مجمرة البخور

Notes

1. The mijmara is a small brazier on which fragrant wood and resins are burnt. In Somalia, the Arabian Peninsula and much of the Arab world women perfume their hair and clothes by letting the scented smoke rise through them, often in the evening. The poem is built around this intimate domestic scene. ↩
2. The rand is an aromatic tree often named in classical Arabic poetry; it has been identified variously with the bay laurel and with other fragrant woods. ʿŪd al-rand is its wood, burnt as incense. ↩
3. Two words carry double meanings here. Shuʿūr, the rhyme-word of verse 2, means 'hair' (a plural of shaʿr); in verse 3 the same word means 'feeling'. This is a complete pun (jinās tāmm): while she scents her shuʿūr, her hair, she is searing his shuʿūr, his feelings. Takwīna comes from kawā, 'to brand, cauterise with a hot iron', so the embers in her incense burner become the embers with which she brands his heart. Al-ḥanāyā, 'inmost depths', are the curving ribs, and so the innermost part of the chest. ↩
4. Wayḥa is an exclamation of pity or rueful concern. Tajnīhi can mean both 'commits', as one commits an offence (jināya), and 'gathers, reaps', as one gathers fruit. Her playful dismay thus says both 'what harm my hand has done!' and 'what my hand has harvested!'. ↩
5. Al-ʿiṭfān are the two sides of the body, from the waist up to the shoulders; the word evokes suppleness and the sway of a graceful figure. It echoes al-ʿuṭūr, 'perfumes', at the end of the same verse. ↩