يحسن ذنبها

أوتار مبعثرة
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:

وعدتني بأمر ولم تنجزه، واعتذرت أنها اضطرت لإخلاف الوعد لظروف قاهرة.. فقلت لها: سوابق إحسانك تجعل ذنوبك إحسانا! والله لا يحاسب المضطرّ.

وَعَدَتْ، وَإِنْ تُخْلِفْ مَعَادَكَ، حَسْبُهَاأَنْ لَمْ يَكُنْ إِخْلَافَ وَعْدٍ دَأْبُهَا
كَمْ ذَا وَفَتْ مِنْ قَبْلُ فِيمَا أَبْرَمَتْبِسَوَابِقِ الْإِحْسَانِ يَحْسُنُ ذَنْبُهَا
وَفَدَى الْجَمَالُ ذُنُوبَهَا، وَلِأَنَّهَامُضْطَرَّةٌ، فَكَذَاكَ يَجْزِي رَبُّهَا

Her Fault Made Fair1

She promised me something and did not keep her promise, and apologised that circumstances beyond her control had forced her to break it. So I said to her: Your kindnesses of old turn your faults into kindnesses! And God does not hold to account one who acts under compulsion2.

  1. She promised; and if she has broken the tryst she made with you3,
    let it suffice her that to break her word was never her way.
  2. How often she has kept her word before, in all she pledged!
    By kindnesses gone by, her fault is made fair1.
  3. Beauty has ransomed all her faults; and since she acted
    under compulsion2, so will her Lord requite her, in that way.

Notes

  1. Yaḥsunu dhanbuhā, ‘her fault becomes good (or beautiful)’, uses the root of iḥsān, ‘kindness, doing good’, and ḥusn, ‘beauty’. The poem plays on all three: her past kindnesses (iḥsān) make her fault fair (yaḥsunu), and her beauty (jamāl) ransoms it. The idea recalls a familiar theme of Arabic love poetry, that the beloved’s many merits intercede for a single fault. ↩
  2. This echoes a Qur’anic principle: ‘whoever is compelled, neither desiring nor transgressing, there is no sin upon him’ (2:173). The last verse of the poem returns to it: yajzī, ‘requites’, means her Lord will judge her as one who was compelled. ↩
  3. The speaker addresses himself as ‘you’, a device (tajrīd) by which the speaker splits off a second self to talk to. ↩

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