عادت بعودك آمالي وأحلامي — أحمد الكاشف

With your return, my hopes and dreams returned;

your nearness stirred my memories and ardor.

I rose to demand that the days fulfill their promise,

seeking a cure for my torments and pains.

No sooner did I strive for what I hoped to gain

than I felt a fire beneath my feet,

and someone crying to me: “Hope not for deliverance—

the road to it has been barred for years.”

God decreed only what Egypt, through fear

and delusions, proved unable to bear:

an overwhelming torrent demolished her pillars—

and a swelling, surging flood may topple mountains.

Nothing remains in her but breaths she draws again,

and a submissive people, devoid of courage,

content with the humiliation and misery they have grown used to,

the horror of calamity—indeed, the tyranny of decrees.

Never once did they remember that their homeland

lay torn apart by a lion’s fangs.

They expose themselves unarmed to the oppressor

until struck, then complain of the marksman’s cruelty.

O you who come while all eyes watch you,

settle here in spacious welcome, man of lofty aspiration.

Contemplate today what appears before your eyes:

the faces of two camps—supporters and reproachers.

Whoever deemed your endeavor wrong spent the night

with a hot, consuming rage against you in his heart.

He received you only in wrath and fury,

as though you were a culprit guilty of the worst sins.

But whoever deemed you right rose in celebration,

magnifying you and showing you every honor.

He thinks you remain ever hopeful

of entering the fray or unfurling banners,

and of returning to your former influence in the

Valley, once again empowered to decide and command.

As though he had forgotten the disasters that befell you

and whose horrors left you with a bloodied claw—

your unity shattered, your will subdued, your two

wings broken, amid misery and destitution—

fleeing before your troops, themselves so filled

with terror that you saw from them only retreat.

O rebel who sought to reform the country by

the sedition and corruption he stirred within it,

deceived by a band who revealed their designs

to repel every invading, unjust aggressor.

He cried among the people, summoning and compelling them

to wage war, until he threw the Valley into turmoil.

He undertook the affair without mastering its means

or seeking the aid of sound planning and guidance.

He marched, supposing victory was assured

for his army so long as water and provisions continued.

He did not know that the strongest of those aspiring

to seize the country were lying in wait for him.

Then what happened, happened—events unknown

to neither the vigilant present nor the absent.

Events that turned time itself gray and filled

the whole land, lowlands and uplands, with terror.

Had the people known their outcome and final end,

no mother before them would have been congratulated on her children.

I shall never, never forget the day their army recoiled

from the fortifications like a thirst-crazed wanderer,

leaving multitudes behind with their conqueror,

surrendered in body and soul.

Their day had not ended before their commanders

were weighed down with chains and fetters.

Victory fell to the English, who took

from among them their finest supporters and guides.

Your party grew accustomed to the aggressor’s oppression, becoming

well accustomed to the very evil you had most feared.

It submitted, obeying commands and heeding

prohibitions, while fear came and went within it.

You once feared for the homelands when you saw

even a few foreigners within them;

today they are cramped by a host as countless as sand—

a thousand counters could not number it in a thousand years.

It surges like the sea, whose billows engulfed us

and drowned us amid roaring foam.

We have become captives of calamities, with no escape

from their bondage, and bereft of a rescuing redeemer.

If we weep so tears may soothe our burning anguish,

the enemies rage with warnings and threats.

So we hold back our tears and even display submission to them,

while within our breasts we conceal the fire of grudges.

Such is the life of a people whose elevation you once sought,

only to cast them down from a balloon’s lofty edge.

Let not Egypt’s ornaments deceive you,

nor her gardens and fine buildings.

They are merely a garment covering a body

wasted away by long illness and sorrow.

Nor rejoice in the victories of which we have spoken,

or in our conquests of Nubia and Sudan.

We have no share in them by which to live;

we dwell only in despair and deprivation.

Your country lies in a state that can delight

neither a free soul nor any pair of eyes.

Could we escape its straits,

its landmarks would be emptied of every Ottoman.

Why yearn for her when, in anger,

she refuses to meet you, estranged and forgetful?

Perhaps by this you sought to share

the burden of misfortunes borne by this suffering people’s heart.

Were it not for you, the enemies would not have robbed it of prosperity,

nor would every traitor have gained mastery over it.

The country would have been spared this misery

had you been sincere in private and in public.

How tranquil in mind, how fortunate in condition,

and how far from every aggression we would have been,

when government was justice in the hands of a monarch

pure of heart, gentle and faithful.

We passed evening and morning in freedom, possessing

full mastery over the vicissitudes of the nights.

The Nile flowed steadily and sweetly, and we gloried in it

above the Euphrates, the Sayhan, and the Jayhan.

Our people were united, joy shone bright,

and life passed between the square and the garden.

After its purity, time has muddied life’s spring;

all now stand between thirst and choking grief.

From that sedition we reaped no consequence

but the harshest punishment to deter the offender.

O remnants of the Urabists, you cannot

bring back what passed away long ages ago,

nor reverse the fate that befell your homeland

because of the former injustice and tyranny.

God frustrated all the suppositions and calculations

your souls concealed and openly proclaimed.

Enough for you is what you suffered after your revolt:

dispersion far from family and homeland.

Ask your Lord’s forgiveness for it, that perhaps

you may receive His pardon and favor.

O my country, why is it that whenever my eyes behold

the soldiers and auxiliaries within you,

and the might of the aggressive intruder, my spirit trembles,

and my streaming tears ulcerate my eyelids?

Oh, how ardently I long for a day when I see you

safe from him—oh, how prolonged my yearning!

Then we shall obey none but Abdülhamid,

and accept no prince but your Abbas the Second.

There I shall joyfully declaim my poems,

offering congratulations and enchanting the world with my melodies.

O Egypt, may your faithful Nile endure for you, and may

no branch within you bear me unless it is lush and well-watered.