Chapter IV: The Story of Yúsuf and Zulaikha

_Yúsuf and Zulaikha_, like _Salámán and Absál,_ belongs to the series of poems known as the _Haft Aurang_. Jámí heralds his poem with a good deal of laudacious singing on the Prophet, Beauty, Love, and concludes by remarking that the loves of Majnún and Laila "have had their day," and makes this excuse for weaving another love poem on another theme. But this scheme was scarcely original, Firdawsí and Ansari having previously composed poems on a similar subject. However, the tongue of the critic is surely silenced by these humble lines:

If here and there a slip or fault you see,
May he not lay the blame of all on me.
May he correct my errors, or befriend
With generous silence faults he cannot mend.

If the work be regarded as a love poem, without its mystical interpretation, Yúsuf may well be regarded as a cold, statuesque young man of the St. Anthony type, but cast in a more beautiful mould. While we may equally well regard Zulaikha as a passionate young lady sadly lacking in worldly wisdom. The coldness of Yúsuf would probably irritate us were we not frequently reminded of the way in which poor Zulaikha plagues him with her too constant attentions. Neither strike us as being very ordinary human people for precisely reverse reasons. There are occasions, however, when Zulaikha awakens our sympathy. It is touching to note that when she finds her own love slighted she should send other women to try their fortune with him, intending, should they succeed, to subtly take their place by strategy of some kind. Again, in the splendid Palace of Pleasure, painted all over, floor and wall and ceiling, with love-entwined figures of Yúsuf and Zulaikha, there is an idol--"A golden idol with jewelled eyes," representing this fatuous woman's love. The idol is placed behind a curtain, and on Yúsuf asking the reason, Zulaikha replies:

If I swerve from religion I would not be
Where the angry eyes of my god may see.

Then we watch the honeyed sweetness of Zulaikha's passion burst forth into bitter hate and shameless lying. We see the proud, chaste Yúsuf cast into prison on false pretences and quite melodramatically freed by the marvellous utterance of a babe at its mother's breast.[5] But Zulaikha finds the gossip of Memphis hard to be borne--the insinuations, the sneers, the cruel reproaches for the unrequited and ill-fated love of hers. Moreover, Zulaikha, like the women of Austria at the beginning of the eighteenth century,[6] had a husband as well as a lover, Potiphar, Grand Vizier of Egypt. These two concocted a scandalous story, which was easily set going and as easily believed by the common people. It resulted in Yúsuf being again sent to prison. At this point of the poem we are once more reminded of the Bible story of Joseph, for Jámí also mentions the interpretation of Pharaoh's dream, the release of the interpreter, and the unlimited power as the king's right hand that followed.

So we watch Yúsuf rise from slave to be the king's chief adviser, and in consequence the fall of the Grand Vizier and Zulaikha. The success of Yúsuf awakens little admiration. He is so far from being human that we should not have been very surprised if he had eaten one of the Pyramids.

But Zulaikha's condition is to be pitied. She is now a widow. Her jewels are gone, her dress is in rags, there are wrinkles in her once beautiful face, and her back is bent. But more than all these trials is the loss of her eyesight. We see her crouching in the road, listening eagerly for the sound of the coming of the proud Yúsuf on his wonderful steed,[7] happy to feel the dust of his passing procession. There is a note of real pathos in this scene. We see for the first time, perhaps, that Zulaikha's passion is changing into a fairer, nobler thing. Sometimes the boys who preceded Yúsuf would shout to her as she sat by her cottage of reeds, "Yúsuf is nigh!" But Zulaikha's heart, sore and hungry and yearning, knew better than they the approach of her lord. The eyes that had seen the Palace of Pleasure saw more now that they were blind! And yet the old passion had not quite burnt itself out. We see the bent form crouching on the ground, feeling the statue of her Yúsuf with her thin, trembling fingers, and piteously praying for some recognition.

The sound of Yúsuf's steed is heard in the distance, and a great shout rends the air: "Make room! Make room!" Zulaikha again crouches in the roadway. How long has she "made room" for the selfish and unfeeling ambitions of a man who was once her pampered slave! It is then, for the first time, that the soul of Zulaikha asserts itself and the mysticism of the poem becomes strongly evident. The material spell of a fleshly love is broken at last. In humility and absolute resignation Zulaikha shatters her once dear idol, destroys a sordid and hopeless dream. Her red rose of passion is turned into a white one, as she fervently cries:

O God, who lovest the humble, Thou
To whom idols, their makers, their servants bow;
'Tis to the light which Thy splendour lends
To the idol's face that its worshipper bends.

Still more triumphant are her words:

Glory to God! to a monarch's state
He has cast the king from his glory down,
And set on the head of a servant his crown.

These words sufficiently interest Yúsuf to ask, "Who is this bedeswoman?" and eventually to win an interview for the poor "Unpitied, forgotten, disgraced woman." Yúsuf does not proceed to moralise; but he does not dispense with frigid formalities beyond calling her Zulaikha and offering, in a studied kind of way, to do anything for her that she may desire. Zulaikha asks for beauty, youth, and the power to win his love. Yúsuf grants her first two wishes, and the decrepit old woman is changed into the ravishingly beautiful Zulaikha of eighteen. But Yúsuf,[8] cold even now, in silence turns in prayer to Heaven, and takes Gabriel's word rather than his own conviction that he is doing well to marry her at last.

Here the late Mr. Ralph Griffith's translation of _Yúsuf and Zulaikha_ ends, and the curious and farseeing might be pardoned for conjecturing an unhappy marriage under these remarkably one-sided circumstances. But in the original the poem does not end here. For the advantage of optimistic believers in marriage, I may add that these two people had an almost unending honeymoon. Remarkable as it may appear, Zulaikha actually became religious, for which altogether wonderful and unexpected event the now kindly Yúsuf built her a most beautiful House of Prayer. The canto entitled "The Longed-for Death" is a little disconcerting, perhaps, but we may reasonably suppose that Yúsuf became religious too, and was not in any way uncomplimentary to his beautiful bride. His death was well arranged, and he was shortly joined by the soul of Zulaikha.

This, then, is & brief sketch of _Yúsuf and Zulaikha_. Like _Salámán and Absál_ it is intended to reveal the beauty of the Beloved; that He can be only approached after much purification, when the physical form ceases to blind the soul's outlook, and only when we realise that passion is an idol that must be broken, and Love the pure Light that shines alone from Him.