The Maqama of famine
It is ibn Hisham related to us and said: I was in Baghdad in a famine year, so I took my way to approach a company, united like the Pleiades, in order to ask them something perhaps I could soothe my ordeal and my discouraging situation. Now there was among them a youth with a lisp in his tongue and a space between his front teeth. He asked: ‘ What is your affair ?'
I replied: ‘Two conditions in which a man prospers not: that of a beggar harassed by hunger, and that of an exile to whom return is impossible.’ The boy then said: ‘ Which of the two breaches do you wish stopped first ? ’ I answered: ‘ Hunger, for it has become extreme with me.’ He said: What sayest thou to a white cake on a clean table, picked herbs with very sour vinegar, fine date-wine with pungent mustard, roast meat ranged on a skewer
with a little salt, placed now before thee by one who will not put thee off with a promise nor torture thee with delay, and who will afterwards follow it up with golden goblets of the juice of the grape ? Is that preferable to thee, or a large company, full cups, variety of dessert, spread carpets, brilliant lights, and a skilful minstrel with the eye and neck of a gazelle ?
And if you don't want either, then what you would say about fresh meat, carp, fried eggplant, a certain Iraqi wine, ripe apples, soft bed not touching the ground, soft shoes can help you to walk as a running water, showering bath, and a heaven with many flowing rivers, Ibn Hisham said.
I replied, " I am the slave of the three."
The boy said, he would be the servant of all, if it was possible.
I replied, " May Allah not bless you." You remind me of such appetites, I for long have been in despair with, then nothing of which was available. So, which village are you from?
The boy said:
Alexandria, is my home
And my family is well known
Bad time and bad living enforced me to go out
Ridding my vanity, I wander on God's earth