1. O Coptic community, O sons of Egypt in prosperity,

    as you have been in adversity too.

  2. We have lost a great man, one of us and of you,

    who yesterday was the ornament of the great.

  3. So we held for him in every gathering place

    a mourning assembly resounding with the sound of weeping.

  4. And we mingled our tears with tears

    that your eyes shed so generously.

  5. And we saw how the calamity ravaged reason,

    and what the disaster did to the wise.

  6. God bless you! You are foremost among people

    in loyalty, if the loyal are counted.

  7. Tears that surpassed the measure of every sorrow

    and overstepped the bounds of every consolation;

  8. and lamentation beyond all imagining,

    and wailing in the wake of every joy.

  9. Had you climbed up to the stars,

    you would surely have accused the stars of al-Jawza.

  10. Your excuse is that Boutros was, in Egypt,

    great in merit, rich in eminence.

  11. Lessen your cries: in Egypt there are no

    enemies of Egypt's sons.

  12. The faith of Jesus among you, and that of his brother

    Ahmad, both enjoin brotherhood upon us.

  13. Woe to you! Christians do not behave this way.

    Be mindful of God, the Creator of the Virgin.

  14. Egypt is you and us—unless

    the causes of misery arise to divide us.

  15. Egypt is ours if we hold

    together; otherwise Egypt belongs to strangers.

  16. Do not obey people from among us and you

    who sowed between us the seeds of estrangement.

  17. Do not turn your faces toward anyone who sullied

    the purity within our hearts.

  18. Indeed, the faith of Christ enjoins good conduct

    and forbids the course of the ignorant.

  19. Let none of us be an enemy to another;

    may God curse those who sanction enmity.

  20. O murderer, drink a cup of death

    in the bloom of youth and the freshness of young manhood.

  21. Had we anything harsher than killing

    as punishment, you would have received it as your due.

Sol 6.1