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First published in 1855, Leg over Leg recounts the life, from birth to middle age, of ‘the Fāriyāq,’ alter ego of Ahmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, a pivotal figure in the intellectual and literary history of the modern Arab world Volume Three, from which this excerpt is taken, finds the protagonist in Malta and introduces the Fāriyāqiyyah, the Fāriyāq’s wife, and gives prominence to a series of discussions between the two of gender relations, a format that allows for numerous digressions in such diverse topics as the manners and customs of different nations, the physical and moral significance of the buttocks, the unreliability of virginity tests, and the human capacity for self-delusion, as well as continuing the work’s celebration of the genius and beauty of the classical Arabic language Akin to Sterne and Rabelais in his satirical outlook and technical inventiveness, al-Shidyāq produced in Leg over Leg a work that is unique and unclassifiable It was initially widely condemned for its attacks on authority, its religious skepticism, and its ‘obscenity’, and later editions were often abridged This is the first complete English translation of this groundbreaking work, rendered in four volumes The Qāmūs to which the text makes reference is a renowned fifteenth-century dictionary —HD * A Banquet and Various Kinds of Hot Sauce The Fāriyāq and his wife now set about exploring the streets of the city, dressed in the costume of the people of Egypt He was wearing wide drawers, whose bottoms wrapped themselves around him in front and in back as he walked She had enveloped herself in a white woollen hooded cloak so as to cover her sleeves, which otherwise would have swept the ground The passersby and shopkeepers were amazed by them and didn’t know whether his wife was a woman or not, some asking, ‘Is it a man or a woman?’, some following along behind them, some touching their clothes and staring into their faces and saying, ‘We never saw the like of this day – something that’s neither a man nor a woman!’ One of the more intelligent English faqīhs, whose