conceives of her dream as an image more real than matter:“The image
whichfills my aching heart is more solid than a marble carving, which
neither wind nor wave can ever efface.”^35 As in Nizami, the dream func-
tions no differently than a physical picture in instigating action. The
ambiguity between transgression and transcendence exonerates
Zuleikha’s passion. Jami points out that“all of us are like Zuleikha: slaves
of opinion and victims of appearances. If reality did not peep out from
behind appearances, how should the sincere of heart ever reach the fash-
ioner of appearances?”^36 The dream serves not as a deception, but as a
transitional object ultimately enabling real perception. He exhorts the
reader to identify with Zuleikha as her passions evolve from the worldly
to the divine.
After several further oneiric visitations where she falls at the man’s feet
and he declares his love for her, he tells her that he is the grand vizier of
Egypt. Although no wedding offers come from Egypt, she persuades her
father to send emissaries to arrange her betrothal. Arriving in Egypt, she
discovers that the real vizier, named Aziz, is not the man of her dreams. She
despairs about giving her virginity to this unforeseen husband. But the
divine archangel comforts her, saying,“He will leave your silver lock
untouched, for his key is of the softest wax.”^37 Indeed, when she and
Yusuf wed at the end of Jami’s tale, he is pleased tofind her a virgin.
Unlike earlier renditions emphasizing Yusuf’s beauty as inherited from
his mother Rachel, here his beauty, radiating from divine prophecy, is
explicitly compared with the power of polytheistic idols. Upon meeting
him, the vizier wishes to prostrate himself before him, but Yusuf stops and
says,“Abase yourself only before God.”“And for all the crestfallen idols of
Egypt, Yusuf was a tablet from which their names had been expunged. For
once the sun had risen, what else is there for a star to do but hide?”^38
When Zuleikha sees him for sale as a slave and recognizes him as her
beloved, she must have him, but her husband says,“All the wealth laid up
in my treasury–gold, jewelry and perfumes–does not amount to half”^39
the sum asked for him. So Zuleikha contributes“her box of pearls, a
veritable galaxy of twinkling stars”^40 to the purchase. Yusuf, an object of
beauty purchased by a wealthy newlywed couple, could just as well be an
idol, or (in today’s terms) a work of art.
In case there was any doubt of the religious nature of Jami’s narrative, he
here introduces a short interlude with an Egyptian woman named Bazigha(^35) Jami, 1980 : 19. (^36) Jami, 1980 : 15. (^37) Jami, 1980 : 34. (^38) Jami, 1980 : 50.
(^39) Jami, 1980 : 53. (^40) Jami, 1980 : 53.
234 The Transgressive Image