I did not cease searching for the clan, following every scattered trace of them
until I was guided to the girl reared within a howdah.

So I crept up in hiding ⦗1⦘, circling round her dwelling,
until I slipped through the concealed entrance-way. ⦗2⦘

She said, “By my brother’s life and the favor of my father,
I shall rouse the whole camp if you do not leave!” ⦗3⦘

Yet she reached for my head to know its feel—
with fingertips henna-stained, supple, unrigid.

I withdrew, fearing her people ⦗4⦘, and she smiled;
I knew then that her oath had not been in earnest.

I kissed her mouth, clasping her tresses,
like a fever-stricken man drinking the cool water of al-Hashraj. ⦗5⦘

Kathir ʿUzzah said:

Jamil Buthayna met me and asked, “Whence have you come?”
I replied, “From this beloved of mine.” He said, “And where are you heading?”
I answered, “To this beloved”—meaning ʿAzza.

He then said, “I adjure you: go back to Buthayna and fix a meeting for me with her, for I have not seen her since the beginning of summer. My last encounter with her was in Wadi al-Qura ⦗6⦘, when she and her mother were washing a garment and we talked until sunset.”

Kathir continues: So I returned until I halted at their dwelling.

Abu Buthayna asked, “What has brought you back, nephew?”
I said, “Some verses I composed; I have come to recite them to you.”
He said, “What are they?”
So I recited, while Buthayna listened from behind the curtain:

I said to her, “O ʿAzza, I send my companion to you
as a messenger, and the messenger is entrusted ⦗7⦘
to fix an appointment between me and you
and to command me concerning what I must do.
My last memory of you is the day you met me
downstream in Wadi al-Dawm, while the garment was being rinsed.”

He said: Buthayna struck the side of her screened alcove and cried, “Be gone! Be gone!”
Her father asked, “What is it, Buthayna?”
She replied, “It is a dog that comes to us once the people have fallen asleep, barking from behind the hill.”

Then she said to the maidservant, “Fetch us some firewood from the dōm-palms so that we may slaughter a sheep for Kathir and roast it for him.”

Kathir said, “I am too pressed for that,” and he went off to Jamil and informed him.

Jamil said, “The rendezvous is at the dōm-palms.” ⦗8⦘

When night fell, Buthayna came to the spot she had appointed; Jamil arrived as well, and I was with them. Never had I seen a night more wondrous, nor conversation more delightful. The gathering dispersed, and I could not tell which of the two better grasped what lay hidden in the other’s heart.

Al-Zubayr ibn Bakkār relates, on the authority of ʿAbbās ibn Sahl al-Sāʿidī, that he entered upon Jamil while he was dying and said to him, “What do you say of a man who has never drunk wine, never fornicated, never committed robbery, never shed blood, and who bears witness that there is no deity but Allah?”