Arabic proverbs

Like donkeys grazing on couch grass: the donkey never has its fill, and the grass is never used up.

Picture donkeys turned loose in a field of najil, a grass so much to their taste that they keep cropping it without ever being satisfied, while the field holds so much that it never thins out. Appetite and abundance sustain each other, and the scene settles into an endless round where nothing is ever finished.

Like the Turk who's been sacked: he keeps up his prayers just until he gets a job again.

The image is a dismissed Turkish official, used in this saying as a stock figure of the arrogant officeholder. Stripped of his post, he turns devout and never misses a prayer, but only until he is employed again. Once he is back in service, the devotion disappears and his former haughtiness returns.

You who keep yourself so modestly out of sight, your shrieking has split my eardrums!

The saying mocks someone who keeps up a careful show of modesty and reserve, then gives the whole act away through noisy, attention-grabbing behavior. Its feminine address and veiling imagery picture a secluded woman whose voice is loud enough to hurt the listener's ears.

There's no shortage of trouble in this world, but it's shared out among everyone.

The saying admits that the world holds a great deal of hamm (trouble, worry, grief, or distress), then adds, with bass meaning 'but' rather than 'only', that this weight is never piled on one person alone. Hardship is parceled out, so every life receives a portion.

Like Nishwa's punctured drum, made to play two weddings back to back.

The picture is a drum identified with Nishwa, a village, with a hole in it, already damaged, yet still carted from one wedding procession straight on to the next. Asking a defective instrument to serve two celebrations in a row turns the scene into a joke about overloading something that is already unfit.

Where love is present, even the smallest space can make room for many dear people.

Affection makes physical limits seem unimportant. Even a cramped place can feel spacious enough when the people gathered there care deeply for one another.

A visit with some business on the side.

The saying describes a social call that also accomplishes something useful. The visit itself is the stated purpose, yet along the way a need is met or an errand is completed, so the occasion delivers both companionship and a practical benefit at once.

Strike the one-eyed man on his bad eye and he'll just say, 'That one was gone already.'

The saying describes harm aimed at something already beyond saving. The one-eyed man is struck on his blind eye, so the blow takes nothing from him; he notes that the eye was lost long before. Damage done to what is already ruined changes nothing.

A hen will keep scratching even when she is standing on a pile of grain.

A hen keeps scratching at the ground by instinct, even when it stands on a pile of grain with food plainly within reach. The image shows behavior continuing after its practical purpose has vanished, because the action has become part of the creature's nature.

When the poor act spoiled, it is enough to drive you mad.

This saying captures the exasperation some people feel when someone poor behaves as if spoiled, acting coy, fussy, or demanding with others. Such behavior strikes these onlookers as galling, provoking an anger figuratively strong enough to burst the gall bladder, an image of extreme irritation rather than a literal claim.

Life is a mirror: whatever you hold up to it, you will see reflected back at you.

Life, the world and one's dealings in it, is pictured as a mirror that gives back an image of whatever stands before it. What a person puts into the world through their own actions is what they will find coming back to them, so the good or harm one meets largely reflects the good or harm one has done.

Cats dream of nothing but mice.

A creature's mind naturally fills with whatever it most craves. Just as a cat's dreams would be crowded with visions of mice, a person's thoughts, hopes and even dreams tend to circle around the things that matter most to them or that they are lacking.

All that bragging and showing off, and yet dinner is just a dish of mallow.

The saying mocks a person who puffs himself up and spreads tales of his own grandeur, while his actual circumstances are modest. The swagger is for show; the evening meal turns out to be nothing more than mallow, an everyday green once cooked in nearly every rural household in winter.

Knock on the door, and you will get an answer.

The saying holds that results come only to those who take the first step. A person who stands silently outside a closed door learns nothing, while one who knocks is sure to get some reply. Effort and initiative are presented as the necessary condition for any outcome.

Morning broke, and there was nothing left to show for it.

The saying pictures a sleeper who spends the night enjoying riches or successes in a dream, only to wake at daybreak and find nothing. It mocks hopes that have no footing in reality and vanish the moment they are tested.

If someone shows me even a little affection, I return it abundantly.

The saying praises answering a small sign of warmth or goodwill with a much fuller response. One person’s modest attention is treated not as something to match exactly, but as an opening for generous affection.

Glued to someone's side

The picture is of something bonded to a surface with adhesive, so firmly that it will not come loose. Turned toward people, the phrase portrays someone who keeps constantly at another person's side and never pulls away from them.

The camel limps because of its own lip.

The image is of a camel that wanders into cultivated plots and grazes on the crops. The farmers drive it off with blows, and it comes away lame. Its injury traces back to its lip, which stands for its appetite for what was not its to eat.

Just say 'I don't know,' my soul, and you'll have peace.

The saying holds that openly admitting ignorance spares a person needless strain. Someone who says 'I don't know' avoids the burden of bluffing, defending guesses, or answering for claims they cannot back up.

Spotting her little one on the wall, the mother beetle cried, "Look, a pearl on a string!"

The proverb gently mocks how parents see their own young. Even a lowly beetle gazes at her daughter and beholds a strung pearl; the humor rests on that contrast between beetle and precious pearl. Affection reshapes what the eye perceives, so a parent praises charms that strangers cannot find.

I can see it plainly, but it's beyond my reach.

The saying sets clear perception against limited reach. A person can recognize exactly what they desire, yet be unable to obtain it. Seeing the thing is not the problem; the shortfall lies in the capacity to get hold of it.

He hauls just as much water as his crop calls for.

In one reading, the saying holds that effort should match what a task actually requires. A farmer working a shaduf, the counterweighted well-sweep, lifts only as much water as his small plot needs, so anyone who complains that he is doing too little is answered: the job is small, and the work fits it.

Better to set the terms when you plow than to fight over them at harvest.

The saying urges people to agree on terms at the very beginning of a shared effort. Setting conditions while the field is still being plowed costs little, while leaving matters vague invites bitter quarrels once the crop is in and there is something real to divide.

"Why are you rushing around like that?" they asked. "My niece is having a wedding," she replied.

The saying is applied to a person who exhausts themselves through constant striving and busyness. It points to someone whose energy is being spent in rushing from one demand to the next until the fatigue becomes plain to see.

A rose may fade, yet it does not lose its perfume.

The image sets a flower's outward state against its essential quality. A rose may wilt, but the scent that defines it stays with it. A visible decline, in other words, does not strip something of the trait that most distinguishes it.

Right sides with whoever has horns.

A mocking verdict on justice that has been purchased. When rivals each bring something to the person judging them, the one whose offering is worth more wins the decision, and the saying dresses that sale up as if it were a principled ruling.

Crisp new clothes on the outside, lice and bedbugs underneath.

The proverb mocks people who take care of their outward appearance while what lies beneath is dirty and neglected. The repeated 'tak tak' imitates the rustle of crisp new fabric, not a knock. Underneath, close to the body, the person is crawling with fowl lice and bedbugs.

The one people can't stop talking about with envy is the one they end up mourning.

The proverb warns that persistent envious talk about a person and what he owns is dangerous; it does not refer to neutral mention. Within the saying's belief in the evil eye, dwelling on someone's good fortune brings ruin, and the person once fussed over soon becomes someone mourned.

A man hoisted a goat and farted from the strain, then said, 'Now hand me her kid too.'

The saying mocks someone whose limits are already showing yet who reaches for an even bigger load. The man can barely manage one goat, and then the strain betrays him physically. Even so, he asks for the goat's young kid as well, as if his struggle were invisible to everyone watching.

His livelihood dripped down from heaven through a needle's eye; he tried to make the hole bigger and blocked it altogether.

The saying pictures a modest provision, or rizq, a livelihood granted by God, that reaches a person from above, thin as a thread through a needle's eye. Instead of accepting that narrow but reliable flow, the person sets about enlarging the opening and ends up sealing it shut.

He cuts you, then bandages you.

The saying describes a person who causes harm through words or actions and then follows it with apparent kindness. The remedy is not a true change of heart. It belongs to the same scheme as the injury, a way to disarm the victim and keep control.

"Mother-in-law, weren't you once a daughter-in-law yourself?" "I was, but I've forgotten."

The saying pictures a mother-in-law (حما) reminded that she, too, was once a كنّة, a son's wife living under an older woman's authority. Her reply, admitting it but claiming to have forgotten, exposes how easily people let go of the memory of their own hardship once their circumstances improve.

The one who shops after dark pays in bad coin.

The image is of a habitual customer of a particular shop who deliberately comes to buy after nightfall, because a merchant in the darkness cannot easily examine coins. Whatever he hands over is likely to be counterfeit, since the darkness itself is the reason he chose that moment.

Even an untrue kind word can heal a hurt heart.

The saying holds that a kind reply, even one that is hollow, idle, or not strictly true, does more good than silence or a cold dismissal. Answering someone, rather than turning away, preserves their dignity and eases their hurt at being slighted.

Step between musk and its scent, and all you'll earn is disgrace.

This saying warns against involving yourself in business that is not yours. Whoever forces a way into matters where he has no part should expect to gain nothing but embarrassment and unwelcome words, since uninvited meddling tends to rebound on the meddler.

If he can manage even a handspan, he may as well take ten.

The saying dismisses a person's threats by challenging them to carry out even a small part of the harm they promise. It presents the speaker as unconvinced that the threatening person has the power to act.

Flour dust leaves no mark on a man already white with lime.

When a miller's flour dust drifts onto a lime-worker, nothing changes, because the lime-worker is already caked in far heavier dust from his own work. The little flour that lands on him simply vanishes into the coating he already wears, so no one could tell it was there.

A careless woman has a cat let loose on her, eating up all she has.

The saying pictures a woman who neglects or squanders, the active sense of mufarriṭa, as if a cat had been turned loose on her belongings, eating away until nothing remains. Her losses are blamed not on bad luck or outsiders but on her own carelessness.

A lion stays a lion, cage or no cage.

Here سبع means 'lion', not the numeral 'seven', though the two look alike in writing. The saying ties worth to what a creature is, not to where it happens to be. A lion behind bars keeps its strength, dignity, and nature. The cage alters its surroundings but leaves its essential character untouched.

A single moving day can cost as much as a year of wear and tear.

Relocating a household takes only a day, yet the toll it takes lasts much longer. Shifting furniture and belongings between homes almost always leaves things scratched, broken or lost, even with great care, so the damage from one move can rival what a whole year of ordinary use would cause.

The fly that escaped the honey once will return and get stuck in it again.

Here the word usually meaning 'bird' refers to the fly, a creature notorious for landing in honey and similar sticky sweets. The image is of an insect that cannot resist the lure, so even after an escape it heads straight back toward the same trap.

It's a goat, even if it flies off.

The saying pokes fun at someone who will not let go of an opinion even once the evidence has openly refuted it. It recalls a short tale: a man took a distant shape for a goat, a companion found it was a kite, and even after the bird flew off the first man kept insisting.

He's like a cat, with seven lives.

The expression describes a person who keeps surviving dangers that might be expected to kill them, above all severe illnesses. Each recovery seems to confirm a remarkable, almost uncanny hold on life. It concerns survival, not general good fortune or success.

All things come in their own good time.

The saying calms someone who is anxious or losing hope. It suggests that every outcome has its own fitting moment, so a present delay is not a final defeat. What has not arrived yet may still come once its proper time is reached.

He lives one life out in the market and keeps a spare one locked in his strongbox.

The saying ironically pictures a person who seems to own two lives: one spent openly among people in the marketplace, and a spare one locked away in a chest, ready to be taken out once the first runs out. The image is mockery, not a literal belief. The two halves rhyme on 'souq' and 'sanduq'.

Sooner or later, your son becomes your neighbor.

A son does not stay a dependent child forever. In time he grows up, marries, and sets up a home of his own, often right beside his father's. Becoming a neighbor stands for that independent household and for equal standing, not for estrangement or distance between father and son.

A cage is still a cage, even in a garden.

Agreeable surroundings do not alter what confinement is. Someone shut away in a lovely, green spot remains shut away, and the beauty of the place offers little genuine ease to a person who is kept there.

Give my child a single date, and I taste its sweetness myself.

A kindness done to a child is felt just as deeply by the parent. Whoever gives a little one even a small treat, such as a single date, has in effect given the gift to the mother or father. The sweetness in the parent's belly is figurative: they share the child's pleasure as their own.

"He got the news from his own uncle!" — "Every person is taken up with his own state."

A report about others is urged on someone as certain because it came through a close relative, a maternal uncle. The listener waves it away anyway, answering that each person is already absorbed in his own situation and has little room left for the affairs of anyone else.

You fed me, then threw it in my face. Better I had died than eaten that day.

The saying gives voice to the bitterness of someone who accepted help, only to have the helper keep bringing it up. Its closing words are a regretful wish, not a statement of fact: the speaker wishes they had not lived to see the day they ate a gift that later became a source of reproach.