الأخوة الأعداء

لا تفطميني عن هواك حبيبتي
ترجمة إنجليزية
شارك:
عَجَبًا لِقَوْمٍ كُلُّهُمْ أَضْدَادُفَجَمِيعُهُمْ لِجَمِيعِهِمْ حُسَّادُ
بِيضُ الْوُجُوهِ بَشَاشَةً وَقُلُوبُهُمْلَوْ فُتِّحَتْ غَشِيَ الْأَنَامَ سَوَادُ
فَإِذَا الْتَقَوْا هَشُّوا وَبَشُّوا إِنَّمَاأَرْوَاحُهُمْ تَحْتَلُّهَا الْأَحْقَادُ
إِنْ أَقْبَلُوا أُعْجِبْتَ مِنْ أَجْسَامِهِمْوَعَجِبْتَ كَيْفَ تُعَلَّفُ الْأَجْسَادُ
مَا فَرَّقَتْهُمْ فِي الْمَذَاهِبِ وِجْهَةٌلَكِنَّهُمْ فِي فِعْلِهِمْ أَضْدَادُ
جَمَعَتْهُمُ كُلُّ الْجَوَامِعِ .. مَذْهَبٌوَطَرِيقَةٌ .. بَلْ تُرْبَةٌ وَمِهَادُ
لَكِنَّمَا أَهْوَاؤُهُمْ شَتَّى فَلَاصَفْوٌ وَلَا حُبٌّ لَهُمْ وَوِدَادُ
إِنْ خَاصَمُوا فَجَرُوا وَقَالُوا لِلْوَرَىهَذَا الْجِهَادُ وَمَا سِوَاهُ جِهَادُ
يَتَظَاهَرُونَ بِأَنَّ كُلَّ فِعَالِهِمْلِلَّهِ وَهْيَ جَمِيعُهَا إِفْسَادُ
فَشَرَابُهُمْ كَدَرٌ وَمِلْءُ قُلُوبِهِمْمَرَضٌ وَهُمْ عَنْ رَبِّهِمْ قَدْ حَادُوا
وَإِذَا الْهَوَى قَادَ الْأَعِنَّةَ فَالْقُلُوبُ إِلَى الْمَهَالِكِ وَالرَّدَى تَنْقَادُ
عَبَدُوا الدَّرَاهِمَ وَالدَّنَانِيرَ الَّتِيبِرَنِينِهَا يَحْلُو لَهُمْ إِنْشَادُ
شَادُوا صُرُوحًا لِلتَّبَاغُضِ بَيْنَنَابِتْنَا عَلَيْهِ فَبِئْسَمَا قَدْ شَادُوا
يَسْعَوْنَ فِي تَمْجِيدِ شَخْصِيَّاتِهِمْفَهُمُ لَنَا الْأَقْطَابُ وَالْأَوْتَادُ
وَيُصَوِّرُونَ لَنَا بِأَنَّهُمُ الثُّرَيَّــا رِفْعَةً .. وَشَجَاعَةً آسَادُ
كِبْرٌ يُغَلَّفُ بِالتَّوَاضُعِ أَوْ فَقُلْعِصْيَانُ رَبٍّ قَادَهُ الْعُبَّادُ
رِجْسٌ يُغَلَّفُ بِالطَّهَارَةِ أَوْ فَقُلْشَرَهٌ يَقُودُ زِمَامَهُ الزُّهَّادُ
يَسْعَوْنَ فِي تَحْطِيمِ بَعْضِهِمُ لَدَىكُلِّ النَّوَادِي بِئْسَمَا قَدْ كَادُوا
وَالَوْا وَعَادَوْا لَا لِشَيْءٍ إِنَّمَالِحُظُوظِ نَفْسٍ بَغْيُهَا يَزْدَادُ
إِنِّي بَرِئْتُ إِلَى الْمُهَيْمِنِ مِنْهُمُأَصْلِي وَفَرْعِي الْجَدُّ وَالْأَحْفَادُ

منبع الرو – كينيا
1999م

Brothers in Enmity1

  1. How strange a people, every one at odds!
    All of them envy all of them, on every side.
  2. Their faces white with cheer2; but open up their hearts,
    and all mankind would drown beneath the blackness from inside.
  3. When they meet, they beam and brighten; and yet
    their souls are held by rancour, as a land is occupied.
  4. When they come towards you, their bodies3 impress you,
    and you wonder how such bodies have been fattened, fed on fodder.
  5. No doctrine ever turned their faces different ways;
    and yet in what they do, they stand on opposite sides.
  6. Every bond4 has gathered them: one school of law, one order,
    no, more: one native soil, one cradle, side by side.
  7. But their desires are scattered5: among them there is no
    clearness of heart, no love, and no affection.
  8. When they quarrel, they know no bounds6, and they tell the world:
    “This is jihad, and there is no jihad but this!”
  9. They make a show that all they do is done for God,
    when every deed of theirs is nothing but corruption.
  10. Their drink is muddied, sickness fills their hearts7,
    and from their Lord they've swerved, and turned aside.
  11. And when desire takes the reins, the hearts
    are led away to ruin and to death.
  12. They worship the dirhams and the dinars8, to whose ringing
    their chanting grows the sweeter.
  13. They've raised among us towers of mutual hate
    where now we pass our nights. How wretched is the thing they've built!
  14. They strive to glorify their own persons,
    so that to us they are the Poles, the Pegs9,
  15. and they paint themselves for us as the Pleiades
    for loftiness, and lions for their courage.
  16. Pride, wrapped in humility; or say, rather:
    rebellion against the Lord, with His worshippers as guide!
  17. Filth, wrapped in purity; or say, rather:
    greed, led by the halter, with ascetics10 as its guide!
  18. They strive to wreck each other in every gathering:
    how wretched are the plots they've laid!
  19. They make allies and enemies11 for nothing
    but the cravings of a self whose wrongdoing only grows.
  20. Before the All-Watchful12 I declare myself quit of them,
    I, root and branch, my forefathers and my descendants.

Mambrui, Kenya, 199913

Notes

  1. Al-ikhwa al-aʿdāʾ, literally 'the enemy brothers', is a set phrase in modern Arabic for kinsmen or comrades who are bitter enemies of one another. The poem describes men bound by every tie of faith and kinship who are yet at war among themselves. ↩
  2. White and black faces carry a moral sense in Arabic, drawn from the Qur'an: 'the day when some faces turn white and some faces turn black' (Āl ʿImrān 3:106). A white face means honour and a clear conscience; here the whiteness is only a surface of cheerful manners, and the blackness in the hearts would flood the world. ↩
  3. The verse echoes the Qur'an on the hypocrites: 'When you see them, their bodies impress you' (al-Munāfiqūn 63:4). The poet adds a sting of his own: tuʿallafu, 'they are fed fodder', is said of cattle, so the impressive bodies are those of well-fed livestock. ↩
  4. Jawāmiʿ, 'bonds, things that bring together', is also the plural of jāmiʿ, the congregational mosque, so 'every bond has gathered them' also says that every mosque has gathered them. Madhhab is a school of Islamic law, and ṭarīqa a Sufi order or brotherhood. The men share both, as well as their native soil and upbringing, so their enmity has no doctrinal excuse. ↩
  5. Ahwāʾuhum shattā, 'their desires are scattered', recalls the Qur'an: 'You think them united, but their hearts are scattered (shattā)' (al-Ḥashr 59:14). ↩
  6. Idhā khāṣamū fajarū, 'when they quarrel they go beyond all bounds', quotes the hadith on the marks of the hypocrite, one of which is that 'when he quarrels, he behaves shamelessly'. Fujūr is wickedness that breaks every restraint. ↩
  7. 'In their hearts is a sickness' is the Qur'anic description of the hypocrites (al-Baqara 2:10). 'Their drink is muddied' may also recall the pre-Islamic poet ʿAmr ibn Kulthūm, who boasted that his tribe drinks pure water while others drink it 'muddied and full of mire'; here the muddied drink is the portion of the brothers themselves. ↩
  8. The phrase recalls the hadith 'Wretched is the slave of the dinar and the dirham', the gold and silver coins of early Islam. Inshād, 'chanting', is also the word for religious chanting, which gives the verse a bitter irony: their chanting grows sweetest to the ring of coins. ↩
  9. In Sufi thought the quṭb, 'Pole', is the supreme saint of his age, around whom the spiritual world turns, and the awtād, 'Pegs', are the saints who hold the earth firm as tent-pegs hold a tent. These men claim such rank for themselves. ↩
  10. Verses 16 and 17 are built in exact parallel (muqābala): pride clothed as humility, filth clothed as purity; worshippers leading rebellion against God, ascetics holding the halter of greed. Each pair joins opposites to expose the hypocrisy. ↩
  11. Wālaw wa-ʿādaw, 'they took friends and took enemies', inverts the Islamic ideal of loving and hating for God's sake alone (al-ḥubb fī Allāh wa-l-bughḍ fī Allāh): these men make friends and enemies only for their own selfish ends. ↩
  12. Bariʾtu ilā Allāh min …, 'I declare myself quit of … before God', is the solemn Islamic formula of disavowal. Al-Muhaymin, 'the All-Watchful, the Guardian', is one of the names of God. ↩
  13. The Arabic has Manbaʿ al-Rū, the Arabic form of the name of Mambrui, a small historic town on the Kenyan coast north of Malindi. ↩

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