من الصومال…!!

Notes

1. Musājala is a friendly contest in verse, in which one poet answers another in the same metre and rhyme. The word comes from sajl, a large bucket: in the image behind it, two men draw water from a well in turn, each trying to fill his bucket as full as the other. Both poems here share the same metre and the rhyme in -ābā, and the reply takes up many of the first poem's own words. ↩
2. Azmaʿtu al-rikāba, literally 'I resolved upon the riding camels', is the classical formula for setting out on a journey. The poet uses the language of the desert departure for a flight out of a war zone. ↩
3. The qaṭā, sandgrouse, is a desert bird of classical Arabic poetry, famous for flying great distances straight to water and never losing its way; 'more sure of the way than a sandgrouse' is an old proverb. The aeroplane becomes a sandgrouse made of steel: a modern machine dressed in an ancient image. ↩
4. Surā is a journey by night. The phrase recalls the old proverb ʿinda al-ṣabāḥi yaḥmadu al-qawmu al-surā, 'at daybreak the travellers praise their night journey': hardship endured in the dark is praised once it has brought one safely through. ↩
5. The half-verse taghayyarat al-bilādu wa-man ʿalayhā ('the country has changed, and all who live upon it') is taken word for word from a famous line of lament attributed, in Arabic tradition, to Adam after Cain murdered Abel. The echo makes the Somali war, in which brother killed brother, a repetition of the first fratricide. ↩
6. Inqilāb, literally 'an overturning', is the ordinary Arabic word for a coup d'état; here it names the upheaval that toppled the old order. The poet plays on its root: when the country was 'overturned' (inqilāb), its people 'turned' (inqalabū) into wolves. ↩
7. The parentheses mark a borrowed line. It comes from Aḥmad Shawqī's celebrated poem in praise of the Prophet (PBUH), Salū qalbī ('Ask my heart'), which has the same metre and the same rhyme in -ābā. There it reads ẓawāhira khashyatan, 'with an outward show of fear of God': they prayed and fasted for appearance only. Here a single letter is changed, and the line reads ʿawāhiri khashyatin, 'harlots of the fear of God': the borrowed line becomes harsher invective, charging them with prostituting piety itself. Kidhāban, 'a lie, false', is an emphatic Qur'anic verbal noun (78:28, 35). ↩
8. Buʿdan li-, 'away with…, perish…', is the Qur'anic curse on destroyed peoples: 'away with ʿĀd', 'away with Thamūd' (Sura 11). 'Those who were transformed into apes' alludes to the Qur'anic account of the Sabbath-breakers who were told, 'Be apes, despised!' (2:65; 7:166). Ape and wolf together stand for moral degradation and savagery. ↩
9. Al-rawādif (full, heavy hips) and al-kaʿāb (a young girl whose breasts are just rounding) are stock features of the beloved in classical Arabic love poetry. The poet dreams of a peaceful country in which he could go back to writing conventional love poems. ↩
10. The 'young man of letters' is Mohamed al-Amin Mohamed al-Hadi, the friend of the evening gatherings mentioned in the introduction, who writes the reply below. His verse fatana al-shabāb: it has captivated, enchanted the young. ↩
11. Al-ṣabā, the east wind, is in classical poetry the lovers' breeze that carries news and the scent of the beloved's country. Najd, the upland of central Arabia, stands for the homeland of love and longing. The word ʿabīr ('fragrance') is set in quotation marks in the Arabic, which points to a second meaning: ʿAbīr al-Abad ('Eternal Fragrance') is the title of Mohamed al-Amin's first collection of love poems, written before the collapse of the Somali government, whose name he has described as a secret shared with the woman to whom the poems were addressed. The friend's verse flows like gold whenever that 'fragrance' stirs him. The reply takes up the word again. ↩
12. Yaʿtasif al-durūb means to travel without keeping to any road, cutting straight across open country. The verse is a playful paradox: the young poet goes off the beaten track without deliberation, and yet always lands on al-maḥajja, the broad, clear highway, and on what is right. His talent needs no deliberate effort. ↩
13. The line recalls a celebrated verse attributed to the jurist al-Shāfiʿī: 'Were it not that poetry demeans men of learning, I would today be a greater poet than Labīd.' Ahmed al-Dawla borrows its opening word for word: as a man of religious learning, he suggests, he must hold back from love poetry, and his age would make it look like tasābī, an old man acting the lovesick youth. ↩
14. Hind and al-Rabāb are among the conventional names of the beloved in classical Arabic love poetry, standing for any beloved woman. ↩
15. Faṣl al-khiṭāb, 'decisive, clear speech', is a Qur'anic phrase: God gave David 'wisdom and decisive speech' (38:20). It is high praise for eloquence that settles a matter. ↩
16. Āsin can be read in two ways. From asiya, 'to grieve', it means a sorrowing man: the complaint is the ache of one who longs for home. As the active participle of asā, 'to treat, to heal', it means a physician: a complaint that hurts, but hurts in order to cure. The word maʾāb ('return') picks up the last rhyme of the first poem. ↩
17. Ruqṭ, spotted or speckled, is used of snakes, and the speckled viper was proverbial in Arabic for a skin smooth to the touch and a deadly bite. Idhā jawwun khalā, literally 'when the air was empty', recalls the old proverb khalā laki al-jawwu, 'the air is clear for you' (said to a lark: now lay your eggs and sing), meaning that nothing is left in the way. Once unobserved, they 'shed their skins', which echoes the first poem's line about men who put on the garments of religion one day and throw them off the next. ↩
18. The Arabic has ḥanīnan, 'longing', which does not fit the grammar of the verse. It is read here as janaynā, 'we gathered, we harvested', which differs only in the dots of the first letter and fits the roses and thorns. The thorns turning into 'fangs' (nāb) links back to the serpents of the previous verse. ↩
19. Sharāb, 'drink', and sarāb, 'mirage', differ in a single letter (jinās). The mirage is the water that the thirsty traveller sees in the desert and never reaches: what the people once offered has become an illusion. The poet softens the charge out of love for his own country and people. ↩
20. Shuʿūr, 'feeling', comes from the same root as shiʿr, 'poetry'; the phrase suggests both 'a pleasant feeling' and the poem that carries it. ↩
21. The reply turns the first poem's own words back on its author in play. Ahmed had hoped to 'vie in verse with a young man of letters' and had spoken of the 'fragrance' (ʿabīr) of Najd, with its hint at Eternal Fragrance; now Mohamed al-Amin invites him to do so. Ahmed had feared people would call him 'an old man playing the youth' (shaykhun taṣābā); here it is the young poet who taṣābā, turns lovesick at a breath of fragrance, and so Ahmed need not fear the charge. ↩
22. Baḥr means both 'sea' and a metre of Arabic poetry (the metres are called 'seas'). The rhymes are to sail the 'sea of love' and also to run in the metre of love poetry. ʿUbāb is the mass of towering, surging waves. ↩
23. Hājara means to forsake, and also to emigrate. The gazelles are, in classical poetry, beautiful women, and the wolves are the wolfish men of the first poem: the friend will say that he has left the wolves behind and gone over to the gazelles. Flight from the war becomes a migration to love, and the love poetry of peace can begin again. ↩
24. Hashīm is dry, broken vegetation, crumbling stalks; in the Qur'an it is the image of the world's life withering away (18:45). The friend's poetry is to bring dead land back to green life. ↩
25. The place is written Manbaʿ al-Rū in the Arabic, which is read here as Mambrui, a small historic town on the Kenyan coast north of Malindi. ↩