1. My friend, you are the inspiration of my poem
And in you lies my great, glorious hope

2. My friend, you are my very soul
What bright hopes you wish would come to fruition

3. You wish for glory and magnificence
Those dreams are the secret of my existence

4. For I am what you feel and endure
Despite our distance, in existence we are one

5. My friend, though we have not said a hurtful word
That would spill blood and pus

6. The cure is in our hands, so seek it
In a song that seduces the ranks of soldiers

7. And seek it in the human cannon
That sings with an cannon of steel

8. And seek it in the peasant soldier who tills the land
Unwillingly with his calloused palm

9. And seek it in the worker who excels at his craft
With his strained and exhausted mind

10. And seek it in all the people's work
And bless their life from afar

11. Those people whose lives are filled
With cups of gloom and stillness

12. In them live remnants of the dignity and resilience
Of ancestors from days gone by

13. We are of them, so like them we pray
And suffer the same cursed fate

14. My friend, while the people are smothered in silence
Hear their muffled voices

15. Under stillness, the snakes lie in wait
Expecting their customary day

16. A day when snakes are of no use
And space rings with the roar of lions

17. My friend, though we have not breathed a spirit
That writhes in chains

18. Let not your beautiful tune be but wailing
Take flight with sweet melody instead

19. Softly, until the dawn comes to us
Crowned with good fortune

20. Then we will sound the organs with delight
And revive their tunes anew

21. My friend, this is not so strange
For distant hopes are brought near

22. Soon we will meet, and every old man
And child among us will cry:

23. "Who am I without pride and nobility
And aspirations that grasp the nights tightly?

24. Who am I if for my dear homeland
I accept shackles and restrictions as my livelihood?

25. Who am I in this life if self-death carries me
To sink into stillness and inaction?

26. Who am I while the existence around me is vast,
If I confine myself to passions and limits?"

27. Life, life is around me, and from it
I take no necessity for my being

28. And my inviolable hopes fill me, in them
Is all I have, my pledges and wants.

29. My friend, what is Egypt, what are the people, what is history
What is Omar, what is the glory of ancestors?

30. My friend, what is Egypt, once the venerable
And steadfast outcast of the world?

31. My friend, what are the people, only remnants
Of a dream that strayed from an aimless imagination?

32. My friend, we are the descendants of history
And guardians of its glory in existence

33. How did what we inherited from it vanish
Leaving us weeping for bygone glory?

34. My friend, we are the inheritors of Omar
Where is the standing of a newborn's father?

35. My friend, though we are withered in captivity
Our hands have acquiesced to chains

36. Set loose your thoughts and let your imagination take flight
Surge forth with boundless vitality

37. Pour what your free heart holds of light
Onto your long saddened horizon

38. Tomorrow is among us, and it holds our dreams
Troops too generous to be soldiers

39. And for us in the sky is glory that we will revive
And live for its long-awaited dawn

40. Peace be upon it the day we behold its beauty
Radiant with the light of eternity

41. And peace be upon the sanctuary and its children
Victims of deprivation and homelessness

42. The noble chiefs who were enslaved
By slaves who ruled by acts of slaves