Quranic commentaries elaborate with a setting and detailed dialogue.
Al-Thalabi relates how Joseph’s pious reminders of human mortality
negates each of the wife’s compliments:
According to ibn Waki’–‘Amr b. Muhammad–Asbat–al Suddi (as the Quran
says,),“She desired him and he would have desired her.”She said,“O Joseph, how
beautiful your hair is!”He answered,“It is thefirst thing that will fall offof my
body.”She said,“O Joseph, how beautiful your eyes are!”He answered,“They are
thefirst things that will melt into the earth from my body.”She said,“O Joseph,
how beautiful your face is!”He answered,“The earth will eat it.”But she kept after
him until she had enticed him.^19
Using a similarly accessible register, al-Kisa’i provides even more extensive
dialogue, further humanizing thefigures by underscoring the linguistic and
cultural difference between them:
“How lovely are your words, and how graceful you are!”she said.
**
Wahb said that Joseph’s light shone in his eyes and also glowed beneath his skin,
just as a wick shines in a crystal lamp.****
“Zuleikha,”said Joseph,“were you to see me after my death, you would not
recognize me or have seen anything worse than me.”
“O Joseph,”she said,“I am passionately in love with you. I cannot but try to seduce
you!”
“Zuleikha,”he said,“having seen the signs of God, would you commit a
sin?”
“How beautiful is your language,”she replied,“but I do not understand it.”
“ItisthelanguageofmygrandfatherAbraham,”said Joseph.“Were it not
forbidden to polytheists, I would teach it to you. I will speak to you in
Qamarite if you wish.”
“I prefer the Hauranite tongue,”she said,“For that is the language of the people
of Egypt.”
She went to great pains to tempt him again: she built a beautiful bower,
adorned with every sort of embellishment, and called it the House of Joy and
Pleasure. She bedecked herself withfinery, reclined on her couch and called
for Joseph. She seated him on the couch andshut the doors (12.23) and
pulled the curtains.(^19) at-Ta’labi, 2002 : 155.
228 The Transgressive Image