[336]. Alluding to the angels who appeared to the Sodomites in the shape of beautiful youths (Koran xi).
[337]. Koran xxxiii. 38.
[338]. "Niktu-hu taklídan" i.e. not the real thing (with a woman). It may also mean "by his incitement of me." All this scene is written in the worst form of Persian-Egyptian blackguardism, and forms a curious anthropological study. The "black joke" of the true and modest wife is inimitable.
[339]. Arab. "Jamíz" (in Egypt "Jammayz") = the fruit of the true sycomore (F. Sycomorus) a magnificent tree which produces a small tasteless fig, eaten by the poorer classes in Egypt and by monkeys. The "Tín" or real fig here is the woman's parts; the "mulberry-fig," the anus. Martial (i. 65) makes the following distinction:—
Dicemus ficus, quas scimus in arbore nasci,
Dicemus ficos, Cæciliane, tuos.
And Modern Italian preserves a difference between fico and fica.
[340]. Arab. "Ghániyat Azárá" (plur. of Azrá = virgin): the former is properly a woman who despises ornaments and relies on "beauty unadorned" (i.e. in bed).
[341]. "Nihil usitatius apud monachos, cardinales, sacrificulos," says Johannes de la Casa Beneventius Episcopus, quoted by Burton Anat. of Mel. lib. iii. Sect. 2; and the famous epitaph on the Jesuit,
Ci-gît un Jesuite: