Sol 6

  1. I held your calamity immense, though calamities are immense.

    The earth is a flood, and the sky is aflame.

  2. For your sake, the nights have warred against us, while

    wars are ending and peoples are finding peace.

  3. Egypt announced your death to the Hijaz; then the news

    echoed through Iraq, and Syria cried out.

  4. Death hurried you away in your precious youth; a star vanished,

    and a sword was sheathed in the dust.

  5. I learned the meaning of death, the hardest thing

    that minds and understanding have suffered.

  6. How promising the year was, poised

    for peace, had that year not taken you.

  7. You deserved public celebrations while alive

    more than the mourning held across the land.

  8. You deserved a long life, surrounded

    after hardship by comfort and peace.

  9. Your glorious virtues gave you rank,

    and generosity and chastity gave you a medal.

  10. Though you lived in seclusion, held sacred,

    you were like a flower enclosed by its petals.

  11. You took a stand when the question of the veil

    occupied voices and pens.

  12. You refused to let those who went too far carry you away,

    and refused to let those who fell short turn a blind eye.

  13. So you became an inquirer and acted with discernment;

    arguments for and against were heard in your circle.

  14. You voiced a view that astonished keen minds,

    strengthened by experience and inspiration.

  15. In every gathering, your pen was a companion;

    in every home, your guidance was a leader.

  16. You arrived like a queen, with angels walking beside you,

    noble ones familiar to you from palaces.

  17. You upheld morals and guarded beliefs

    over which uncertain minds nearly stumbled.

  18. You bore, among the burdens of the country and its people,

    what even a bold conqueror could not bear.

  19. Your noble character honored you before

    your maternal and paternal kin were honored through you.

  20. What the days have preserved of your memory

    made children and descendants unnecessary to your legacy.

  21. Generations will pass on your merit in this homeland

    as long as the Nile and the pyramids remain in it.

  22. The sufferings of nations troubled you, and so

    those sorrows and pains came to rest upon you.

  23. You passed away in tenderness and mercy toward the land;

    tenderness can bring grief, and it can bring illness.

  24. Noble women mourn an exemplar formed as

    Egypt would choose and Islam would favor.

  25. They will remember your merit as long as pens write

    and devout prayer and fasting endure.

  26. O daughter of our poet and our judge, through whom

    poetry and judgments gained honor;

  27. and companion of the Arab, who was most faithful

    in keeping covenants and obligations;

  28. today hearts beat for you in pain

    and burning sorrow, as banners so often waved for you.

  29. Through you I mourned faith and worldly life together,

    and for you I strung pearls into words.

Sol 6