رحيل الشهيد

لعينيك ياقدس
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:

إِلَى رُوحِ الْمُهَنْدِسِ يَحْيَى عَيَّاشٍ، كُتِبَتْ بَعْدَ اسْتِشْهَادِهِ.

“فَارِسَ الْقُدْسِ تَمَهَّلْ!!
لَا تَعَجَّلْ
لَمْ تَبْقَ إِلَّا لَيْلَةٌ ظَلْمَاءُ
مِنْ زَمَنٍ مُدَجِّلْ
مِنْ بَعْدِهَا.. تَوًّا سَتَرْحَلْ”
لَكِنَّهُ لَمْ يَسْمَعِ الصَّرَخَاتِ
مِنْ بَطْنٍ تَرَهَّلَ
وَمِنْ شِدْقٍ تَعَوَّدَ أَنْ
يَلُوكَ الْحَرْفَ… أَهْبَلْ!
فَمَضَى عَلَى دَرْبِ الشَّهَادَةِ قَائِلًا:
“عَلَّمْتُكُمْ – إِنْ كُنْتُمُ تَتَعَلَّمُونْ –
دَرْسًا إِذَا أَتْقَنْتُمُوهُ
تَزُولُ إِسْرَائِيلُ عَنْ دُنْيَا الْوَرَى
حَتْمًا وَتَرْحَلْ
أَدَّيْتُ دَوْرِي يَا تَلَامِذَتِي وَإِنِّي
تَارِكٌ لَكُمُ الْمَجَالَ وَنَاظِرٌ
مَاذَا تُرَاكُمْ تَفْعَلُونْ؟
هَذَا امْتِحَانٌ
هَلْ تُرَاكُمْ تَنْجَحُونْ؟”

The Martyr’s Departure1

To the soul of Yahya Ayyash, the Engineer, written after his martyrdom2.

  1. “Knight of Jerusalem3, hold on, go slow!!
  2. Don’t rush ahead:
  3. there is nothing left but one pitch-dark night
  4. of an age of deceit4;
  5. and after it… you’ll be straight on your way.”5
  6. But he did not hear the cries
  7. that came from a belly gone slack,
  8. and from a jaw grown used
  9. to chewing over words… the fool!6
  10. So he went on, down the road of martyrdom, saying:
  11. “I have taught you, if you are the kind who learn,
  12. a lesson which, once you have mastered it,
  13. will make Israel vanish from the world of men,
  14. for certain, and be on its way.
  15. I have played my part, my pupils, and now
  16. I leave the field to you, and I am watching:
  17. what, I wonder, will you do?
  18. This is a test.
  19. Will you, I wonder, come through?”

Notes

  1. Raḥīl, 'departure', is the key word of the poem. The voices at the start tell the knight to wait, promising that after one more night 'you will depart', or be on your way (sa-tarḥal); he departs at once instead, on the road of martyrdom; and his parting words foretell that Israel 'will depart', be on its way (tarḥal). The one urged to wait is the one whose departure brings about the real departure. ↩
  2. Yahya Ayyash (1966–1996), an electrical engineering graduate, was a commander in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, and was known as 'the Engineer' for his skill in making explosives. Israel assassinated him in Gaza on 5 January 1996 with a booby-trapped mobile phone. The poem's figure of the teacher and his pupils plays on this: his 'lesson' is the craft he passed on to those who came after him. ↩
  3. Jerusalem is al-Quds, 'the Holy'. The 'knight of Jerusalem' is Yahya Ayyash himself, addressed by the voices that urge him to wait. ↩
  4. Mudajjil, 'deceiving, fraudulent', comes from the same root as al-Dajjāl, the great Deceiver (the Antichrist) of Islamic tradition, so 'an age of deception' carries a hint of the end-time impostor. It is an age of false promises; written in the years after the Oslo Accords, the phrase most likely points to the promise of a peace that would end the occupation without a struggle. ↩
  5. Sa-tarḥal is read here as addressed to the knight: wait one more night, and then you may set out. The voices counsel delay, claiming that the dark age is about to end by itself. The words can also be heard as a grim warning, 'you will soon depart', that is, be killed; or tarḥal can be read as 'it will depart', with the night or the age as its subject, though the grammar fits that reading less well. ↩
  6. The flabby belly and the jaw are images (kināya) of those who have grown comfortable and do nothing but talk: the voices that urged the fighter to wait. Lāka al-ḥarf, literally 'to chew the letter', is said of one who mouths words endlessly without acting on them. The closing ahbal, 'fool, idiot', is taken as flung at the owner of that belly and jaw; it can also be heard as the word those voices chew over and hurl at the fighter himself. ↩

English translation prepared by artificial intelligence and reviewed against the Arabic for accuracy of meaning and rhetoric.