رسالة من الشهيد

A Letter from the Martyr

To the martyr Muhyi al-Din al-Sharif¹, the second “Engineer” of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, who was assassinated by the criminal hands of Zionism in Palestine.

1. I have gone on to my Lord… and you will follow² the same way;
   yet I remain, a memory, through all your days.
2. My bliss endures beside my Lord… although to you I may
   seem like a dead man, laid down in the hollow of the grave.
3. So do not count me dead³… it is your life, instead,
   that is death, when measured by the treasure I have won and laid away.
4. For I am alive with God… in bliss, and I receive
   provision that my poetry is at a loss how to portray.
5. The houris⁴ are led to me as brides, all eager for our meeting;
   they yearn for me, they lean to me in tenderness… oh, what reward this day!
6. Around me flow rivers of honey and of wine⁵,
   and I breathe the fragrance of the blossoms from the riverbank.
7. And there is spreading shade, from boughs that sway and bend
   to bring ripe clusters of fruit within my reach.
8. The birds sing me a melody the soul holds dear,
   while I am given ewers of wine to drink.
9. And I meet my beloved, my Chosen One⁶, and his Companions,
   and every martyr who was no hypocrite, and never sold his faith away.
10. And there among them is the one whose banner we belong to:
    I mean al-Banna, and al-Qassam, who followed in his footsteps⁷;
11. and Ayyash⁸, who watered the roses of our jihad
    with blood, and so we tread his steps wherever, by night, we make our way.
12. I bore down on the enemy, avenging his soul;
    so which of you, when I am gone, will avenge me and make them pay?
13. I bore down on the occupier till I made him taste
    such abasement that he’d live out his life in terror and dismay.
14. I left him reeling, for all that is claimed for him, and,
    once I had put him to the test, I found no might in him, no power.
15. I cast all faintness from my soul, and so I vanquished him,
    while you, for fear of death, live on as the vanquished⁹.
16. I am free of the feebleness that you have grown so used to,
    and so my foe was humbled… bowed beneath his sin’s great weight.
17. I am free of the “peace”¹⁰ that they have peddled,
    which the drowsy sang of at the breaking of the day:
18. gaudy illusions, which they dressed up in their malice;
    and fools believed them, and were led off into captivity.
19. The peace the dreamers wish for is an egg,
    a painted egg… that one fears will break.
20. And now it has fallen to the ground, and struck on that
    which shatters the heads of the deluded for ever and a day.
21. I am the free man: I never bore upon my shoulders
    false hopes… nor weighed my back down with a pact of theirs.
22. And so the enemies became my slaves, through their own terror,
    whenever they heard my name, and the thought of me came to haunt them.
23. I lived in happiness, while the enemies reeled before me,
    and I died a martyr, lofty in my glory, in my pride.
24. I have gone on to my Lord, and you will follow the same way;
    but always, like a traveller by night, my spirit over you makes its way.
25. And I have left behind me young men in their zeal¹¹,
    scouting the road to victory by night and at the break of day.
26. They think that I am only one – how wrong they are! –
    when every young man in Jerusalem has rolled his sleeves up for revenge,
27. and every alley in Palestine is a seedbed
    for a thousand heroes yearning for victory,
28. and every young man who departs will leave behind him
    armies of heroes past all counting.
29. They will make you taste the humiliation of defeat, a colocynth¹²
    on which throats choke, bitterness heaped on bitterness.
30. In your markets, from my bombs, volcanoes will erupt
    that never rest, except for the moment of the charge¹³,
31. until you see them turned to barren waste with none to guard them,
    no buyer there, and no one left to sell.
32. I have sown bombs for you in every step you take,
    to reap you, or to cast terror into your breasts,
33. in every bus, in every house and gathering,
    in the bar, the nightclub, and in every tempting display,
34. and beneath the bed of sleep, when the air speaks of the safety
    of the nights, and the coverlet is the full moon’s ray,
35. and where the lovers meet, when sin is panting
    for breath within the maze of cheek and lips.
36. There, a fidāʾī¹⁴ blows himself up,
    until you vanish from his soil into the grave.
37. You will not savour life, nor find your ease in it;
    and far, far beyond you is a life of peace that knows no dread!
38. The Izz ad-Din Brigades¹⁵ have sworn an oath against you:
    they are the wind, the whirlwind, and the atom bomb,
39. until they sweep away the injustice, and the dark¹⁶
    in which you shelter like the bats, and not the eagle.
40. So, my brothers, bear down on them, and make the whole world
    witness their malice, till they are driven to seek refuge in flight.
41. Jihad until your crookedness is straightened;
    jihad until you yield the last inch of the land.
42. Jihad until you leave our land;
    jihad until, with purity, we wipe the filth away.
43. Jihad, jihad, and no deceitful peace;
    jihad until, with dawn, we wipe the night away.

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