[104]. Lit. "Allah not desolate me" (by thine absence). This is still a popular phrase—Lá tawáhishná=Do not make me desolate, i.e. by staying away too long; and friends meeting after a term of days exclaim "Auhashtani!"=thou hast made me desolate, Je suis désolé.
[105]. Charming simplicity of manners when the Prime Minister carries the fish (shade of Vattel!) to the cookmaid. The "Gesta Romanorum" is nowhere more naive.
[106]. Arab. "Kahílat al-taraf"=lit. eyelids lined with Kohl; and figuratively "with black lashes and languorous look." This is a phrase which frequently occurs in The Nights and which, as will appear, applies to the "lower animals" as well as to men. Moslems In Central Africa apply Kohl not to the thickness of the eyelid but upon both outer lids, fixing it with some greasy substance. The peculiar Egyptian (and Syrian) eye with its thick fringes of jet-black lashes, looking like lines of black drawn with soot, easily suggests the simile. In England I have seen the same appearance amongst miners fresh from the colliery.
[107]. Of course applying to her own case.
[108]. Prehistoric Arabs who measured from 60 to 100 cubits high: Koran, chapt. xxvi., etc. They will often be mentioned in The Nights.
[109]. Arab. "Dastúr" (from Persian)=leave, permission. The word has two meanings (see Burckhardt, Arab. Prov. No. 609) and is much used, e.g. before walking up stairs or entering a room where strange women might be met. So "Tarík"=Clear the way (Pilgrimage, iii., 319). The old Persian occupation of Egypt, not to speak of the Persian-speaking Circassians and other rulers has left many such traces in popular language. One of them is that horror of travellers—"Bakhshísh" pron. bakh-sheesh and shortened to shísh from the Pers. "baksheesh." Our "Christmas box" has been most unnecessarily derived from the same, despite our reading:—
Gladly the boy, with Christmas box in hand.
And, as will be seen, Persians have bequeathed to the outer world worse things than bad language, e.g. heresy and sodomy.
[110]. He speaks of his wife, but euphemistically in the masculine.
[111]. A popular saying throughout Al-Islam.