In this anecdote from Jami's Baharestan, the poet Farazdaq encounters a learned man whose face is exceptionally ugly and repellent. Asked why his own complexion has turned yellow, Farazdaq turns the exchange into satire: the sight of the man's hideous face reminded him of his sins and made him fear that God might disfigure and transform him (maskh) as a punishment, just as the ugly man appears to have been transformed.

The concept illustrates a recurring device in classical Persian moral satire: physical deformity is read as a mirror of the soul and as a sign of divine chastisement. Grotesque ugliness functions on two levels at once — as comic hyperbolic insult, and as a genuine admonition that dissolves the beholder's resolve to persist in sin (عقد اصرار گنه فسخ کند). Understanding this anecdote requires grasping how the trope of maskh (metamorphosis as punishment) lets outer appearance stand in for inner moral state.