1. Men degrade themselves in life
Yet I seek to live with dignity and honor

2. Some roam the lands hoping
To gain wealth or spoils

3. But I hurl myself into perilous straits
To aid the afflicted and give sight to the blind

4. When they see me emerge from the mountain pass
They cry "come, we have found a protector"

5. And they rush to me, unburdening their sorrows
Speaking to me words long suppressed

6. Each has a malady that consumes him
And grief that makes life bleak and gloomy

7. If he recalls his children, he weeps for them
And his breath comes only with agony

8. I bear burdens that if cast upon
A lofty mountain, would cause it to crumble

9. Cares, pains, the needs of a nation
That suffers, while injustice refuses to abate

10. Encompassed by the wicked and the starving
Who found only food and drink from me

11. Whenever we mention the days of tyranny
That established endless wrongs in Egypt

12. However much we praise eras and dynasties
We'll never praise this abhorrent accursed age

13. We moan, but the people refuse to let us speak
Neither silence nor mouths can be controlled by the tongue

14. Seeing the muzzles on our mouths, sorrow hurls at them
So they built a barrier of fire, unbreachable

15. For every line, their judges prepare hell
In every letter, should we dissent or condemn

16. When the anguished cry out to us, hoping
They deliberate, then equivocate and waver

17. We have become frozen, never rising against torment
Nor stopping the assassin from drawing near

18. Eyes upon us, though we have no need for suspicion
For it is the mark of the doubter to imagine and presume

19. When the blind man enters, they look around him
Suspecting the excess cloth to hide a weapon

20. They call every loyalist a troublemaker
And consider every person of conscience a criminal

21. Indeed, the guardian of evil thought to gain control
But found people heedless and asleep

22. Gently, people of privilege, behind you
Lies a day that hurls fire and blood

23. You shot the people of Egypt with arrows of harm
And thought yourselves archers filling the ages with arrows

24. The fearsome warrior hurls the flood of his might
And the peoples of earth become drowned and adrift

25. The Ottoman empire will one day soon
Be lofty, with no sanctuaries inviolable to it

26. When the Ottomans unsheathe their swords
Tell the privileged to unsheathe what remains of theirs

27. They count it a sword ever-victorious
And an army shaking the battlefields

28. Their leader and elders count it a tiger
Greater than armadas in might and esteem

29. When their onslaught overwhelms, his onslaught rages
And if they recoil from the fury of war, he charges ahead

30. I see him turning them into scattered dust
And their loyalists into tales retold and fragmented