يقين البلاد وإيمانها — أحمد الكاشف

The country’s confidence and its faith

you won, and so strengthened its authority.

You built for it an auspicious house,

and came to choose its inhabitants,

ennobling its seats, after

you had made qualifications their price.

And you chose reformers for the nation,

who set up its scales upon the earth.

And the king, for whom lives would be given, conveyed to you

through his approval of you, the country’s approval.

And you traveled on his journey through Upper Egypt,

bringing glad tidings to Egypt and its Sudan.

And the tour through those regions increased

the regions’ ease and prosperity.

For if its celebrations delighted him,

they had received from you what adorned them.

You secured for your party within the state

its future, and dealt with its angry man.

His hand held none of its keys of power,

so he became an enemy of whoever safeguarded it.

You fulfilled the trust of your people,

and whoever betrayed it came to thwart you.

And he cannot, whether he rebels or obeys,

improve matters or make them worse.

So what ails the clan, after affection,

that it now severs ties with its brothers?

And you reproached it while it complained to

its enemies of its anguish and sorrows.

And it grieves over power, though it was the one

that wished for its own exclusion from power.

And it is astonishing that eagles should sink so low,

then follow Egypt’s crows.

And one who has done no wrong suffers ill-treatment,

then asks it today for its forgiveness.

And he forgets what yesterday he counted

against it, and asks that it forget.

And you have power over a faction

whose aggression your forbearance increases.

It counts against you the calamities of time,

though in you it found its ready helper.

It turned with its offering to the adversary,

in hypocrisy, but he did not accept its offering.

And when you bore patiently with its gray-haired men,

they went on inciting its young men against you.

For if its arena is gone today,

it lost its horsemen yesterday.

And nothing remains but its false rumors,

revealing its grudges to the people.

And they are nothing but the land’s wolves,

turned by your might into its flocks.

And you are none other than time’s messenger

to Egypt, demolishing its idols.

You assailed its beliefs, and they turned

toward you, and you transformed its minds.

And greater than the conqueror of the fortress is one

who restores to the soul its inner awareness.

And the group must surely return

to you, even if it fears announcing that return.

You have governed—and governance has its brave men,

just as war has its brave men.

And you bound your rule in the two nations

to heaven’s justice and benevolence.

The ship will anchor proudly,

and the voyagers will have praised its captain.

And indeed the cause is entrusted

to whoever today possesses its proof.