1. Ask the caravans if they watered the fevered camels
With dew, so Allah watered the fevered and I.

2. And ask those I met about Umm Malik's mother -
Do the living ask the well how I fare?

3. I bade them farewell laughing
As I went to her, not knowing we'd never meet again.

4. Had I known it was our last meeting
I would have wept and made my beloved companion weep.

5. It is love - its intensity cannot be hidden
And how can tears not show what was secret?

6. They say Layla is a Nabataean healer -
And Layla made me love the outcasts.

7. I love the outcasts if they dwell in her land
But the outcasts have no claim on you, nor I.

8. O Lord, if you make Layla my companion
I will always fast and pray.

9. O Layla’s cousin, if I complained of my misery
To a monk in his monastery, he would weep for me.

10. When lovers moan in their death throes
I call on you, Layla, to answer my call.

11. So the doctor was no use with his cures
Nor the wise man who tried to heal me.

12. I went to Layla’s father with my friends and women
And gathered a group from my countrymen

13. To ask him to soften his hard heart -
But he grew more stubborn and tried to kill me.

14. Tell them what you see of my youth
And the tears that continually stream from me,

15. And that for her sake I loved one who did not love me
And who the days make more and more my enemy,

16. And that for her sake I kept company with people who were prejudiced
Against me and did not respect the rights of a neighbor.