Beyond the Barbed Wire: Three translations || Huzaifa Pandit

Don’t execute these voices
Ahmed Faraz

You impale every infidel heart
armed with spears of your doctrine.


Why wave daggers in our face?
Except love, we preach no doctrine.

Let songs flow through this city
Permit us to call home this city.

We feed fresh colour to flowers
We guard the sweet scent of flowers.

Whose blood do you intend to spill?
We preach love, nor goad to kill.

What will you enjoy of this city:
When words
get hunted into extinction?
When the lyre
is slain as an abomination.
When poems
migrate from persecution?
When melody
is executed by poison?
When a famine
Devours all conversation.
When nothing remains
Save ruins and destruction?

Who will you stone
then?
You will recoil
in horror
When the mirror serves
You
your own reflection.


(Ahmed Faraz (Urdu: احمد فراز‬‎, born Syed Ahmed Shah (Urdu: سید احمد شاہ‬‎) on 12 January 1931in Kohat, died 25 August 2008) was a Pakistani Urdu poet. He was widely known as one of the best modern Urdu poets of the last century. Faraz was his pen name, (in Urdu takhalus تخلص). He died in Islamabad on 25 August 2008. He was awarded Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Hilal-e-Imtiaz and posthumously the Hilal-e-Pakistan by the Government of Pakistan.)


Letter to the Leader
Habeeb Jalib

I assured him:
These teeming millions
are models of rank ignorance
Their conscience lies
in deep deep slumber!
The last stammering ray of hope
was devoured by night-black darkness.
The rumour is true:
reports of their demise
are confirmed as true.
Such impudence-
infested with life.
Only you possess
their remedy.

I assured him:
You inherit the radiance
of the compassionate Lord.
Wisdom incarnate,
Knowledge personified
The nation stands firm
behind you
Our deliverance lies
with you.
You are the dawn
of the promised day
The vast dark
of the dreadful night
Threatens us after you!
This handful that dares to speak
are mere conspirators
bent on mischief.
Lock their tongues
Strangle their throats!
People are caged
At their own cost
in your peaceful regime.
He is an ideal citizen:
head always bowed
At your merciful door.
Forgive his faults!
He is deserving of your mercy.


I advised him:
China is a dear neighbour
A good neighbour is a friend.
May our loyal lives
Be sacrificed on her.
But, be warned:
Don’t be tempted by her autocracy.
It’d make a strange bedfellow
For our Democracy.
Praise it from distance!
Don’t even dream of intimacy.
Surely, these billion simpletons
Called the masses
Can never be worthy
of the coveted throne.
You, only you are the definite reality
These fools are a stupid fantasy.
We pray everyday
To our million gods:
May you stay the President
Till the moon weeps in the sky

Till the sun seethes in the sky. 

- to Mohamad Akhlaq (dadri)

(Habib Jalib (Urdu: حبیب جالب) was a Pakistani revolutionary poet, left-wing activist and politician who opposed martial law, authoritarianism and state oppression. Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz paid tributes to him by saying that he was truly the poet of the masses. He employed a unique sing song style of recitation that combined with his easy earthly idiom granted him massive abiding popularity. The band Laal has rendered several poems of his to critical acclaim.)



Margin
Fehmida Riaz

Has it struck you
When you wax eloquent
about your honour and dignity
and the dizzy supremacy of your
eastern ethics,
from which lofty position
you observe a wretched foreign culture, far inferior
when you note in golden letters your
noble story, the fine, refined traits of your customs
leave a margin in black
where lie pasted modest eastern-women
never ever exposed to the eyes
of the spying sky.
There lie registered
the autobiographies of their modesty
that continue to be written till date
such tales as demand the ransom
of pity and compassion
this is the margin of your culture,
your glorious civilization
that has concealed itself from everyone
till now.
Now tell me just this:
How will you deny
ignore this?


(Fahmida Riaz died on November 21. She will be remembered for her bravery – for her outspokenness as a feminist and public intellectual – and for being a great poet. She wrote for and about ordinary people and their plight, which is why she will be remembered alongside that other great Pakistani poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz.)