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As for thee, O blonde, thy colour is that of leprosy and thine embrace is suffocation;[1] and it is of report that hoar-frost and icy cold[2] are in Gehenna for the torment of the wicked. Again, of things black and excellent is ink, wherewith is written Allah's word; and were it not for black ambergris and black musk, there would be no perfumes to carry to Kings. How many glories I may not mention dwell in blackness, and how well saith the poet,
'Seest not that musk, the nut brown musk, e'er claims the highest
price * Whilst for a load of whitest lime none more than
dirham bids?
And while white speck upon the eye deforms the loveliest youth, *
Black eyes discharge the sharpest shafts in lashes from
their lids.'
- ↑ Women with white skins are supposed to be heating and unwholesome: hence the Hindu Rajahs slept with dark girls in the hot season.
- ↑ Moslems sensibly have a cold as well as a hot Hell, the former called Zamharir (lit. "intense cold")or AI-Barahút, after a well in Hazramaut; as Gehenna (Arab. "Jahannam") from the furnace-like ravine East of Jerusalem (Night cccxxv.). The icy Hell is necessary in terrorem for peoples who inhabit cold regions and who in a hot Hell only look forward to an eternity of "coals and candles" gratis. The sensible missionaries preached it in Iceland till foolishly forbidden by Papal-Bull.
