم على المشتوم، ومساواة الحاكم بالمحكوم.
Our narrator told us: When the time came for us to part company, I got off and so did they. We all went our own ways. I left them to their dreams of profit, economy, and flattery. They meanwhile left me with their conversation, achieving thereby the cherished goal of distinction between the curser and the cursed and of equality between ruler and ruled.
مصباح الشرق ٣١، ١٧ نوفمبر ١٨٩٨
Miṣbāḥ al-sharq 31, November 17, 1898
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حدثنا عيسى بن هشام، قال رأيت في المنام، كأني أمشي في صحراء الإمام بين القبور والرجام، في ليلة قمراء، يستر بياضها نجوم الخضراء، فيكاد في سنا نورها ينظم الدر ثاقبة، ويرقب الذر راقبه، وكنت أحدث نفسي بين تلك القبور، وفوق هاتيك الجنادل والصخور، بغرور الإنسان وشممه، وافتخار بمساعيه وهممه، وإغراقه في دعاويه، وتغاليه في تعاليه، واستعظامه لنفسه، ونسيانه لرمسه، فقد شمخ الإنسان بأنفه حتى رام أن يثقب به الفلك، استكبارا لما جمع وما ملك، فأرغمه الموت حتى سد بذلك الأنف شقا في لحده، بعد أن وارى بين صفائحه صحائف عزه ومجداه.
ʿĪsā ibn Hishām told us: In a dream, I saw myself walking among the tombs and gravestones in the Imam Shāfiʿī cemetery. It was a brilliant moonlit night, bright enough to blot out the stars in the sky; in fact, so gleaming was the light, one could have threaded a pearl and watched a speck of dust. As I stood there amid the graves atop the tombstones, I contemplated man’s arrogance and conceit, his sense of his own glory, his pride, his total obsession with his own pretensions, his excessive desires, his sense of self-aggrandizement, and the way he chooses to forget about the grave. In his deluded arrogance he hoists his nose into the air and endeavors to pierce the very heavens with it. Then he can boast about the things he has collected and use what he owns to claim some kind of superiority. But then Death always coerces him. Once it has enshrouded his artificial splendor and glory beneath its slabs of stone, it uses