[44]. i.e. “Show a miser money and hold him back, if you can.”
[45]. He wants £40,000 to begin with.
[46]. i.e. Arab. “Sabíhat al-’urs” the morning after the wedding. See vol. i. [269].
[47]. Another sign of modern composition as in Kamar al-Zaman II.
[48]. Arab. “Al-Jink” (from Turk.) are boys and youths mostly Jews, Armenians, Greeks and Turks, who dress in woman’s dress with long hair braided. Lane (M. E. chapts. xix. and xxv.) gives same account of the customs of the “Gink” (as the Egyptians call them) but cannot enter into details concerning these catamites. Respectable Moslems often employ them to dance at festivals in preference to the Ghawázi-women, a freak of Mohammedan decorum. When they grow old they often preserve their costume, and a glance at them makes a European’s blood run cold.
[49]. Lane translates this, “May Allah and the Rijal retaliate upon thy temple!”
[50]. Arab. “Yá aba ’l-lithámayn,” addressed to his member. Lathm the root means kissing or breaking; so he would say, “O thou who canst take her maidenhead whilst my tongue does away with the virginity of her mouth.” “He breached the citadel” (which is usually square) “in its four corners” signifying that he utterly broke it down.
[51]. A mystery to the Author of Proverbs (xxx. 18–19),
There be three things which are too wondrous for me,
The way of an eagle in the air;