Woman and the Poet: Abla

She was among the loveliest maidens of the quarter: tall of stature, dusky of complexion, with languid black eyes, a serene mouth, a beautiful nose... And she was the daughter of the lord of the tribe, so that to beauty she added coquetry and disdain, and to enchantment loftiness and hauteur — she was witchery itself.

He was black of color, though not ugly: a figure like a lance, two sinewy arms, and two eyes striking sparks of resolve... Most probably he was not deeply black, for his mother was an Abyssinian, and if he did inherit his color from her and not from his father, it was, in its turn, an Abyssinian hue. As for the title of slave that clung to him, and the title of the black one that was fastened upon him, these came to him not from color alone but from contempt for his birth of a slave woman — for the son of a slave woman is a slave even were he white; how much more, then, one black and born of a black mother...

The boy opened his eyes to the light to find himself so despised by his people that they would not acknowledge him. His captive mother whispers in his ear that he is the son of Shaddad, one of the sheikhs and heroes of the tribe; while Shaddad knows him only as one of his slaves, herding his camels and standing in attendance upon him — and if he was permitted to sit, he sat at his feet, like a dog at the feet of its master.

In the boy's breast was a great soul, inherited from this mother who never ceased repeating in his hearing that her people were among the best of folk, and that but for captivity she would have been slave to neither Shaddad nor any other... and inherited from this father of Abs who, with his brother, led the tribe. But this pride had perforce to remain imprisoned in his breast, lest the people mock a haughty slave...

We do not know when, or at what age, he came to love Abla, the ornament of the quarter's girls. It is reasonable to suppose that this love sprang up in his breast early, from the time he first began to understand love: he carries the bowl of laban to her tent every day; he waters the camels at the spring to which she comes to cool herself and play; and in that little city made up of a cluster of tents, each person feels the breath of every other, and sees him or hears of him every day. Why should his young heart not open, with beauty and youth and favoring circumstance before it?...

And the boy's soul was in torment. It said to him: woe to you — there is the inherited honor, the high station, the beauty and the enchantment; and here — here is the blackness, the slavery, the unknown lineage. How dare you aspire?... How can you hope, O slave, O camel-herd — how can you hope?... By God, unless you become something of note, unless you grow so famous that fingers point you out, you shall never win her.

And love — sad, aspiring love, violent and rebellious — went on working miracles. Behold, the boy breathes poetry with his breath, and behold, the slave's verse, all tenderness and sweetness and beauty, wells up from the depths of the depths of the lovestruck youth... And he asked himself anew: dare I hope?... And his soul laughed at him mockingly once more, for the poets in his world were many, and the beauty of his maiden was warrant enough to loose in her praise the tongues of a thousand poets and one.

And ambition began to do its work in the boy's breast. He was son to a brave father; the blood of heroes ran, then, in his veins; so let heredity join hands with passion to mold him into a daring hero. And how, how should he not become the lord of thrust and combat, the horseman who guards the tribe's sanctuary and defends its honor, so long as there was, among the maidens of the tribe, the adored one whose love ran deep in his veins...

And the doting lover began to rise toward perfection. Since his eyes were fixed on high, on the star glittering there, and since nature had begrudged him beauty of countenance, let him strive for the beauty of the soul, and distinguish himself from his fellows by every noble quality — so that when the youths and maidens of the quarter spoke of him, and when, love having smelted his heart, he sent forth those burning moans that were his composed odes, passed from tongue to tongue until they reached the ears of her he loved, he might fill them not only with pride in his poetry and his valor, but in his lofty virtues... And so, when he plunged into battle, he was its shining hero; and when his people, like all peoples, fell to dividing the spoils after the battle, he sat apart, looking on, disdainful; and then he would send his message, in an open letter, to her:

Have you not asked the horsemen, O daughter of Malik,
if you are ignorant of what you did not know?
He who witnessed the battle will tell you
that I plunge into the fray, yet abstain at the spoils.

And when his fellows drank wine, and youth ran riot as tender youth will, let him say to her:

When I drink, I squander
my wealth; but my honor is abundant, unwounded.

Such were his letters to her; he never ceased to charge them with the beauty of his spirit and the loftiness of his virtues. And whenever he was taunted

with the blackness of his color and his slavery, pain cast over his verse a mournful hue — yet a rebellious, indignant one:

If I am counted among the slaves, yet my aspiration
is above the Pleiades and unarmed Spica;
And if you deny my lineage among the horsemen of Abs,
my spear-point and my sword bear witness for me.

Antara, then, was a horseman and a poet; knighthood and poetry contended over him until he settled upon both their thrones together. As for his knighthood, it is a matter never disputed; and were we to strip his life of the embroideries added to it and take only the accounts of the trustworthy — indeed, were we merely to return to the incident of his father's acknowledging him, an acknowledgment of the slave that came only by way of pride in his courage and knighthood — we should rightly count him a hero. He lived ninety years and died on the field, as most of the transmitters say, though some hold that he was assassinated.

As for his poethood, that too is undisputed. He was born more than half a century before Islam; his ode rhyming in mim was hung upon the walls of the Kaaba, and it — and its author with it — were counted among the foremost of the masters of the Mu'allaqat. In his verse, besides the mournful ring, the pride, the disdain, and the heroism, are lines whose delicacy of meaning and fluency of expression have made them pass from tongue to tongue like proverbs, among them his saying:

They said: the meeting is tomorrow, at the winding of the sands —
and how long is the yearning of the lovestruck for the morrow!

I have passed the night on an empty belly, and kept it so by day,
that I might thereby attain a noble repast.

And I lower my gaze when my neighbor-woman appears,
until her dwelling hides my neighbor from my sight.

It is said that the last of these verses was quoted before the Prophet, and he said: No man of the desert was ever described to me whom I longed to see, save Antara... But what was woman's part in the life of this masterly poet?

In his life were two women. The first was his mother — that Abyssinian, noble of character, who fulfilled her mission as a mother who would not accept humiliation for her son. She kept telling him of the nobility of her stock until the blackness of his maternal uncles became a boast to him, as when he says:

I am the one proven in every field:
from the house of Abs are my station and my deeds;
of them, in truth, is my father — they are father to me —
and my mother is of the line of Ham, so they are my uncles.

The second was Abla — she who was mingled into every last detail of his life. She is in his Mu'allaqa, every line of which brims over with sorrow, love, and longing; she is in his fervor and his pride, in his war and his peace, in the pasture and in the battle. It is as though he composed for her, and for her alone; as though he had scarcely begun to compose before her image stormed the poem and enthroned itself in every one of its lines — nay, as though it were she herself who stood over him, breathing into him the idea, the imagery, and everything.

And we ask ourselves: had Antara been placed in other than this cruel circumstance — had there not been his slavery and the loftiness of her station, his blackness and her beauty — had there not been these differences that made the poet taste deprivation and kindled in him the spirit of boundless ambition, would he then have become the hero-horseman and the masterly poet?

Someone may say: but many poets rose to genius and fame though they were not in circumstances like Antara's. Yes — they rose to genius and fame precisely because they were not in his circumstances. Each of them was born free, with nothing between him and glory but to pave the road and then walk it. But how far from Antara lay the roads he had to pave!... It would have been more plausible for him to grow up a slave content with his slavery, herding the camels and composing verse if he could — slaves' verse, to speak more exactly. But to make war upon the world and wrest his freedom by force from those around him; to compel men to bow their heads before his genius, and so win from his fate all that he desired — that requires a spirit driving him without cease, and forever hardening his resolve...

And finally, it is only fair to say that other factors joined in the making of the poet-horseman, chief among them the blood of the men of Abs that ran in his veins, and the sufferings of that noble woman who guided him. But the greatest factor, as I believe — the factor that refined his feelings, exalted his character, strengthened him to surmount hardships, and made his heart and his tongue drip sweetness, pride, and grandeur — was love; or, more exactly, the kind of woman he loved... She looked down upon him from on high, chaste, proud, lofty of character, never ceasing to whisper in his ear: "Try to reach me... try." And so he kept trying — kept soaring on his two wings, surmounting the hardships, until he arrived...