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كُوسُوفَا بُوسْنَةٌ أُخْرَىتُطِلُّ بِرَأْسِهَا حَيْرَى
تَزِيدُ جِرَاحَ أُمَّتِنَانَزِيفًا.. وَهْيَ لَا تَبْرَا
صَلِيبُ القَوْمِ مُنْتَصِبٌنُبَاعُ عَلَيْهِ أَوْ نُشْرَى
وَنُصْلَبُ فَوْقَهُ حِينًاوَنُنْحَرُ بِالمُدَى نَحْرًا
وَنَحْنُ هِلَالُنَا غَافٍبِلَيْلٍ لَمْ يَلِدْ فَجْرًا
بَكَيْنَا أَمْسِ أَنْدَلُسًاوَنَبْكِي يَوْمَنَا القُدْسَا
وَقَدْ كَثُرَ البُكَا لَكِنْأَيُجْدِي الدَّمْعُ مَنْ قَعِسَا؟
سِلَاحُ القَوْمِ هِمَّتُهُمْوَنَحْنُ: لَعَلَّ، لَيْتَ، عَسَى!
نَعِيشُ هُنَا تُدَغْدِغُنَاأَبَاطِيلُ الهَوَى تَعِسًا
وَقَدْ نَصْحُو عَلَى أَمَلٍفَيَخْذُلُنَا الَّذِي نَعَسَا
أَمَا لِجُمُوعِنَا حَادِيأَمَا لِنَشِيدِنَا شَادِي؟
وَمَا لِسُيُوفِنَا صَدِئَتْوَمَا بَرِحَتْ بِأَغْمَادِ؟
فَهَلْ شُلَّتْ سَوَاعِدُنَالِنَحْمِلَهَا كَأَجْنَادِ؟
نُحَرِّرُ أَرْضَ أُمَّتِنَاوَنَحْمِي إِرْثَ أَجْدَادِ
فَتَأْتِينَا رِيَاحُ النَّصْرِلَمْ تُخْلِفْ بِمِيعَادِ
أَمَا كُنَّا حُمَاةَ الدَّارِ وَالجُنْدَ المَيَامِينَا؟
وَتَعْرِفُنَا بِقَاعُ الكَوْنِ.. إِنْ ثُرْنَا تُحَيِّينَا
فَتَحْنَاهَا بِنُورِ اللَّهِإِذْ حَمَلَتْهُ أَيْدِينَا
مَلَاحِمُنَا شَوَاهِدُنَافَسَلْ بَدْرًا وَحِطِّينَا
مَتَى انْتَفَضَتْ عَزَائِمُنَافَنَصْرُ اللَّهِ حَادِينَا
كَفَى – يَا قَوْمَنَا – نَوْمًالِنَجْعَلَ يَوْمَنَا يَوْمًا
نُغَيِّرُ مَا بِأَنْفُسِنَاوَنَطْوِي العَتْبَ وَاللَّوْمَا
نُحَوِّلُهُ لَنَا عِزًّايَكُونُ عَلَى العِدَا شُومًا
نُعِيدُ جِنَانَ أَنْدَلُسٍإِلَى أَرْضِ الحِمَى دَوْمًا
وَنَزْحَفُ فِي جَحَافِلِنَالِنَفْتَحَ بَعْدَهَا رُومَا

نُشرت في مجلة «المجتمع»، العدد 1310
28 يوليو 1998م

Kosovo1

  1. Kosovo: another Bosnia,
    rearing its head, distraught.
  2. It makes our nation’s2 wounds bleed more,
    and healing comes to naught.
  3. Their cross stands raised; upon it
    we are sold, or we are bought3;
  4. at times we’re crucified upon it,
    and slaughtered, knife at throat,
  5. while our crescent lies asleep
    in a night that bore no dawn.
  6. Yesterday we wept for al-Andalus4;
    we weep for Jerusalem today.
  7. Our weeping has grown great; but can
    tears help the ones who hang back5 and delay?
  8. Their weapon is their resolve;
    and ours: ‘perhaps’, ‘if only’, ‘may’!6
  9. We live here, wretched, tickled by
    the empty fancies of desire,
  10. and if at times we wake to hope,
    the one who dozes when it counts7 will let us down.
  11. Is there no driver8 for our throng,
    no singer for our anthem’s song?
  12. And what ails our swords, that they have rusted,
    still in their scabbards all along?
  13. Are our arms palsied, then, that we
    can’t take up our swords as soldiers do,
  14. to free our nation’s land, and guard
    the heritage our fathers handed on?
  15. Then victory’s winds would come to us,
    never failing the appointed hour9.
  16. Were we not the homeland’s guardians,
    the troops whom fortune blessed?
  17. The regions of the world all know us:
    if we rise up, they hail our name.
  18. We opened them10 by the light of God,
    when our hands bore that flame.
  19. Our epic battles are our witnesses:
    ask Badr, and ask Hattin11!
  20. Whenever our resolve rises up,
    God’s victory is the driver8 of our train.
  21. Enough, my people, of sleeping!
    Let us make our day a day12.
  22. Let us change what lies within ourselves13,
    and fold reproach and blame away,
  23. and turn it into glory for ourselves,
    an ill omen for our foes.
  24. We will bring the gardens of al-Andalus
    back to the sacred land14, to stay,
  25. and march on in our legions, then
    go on to open Rome15 in turn.

Published in the magazine al-Mujtamaʿ, issue 1310, 28 July 199816

Notes

  1. The poem was written in 1998, as Serbian forces were waging a campaign of repression against the Albanian population of Kosovo, most of them Muslims. It came three years after the end of the Bosnian war of 1992–1995, with its massacres and 'ethnic cleansing' of Bosnian Muslims; hence 'another Bosnia'. ↩
  2. Ummah here is the worldwide community of Muslims, felt as a single body: a wound in Kosovo is a wound in the whole nation. ↩
  3. 'Their cross' and 'our crescent' (in the fifth verse) are the emblems of the two sides as the poet sees the conflict: Serb nationalist forces fought under Orthodox Christian symbols, while the victims were Muslims. The cross is also the instrument of crucifixion, so it serves at once as the auction block on which 'we are sold or bought' and as the instrument on which 'we are crucified'. The verb nunḥaru is used of slaughtering a sacrificial beast by cutting its throat. ↩
  4. Al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, whose loss, completed with the fall of Granada in 1492, is the great elegiac theme of Arabic poetry. Weeping for al-Andalus 'yesterday' and for Jerusalem 'today' draws a line of loss from the past into the present. ↩
  5. Qaʿisa is taken here in the sense of qaʿasa or taqāʿasa, 'to hang back, to sit idle and not rise to the task'. The rhetorical question expects the answer no: tears are no use to those who will not act. ↩
  6. Laʿalla ('perhaps') and ʿasā ('it may be', here 'may') are the Arabic words of hoping, and layta ('if only') the word of wishing, used above all for what is out of reach. The poet reduces the nation's whole armoury to three small words of grammar: others fight with resolve, we fight with wishes. The list is left hanging, with an exclamation of bitter irony. ↩
  7. ‘The one who dozes’ (alladhī naʿasā) is anyone who dozes off at the hour that calls for earnest action: whoever sleeps when he should act betrays the hope. ↩
  8. The ḥādī is the camel-driver who sings the ḥudāʾ, the rhythmic chant that urges camels on and keeps a caravan moving. The question pictures the nation as a caravan with no one to drive it forward and no song to march to. In the twentieth verse the image returns as the answer: God's victory will be the ḥādī of the caravan, the 'train'. ↩
  9. 'Never failing the appointed hour' echoes the Qur'anic assurance that 'God does not fail His promise' (inna Allāha lā yukhlifu al-mīʿād, Q 3:9): victory would come as surely as a divine promise. ↩
  10. Fataḥa, 'to open', is the Arabic word for the early Islamic conquests (futūḥ, literally 'openings'): the lands are 'opened' to the faith. 'The light of God' is the faith itself, carried in the conquerors' hands like a flame. The same verb returns in the last verse, where the poet looks to 'open' Rome. ↩
  11. Badr (624) was the first great victory of the Prophet Muḥammad (PBUH) and the early Muslims, against the Quraysh of Mecca, won against heavy odds. Hattin (1187) was the victory of Saladin over the Crusaders, which opened the way to the recovery of Jerusalem, the city mourned in the sixth verse. ↩
  12. Yawm, 'day', also means a day of battle: the famous battles of the pre-Islamic Arabs are known as their 'Days' (ayyām al-ʿArab). 'To make our day a day' is to make it one to be remembered, a day of deeds. The verse also rings on nawman ('sleep') and yawman ('day'), words that differ by a single letter: the day of deeds is to replace the sleep. ↩
  13. An allusion to the Qur'an: 'God does not change what is in a people until they change what is in themselves' (Q 13:11). Renewal, the poet says, must begin within. ↩
  14. Arḍ al-ḥimā, 'the land of the protected pasture', means the homeland that is guarded and held sacred, here the lands of Islam. To bring the gardens of al-Andalus back to it is to restore lost Muslim Spain to the Muslim world. ↩
  15. An allusion to a hadith in which the Prophet (PBUH), asked which city would be conquered first, Constantinople or Rome, answered that the city of Heraclius, Constantinople, would be first. Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453; the conquest of Rome remained in Muslim tradition a promise still to come. ↩
  16. Al-Mujtamaʿ ('Society') is a weekly Islamic magazine published in Kuwait. ↩

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