مساجلة ثلاثية

لا تفطميني عن هواك حبيبتي
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:

قال الشاعر الصومالي محمد سعيد الدولة:

هَبَّ الْهَوَى فَتَلَخْبَطَتْ(1) أَفْكَارِيوَأَتَى النَّوَى فَتَشَابَكَتْ أَوْتَارِي
وَكَوَتْ بِنَارِ الشَّوْقِ قَلْبِي لَوْعَةٌتَرْنُو إِلَيْهَا بِالْجَوَى أَشْعَارِي
أَنَا مَا تَرَكْتُ الْقَلْبَ يَرْعَى فِي الْهَوَىأَنَا مَا أَتَيْتُ الْحُبَّ حَسْبَ قَرَارِي
لَكِنَّهُ حُكْمُ الْهَوَى وَفُرُوضُهُيَجْثُو عَلَى الْعُشَّاقِ دُونَ خِيَارِ
رُحْمَاكَ رَبِّي قَدْ شَكَوْتُ مِنَ الْجَوَىيَا رَبِّ لُطْفَكَ رُدَّ لِي أَفْكَارِي
  1. (1) «تلخبط» عامية وليست فصيحة، أُبقيت كما هي لأنها مقصودة في المساجلة

وقال الشاعر الموريتاني محمد ولد عبدي ردا على الأبيات المتقدمة:

يَا عَازِفًا لُطْفًا عَلَى الْأَوْتَارِإِنَّ الْهَوَى ضَرْبٌ مِنَ الْإِسْكَارِ
إِنْ هَبَّ فَالْأَفْكَارُ تَغْدُو أَبْحُرًاحَيْرَى تَمُورُ بِقُوَّةِ التَّيَّارِ
وَإِذَا النَّوَى وَافَى حُرُوفًا سُكَّرًافَالْوَيْلُ لِلتَّخْطِيطِ وَالْخُيَّارِ
الْحُبُّ يَا هَذَا سَمَاءٌ أُوقِدَتْنُورًا تَمَازَجَ وَمْضُهُ بِالنَّارِ
لَا غَرْوَ يَا مُتَلَخْبِطًا شَكْوَى الْجَوَىفَالْوَجْدُ سِرُّ تَلَخْبُطِ الْأَفْكَارِ

وقلت على منوالهما على البديهة:

يَا شَاعِرًا يَقْسُو عَلَى الْقِيثَارِيَشْكُو الْهَوَى وَتَلَخْبُطَ الْأَفْكَارِ
وَيَرَى بِأَنَّ فُؤَادَهُ هَدَفُ النَّوَىمَأْوَى الشُّجُونِ مُمَزَّقُ الْأَسْتَارِ
يَلْقَى سِهَامَ الْحُبِّ غَيْرَ مُخَيَّرٍفِيهَا وَتِلْكَ مَشِيئَةُ الْأَقْدَارِ
وَيَصُوغُ أَسْرَارَ الْهَوَى فِي شِعْرِهِوَالْحُبُّ سِرُّ تَدَفُّقِ الْأَشْعَارِ
قُلْ لِي بِرَبِّكَ مَا تَرَى تَشْكُو لَنَاهَذَا الْهُبُوبَ فَكَيْفَ بِالْإِعْصَارِ؟

في محل باحاج للتجارة بممباسا
18/7/1994م

A Three-Way Exchange in Verse1

The Somali poet Mohamed Said al-Dawla said:

  1. Love blew2 in, and made a muddle (1) of my mind;
    then parting came, and left my strings entwined.
  2. A burning pang has seared my heart with longing's fire,
    and towards it, burning, all my verses gaze and pine.
  3. It was not I who let my heart go grazing in love's fields;
    it was not I who came to love as I'd designed.
  4. No: it is love's decree, the duties love lays down,
    which weigh on lovers, leaving them no choice of any kind.
  5. Your mercy, Lord! I have complained of love's burning ache;
    O Lord, in Your kindness, give me back my mind!
  • (1) Talakhbaṭa, 'to get muddled, jumbled', is colloquial, not Standard Arabic; it has been kept as it is because it is used deliberately in the exchange.

The Mauritanian poet Mohamed Ould Abdi said, in reply to the verses above:

  1. Gently, you who are playing on the strings!
    For love is a kind of drunkenness, you'll find.
  2. Whenever it blows, our thoughts become the seas,
    bewildered, heaving where the strong currents wind.
  3. And when parting comes upon the sugared letters3,
    then woe to planning, and to choosing of every kind!
  4. Love, my good fellow, is a sky set all alight
    with radiance, its gleaming and its fire combined.
  5. No wonder, muddled one, you moan of love's burning ache:
    passion's the secret of the muddled mind.

And I said, on the spot, on the same pattern as theirs4:

  1. O poet who is harsh upon the lyre,
    complaining of your love and muddled mind,
  2. who sees his heart as the target parting aims at,
    a shelter for sorrows, its veils all torn to shreds,
  3. who takes love's arrows with no choice in them,
    and that is as the fates decide;
  4. who shapes the secrets of love in his verse,
    and love's the secret why poems flow, unconfined!
  5. Tell me, by your Lord, what do you think? You grumble to us
    of this mere gust5: then how will you face the whirlwind?

At the Bahaj Trading shop, Mombasa, 18 July 1994

Notes

  1. A musājala is a poetic exchange in which poets answer one another in the same metre and rhyme. The word comes from sajl, a large bucket: two men drawing water from a well would take turns, each trying to draw as much as the other, and poets vying in verse were likened to them. Here three poets, a Somali, a Mauritanian and the author, answer one another in turn. ↩
  2. Habba al-hawā, 'love blew': hawā, 'love, passion', is close in sound and spelling to hawāʾ, 'air, wind', so love is said to 'blow' like a wind. The image runs through the whole exchange: the second poet says 'whenever it blows', and the third ends by asking what the lover will do in the face of a whirlwind. ↩
  3. The verse is playful and hard to pin down. Ḥurūfan sukkaran, 'letters of sugar', are sweet words, the love letters or verses that separation now falls upon. Next to 'sugar' stands khiyār, which means 'choice' but is also the Arabic for 'cucumber', so the line jests with two things from the kitchen while it speaks of the ruin of all plans; the word is vowelled khuyyār, 'the choicest', which keeps the sense of choosing. Takhṭīṭ, 'planning', can also mean drawing lines, writing, which suits the 'letters'. Sukkar, 'sugar', also echoes sukr, 'drunkenness', and the iskār, 'intoxication', of the reply's first verse. Another reading takes the letters to be the way separation arrives, wrapped in sweet words. ↩
  4. ʿAlā minwālihimā, literally 'on their loom': in the same metre and rhyme, taking up the same theme. ʿAlā al-badīha means on the spot, without preparation. ↩
  5. The closing question turns the first poet's own image against him. He began with love that 'blew'; the reply calls his complaint a mere gust (hubūb) and asks, in gentle mockery, how he would fare if love came as a whirlwind (iʿṣār). The rhetorical question expects no answer. ↩

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