The Most Beautiful Arabic Poetry I've Read

I’ve translated an old tale which ends with one of the most beautiful Arabic poetry I have ever come across. It’s about one of the twelve Shia imams- Imam Ali Al Hadi. Although I do not believe in his (or their) purported immunity to have committed mistakes, I do, however, hold them with high regards as some of the leading and righteous men in Islam’s history.

Unfortunately, I haven’t read more about him or his lineage in the Imam chronicles, and inshallah, when the opportunity and time (really, mostly time), arises, I definitely will.

Mutawakkil was a typically cruel Abbasid caliph, and very hostile towards those who he viewed as being a threat to his reign and power, and especially influence. Imam Ali al-Hadi, lived in one of the Iraqi cities, and because of his great character, people admired and respected him immensely. Fearing him, Mutawakel called on Yahya bin Harthama, and ordered him to go into city, and look at the situation.

So Yahya narrated the story, saying, “I went to the city, and inquired about him, and when people heard my inquisitive questions, out of fear for Ali, they all gathered in riot to reassure me that this man was one whose heart has abandoned this world for the after, was always part of the mosque, did not have a tendency to have worldly desires, and has always been there to help and improve their lives.

“They made me swear to be gentle, and I reassured them that I was not ordered to harm him, and that there is nothing wrong. Then I searched his home but did not find but copies of the Koran and prayers, and books of knowledge, And this made him grow in my eyes, and I assumed the service myself, and did well treating him kindly.”

“When I reached Baghdad, Isaac Bin Abraham Al-Taheri, the ruler of Baghdad, began saying to me: ‘O Yahya, This man is the son of the messenger of God, and Mutawakkil, of whom you know, if you instigate him, will order his execution. And if this happens, the Messenger of Allah will be your opponent until the Day of Resurrection’.

“I said to him: By God, I have not stood by him, except in all matters sponsoring.”

“Then I escorted him to Sirmenrai, I came across the Turkish Waseef, I told him of Ali’s arrival, he swore: 'By God, if a hair falls off this man, no one will be arrogated for it but you'.

“When I entered the Caliph’s palace, Mutawakkil asked me about him, and I told him the man’s good biography, and the safety of his own way, and about his piety and humility, and that I searched his home and did not find but the Koran and books of knowledge, and about how the people of the city feared for his safety. Upon hearing this, Mutawakkil, honored him with a good prize, and granted him highest righteousness, and gave him a tour of Samarra.”

Although the Imam was living in the same country, Mutawakkil commissioned eyes and spies to monitor him closely. After sometime, some informant told Mutawakkil that the Imam had stored books and arms in his house from his followers in Qom (Iran), and that he was determined to execute a coup on the state.

He sent him a group of Turks, attacking his house at night, but they did not find anything.

They found the Imam in a closed room, covered in a woolen sweater, sitting on the sand and gravel, praying to God, reciting verses from the Koran. They proceeded to carry him the way he was to Mutawakkil, and said to him: “we did not find anything in his house, and when we found him, he was reading the Koran facing the Qiblah”.

Mutawakkil was sitting at his bar, and when he saw the Imam, honored and praised him, and seated him at his side, and offered him the cup which was in his hand.

The Imam responded: “By God, my flesh and blood have never been intoxicated, so pardon me”, so he pardoned him and said to him: “Recite us some poetry”.

The Imam excused himself with: “I'm little of a reciter of poetry”, so he urged him, “You must”.

So the Imam, sitting with him, improvised: (my rough translation)

They dwelled on the edges of mountains protected by the toughest of men, but the epitomes did not provide them sustenance.

And they were subverted, after all their prideful strongholds, and deposited into craters- such an abysmal decadence.

A caller shouted out to them after their entombment; where’s the kin, and the crowns, and the conveniences?

Where are the faces that were once prospering? Without it, the curtains and settings are flailing.

So the grave articulated during their interrogation- worms, on those faces, are now slaughtering.

Long since they’d devour decades and drinks, and have, after all the consumption, become consumed.

And long since they’ve aged their investments to harvest them, then departed those materials and relationships- got removed.

And long since they’ve treasured money and amassed, then bequeathed it onto enemies- got reduced.

Baring their homes into deserted wilderness, and their occupants, to the graves, have moved.

Ask the Caliph if his wishes are attained- where’s the protection, and where is the horse and the cavalry?

Where are the shooters, can’t you shelter behind their arrows, when you encountered death’s bolt, transferring?

Where’s the soldiers, didn’t they shield, didn’t they rage? Where are the armies that defend with it states?

Never, they didn’t benefit anything, and they won’t fulfill your desires if destiny arrives and implicates.

So how can he hope an immortal living by connecting his soul onto mountains, when death- high atop mountains- can confiscate?

Mutawakkil wept until his beard soaked with tears, and so did the audience and then the Imam was returned to his home, honored.

So here's the original poem. I must mention that the essence really is in the Arabic version:

باتوا على قللِ الاجبال تحرسُهم ** غُـلْبُ الرجالِ فما أغنتهمُ القُللُ 

و استنزلوا بعد عزّ من معاقلهم ** وأودعوا حفراً يـابئس ما نزلوا 

ناداهمُ صارخٌ من بعد ما قبروا ** أين الاسرّةُ و التيجانُ و الحللُ 

أيـن الوجوه التي كانتْ منعمةً** من دونها تُضربُ الأستارُ والكللُ 

فـافـصـحَ القبرُ حين ساءلهم ** تـلك الوجوه عليها الدودُ يقتتلُ 

قد طالما أكلوا دهراً وما شربوا ** فأصبحوا بعد طول الأكلِ قد أكلوا 

و طالما عمّروا دوراً لتُحصنهم ** ففارقوا الدورَ و الأهلينَ وارتحلوا 

و طالما كنزوا الأموال و ادّخروا** فـخلّفوها على الأعداء و انتقلوا 

أضـحـت منازلُهم قفراً معطلةً **و ساكنوها الى الاجداث قد رحلوا 

سـل الـخـليفةَ إذ وافت منيتهُ** أين الحماة و أين الخيلُ و الخولُ 

ايـن الرماة ُ أما تُحمى بأسهمِهمْ ** لـمّـا أتـتك سهامُ الموتِ تنتقلُ 

أين الكماةُ أما حاموا أما اغتضبوا** أين الجيوش التي تُحمى بهاالدولُ 

هيهات ما نفعوا شيئاً و ما دفعوا ** عـنك المنية إن وافى بها الأجلُ 

فكيف يرجو دوامَ العيش متصلاً ** من روحه بجبالِ الموتِ تتصلُ

On Being a Persian In Bahrain

As a Persian native who considers his homeland to be Bahrain, it’s disheartening to see the current emergence of sectarian-driven suspicion my ethnicity has become subject to. It’s apparent beyond infantile minds, the result of murky politics of the Gulf monarchs trying to divide and conquer by inducing false suasion.

Bahrain is diverse with backgrounds as variant as Iran, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi, Jordan, Syria, Yemen of the predominant ones. And like archetypal diversity yields; the minorities and their communities face subtle and sometimes apparent antagonism from the rather accepted mainstream because of the subtle or apparent dissimilarities.

Arabic is the official first language and English is the second. I speak 3jmi at home (an Arabized version of Farsi) and my Arabic, before my Saudi uncle married into our family and our long Ramadhan discussions, sounded like a train-wreck about to capsize over the Niagra falls into the abyss of molten lava.

A popular joke around the Gulf is to claim bad-grammer short-circuited the fuse of electrical devices and the lights are about to go off. Farsi does not assign gender to inanimate objects so when I’m on a roll during conversation and have to be conscious of this, I might say my hand hurts but accidentally assigned the male gender to it when describing the verb. So what? I mean it is my hand.

I’m not writing to evoke empathy; I have always felt at home especially in Manama city. There are so many Persians and just mine is prodigious. I grew-up sheltered and the school I went to was an Indian administered one- mark of proletariat Persian families (now MKS is in competition). Citizenry and patriotism never came into question.

I remember one incident in Summer of 1998. I’d joined a sports club and we were about to play football when one of the kids in the group, overhearing me and a Persian buddy converse in 3jmi,blurted, “You are Persian, you don’t have passport.”

It was so random and unprompted that I drew blanks. I couldn’t interpret the intention of that remark or his smirk because I never experienced this before. What was he saying? That I was from a different ethnicity and therefore not eligible for the Bahraini passport? Should I worry? I was only 12 and I did have one. And back then, I couldn’t care less as long as I got to travel. There were a few hiddenPersians in our group whom I wasn’t aware of and as it dawned on them that this prick was a racist piece of dung, they ganged up on him and we settled on verbally patronizing him. But I was lost, it didn’t occur to me that I was different from him (or that he thought I was) till he mentioned it. I just wanted that smirk off his face.

The first generation immigrants of any ethnicity in any country usually suffer and the forbearers can either do considerably well by witnessing these struggles or develop inferiority complexes and atrophy. And there are quite a few delinquents in the Persian community in Bahrain. Sometimes, I get the impression that we reflect underground mobs in that we are very successful in attaining economic resources without concern for the politics. Not that we don’t want to be involved, our roots are viewed as the ultimate sin to the Arab monarchs.

Another vivid experience as a child was when a group of other Persian kids in the Mushberneighbourhood began picking on the three of us; my schoolfriend, cousin and myself. Things escalated and the leader challenged me to a fight. I chickened out of it and tried to set it up against my older cousin but to no avail. The leader was set on me. We tried to settle it the less violent way by attempting to talk but it heated up anyway when he began taunting me by removing my glasses. This made me react with a bit of anger as I edged emotional control and at the sign of it, and somewhere between us negotiating, they decided they had teased us enough. Things transformed into friendly relations (the norm during preadolescent interactions) and we were going to leave. Just then, a car passed whirring with commotion and at that moment, the gang leader whispered these words in my ear, “I want to f**k you”.

We were like 13, he was my age and somehow, my incognizant mind translated that into a taunt against the passing car so I echoed it with a,” Yeah, f**k you [Car]”.

I didn’t realize this until after we said our goodbyes and walked a few distance. The leader hollered my name again in an awkward attempt to call me back. This, my cousin somehow immediately understood, was a sign of homosexual invite. I didn’t ask for an explanation and I rationalized that he knew better because he was in a government school.

A popular stigma attached to young Persian males is that they’re jailbait especially in peer conglomerations like public high-schools because they’re good-looking. I don’t know if this is valid today because with the easy virtual access that the youth have to each other, boys are no longer sexually confined to the savanna of their institutes. Girls are at arms-length and have become, thanks to mainstream influence, a cherry pick. But during those times, there was an undeniable awareness of being prey, a feeling that partly fueled my excessive workouts and which I retrieve when considering why women’s rights are still lacking in our society.

Another reason I got obsessed with working out was/is because when one chooses to live life based on principles, one will inevitably invite antipathy or run across an ape who’s world is limited to spots and stripes and cannot comprehend why you can’t be lenient to their simplistic POV and then mentally tug at you in an effort to prove you wrong for being righteous. Women negotiate power by showing solidarity through dialogue and eventually discuss their POV. As a man amongst men, that doesn’t manifest well in underdeveloped societies unless you have big biceps so it seems you’re doing them the favor of concession.

Then, of course, we have the excellent Manama basketball club. Those guys are the local heroes. You mention Shahram or Noo7 Najaf and the likes of Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant pale in comparison. Quite a few Persian slangs have entered the Bahraini colloquial, none so famous as Manama, Chitori?. Others are the profanities like Meerah, Show Beyow and Mal Mufti, Cheh Gofti? (the latter not a profanity per say but a crude gesture to wolf free-food). We’re ever so proud of the dumbing down of the Arabic language because to us, it’s a contribution, never mind the newspeak. We want to be integrated but we sense a tinge (or a cornucopia) of resentment towards our ethnicity and our race. In this sense, I have Pakistani friends who are more Bahraini than the typical Bahraini because they live and have become dependent on the public amenities that are provided to them- signature stultification of the typical Bahraini.

And then there are the monopolists who own everything from consulting agencies to exclusive car dealership because they bought government support- partly monetary and partly by abandoning their roots and Arabizing themselves to ease the latent hostility. The Howalas (Arabized Persians or Sunni Persians mostly from Basatak and Ahwaz in Iran, speak a different dialect from Tehran) are usually the head-in-ground ostriches. My mother is Holia and they tend to keep a low profile, speaking better Arabic than the Arabs themselves sometimes to chameleonate their ethnicity.

Some Persians believe Bahrain was a part of Iran and should still be. They are the Persians in Iran. The Bahraini Persians are today a new race. They have intermingled genes and when in Iran, feel home sick not because they miss the desert, but because of the symbol of unity and sovereignty that we’ve become accustomed to, notwithstanding the ruling monarchy.

One of the most exciting experiences that I have is walking down Manama street. Today, it’s exactly how I envision Tamil Nadu to be. But beneath this flood lies the ancient architecture of our grandfathers, the alleys and backstreets where our fathers spent endless nights dallying next to the mosques and Ma’tams. The mothers gathered around hubble-bubbles in Hussainiyas crying over the chronicles of the Imam’s sacrifices and celebrating the folklore. During memorial days like Ashura’, it comes back- the chatters of retrospective stories and political discourse, the laughters and sometimes the profanities.

I remind myself of Richard Rodriguez as a 21st century human being saying, “I avoid falling into the black-and-white dialectic in which most of America still seems trapped. I have always recognized that as an American, I am in relationship with other parts of the world; that I have to measure myself against the Pacific, against Asia. Having to think of myself in relationship to that horizon has liberated me from the black-and-white checkerboard.”

This is how we feel; we’re not ostracized, we’re pressed to adopt a broader skyline.

An Open Letter to the Middle-East Tyrants

I know you don’t like to be called that. Some of you like His Highness the Prince, others prefer the title His majesty the King, some simply the super-freakin’intelligent-otherworldly-leader. FYI, as long as you’re not elected, you can be Bongo the Chibacobra for all we care.

Look, I know you know we’re not loyal to you out of respect, hypocrites are out of fear. Only the devil and the U.S. corporations have great admiration and respect for you. Otherwise, the rest of us don’t appreciate your Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde attitude because we get jailed or killed in the process.

It’s not rational to like you, you know. I mean, we barely like ourselves for God’s sake, let alone our family, friends, co-workers. Ok, maybe we actually do have some form of affinity for the former two, but you? Let’s just say our empathy is proportional to how intimate we are. So when was the last time you climbed down the stairway from the clouds and got stuck in traffic? I mean I might empathize with you if we shared some form of misery. Ironically, we do, we make each other miserable. When people begin to ask questions, to demand rights, to expect you to be equal and fair, you get annoyed. And when you finally throw us in your dungeons, we disappear and so does all the noise.

To be elected as a representative of land is proportional to how well you serve us.

How did you manage to be a representative? History shows your grandparents (and in some instances yourselves) killed and pillaged. They were pirates. And tomorrow, your undeserving children will inherit your privilege, why? Because you run a modern day corsair.

How do we get rid of you?

Also, I know you don’t believe in God. Most of you don’t. It’s just a pretense. You laugh at us for actually believing you have a religion. I give you that, some of us are pretty dumb.

In Bahrain we call you Pharaoh. See he was pretty straight forward with his worshipme-or-die-a-merciless-death agenda. You guys are too fancy. If we challenge your authority, we get the “inciting the instability and provoking the peace” label from your myopic media.

I think the only redeeming thing in your lives is your cognitive dissonance. You actually believe people like and respect you. Go ahead, ask that servant if he/she does. I bet they’ll say yes. Go on, ask.

See.

Okay you’re not all that bad personally. Maybe. But as an absolute authority immune to criticism, you begin to lose human traits and naturally, then, you’re adorable. Everyone just magically loves you and wants to take pictures of you and put you in headlines every time you send those cable-of-good-wishes and work from the pre-prepared things-to-do the CIA gave you.

Ask anybody what they think of you as a tyra...I mean leader and they’ll all respond with the same enthusiasm Mr. Leandro, the Swiss bank manager, does.

Let me tell you what makes us happy. Google work environment.

We want the same life that Google employees have; free gourmet food, free laundry, discounted massages and the other perks. Of course add to that the same propaganda effort administered into promoting your “leadership” with a real vision for progress and we’ll be just as productive. And you can be that portrait on the wall because you’re very good at photo-shoots I guess.

As long as you’re not held accountable, nothing you do will suffice since that implies that you’re a perfect human being. Imagine, then, how we feel about your excessive lifestyle and your belligerent bureaucracy and nepotism? Let alone the punishment entailing a vocal critic.

By definition, any intellectual is against an autocracy which explains their scarcity in your societies.

Again, how do we get rid of you? You, as in, the human impulse of hoarding power and piling-up wealth. Minus that, you’re just another human being. There’s something special about you, like all of us. We have a unique fingerprint and superstitiously capable of uniquely contributing to this world. I’m skeptical since it’s almost impossible for most of you to get back to ground zero- you’re already light years below on the negative scale. But I’m not the one to judge.

According to the US government, you are our “beacons” of “freedom” and “democracy”.

Of course that’ll reign as long you serve the purpose of fueling their currency and elites wallets and keep us deviant ones in check with a hammer. And in case, they already have their bases here to seal the deal.

Truth is- you’re cancer. You consume our resources and channel very little our way to keep us content and just enough for the defense mechanism not to notice. You metastasize the more your family members gain prominent positions in the ministries which urges people into hypocrisy. Ultimately, however, you poison society in principle with your socio-political system, and clientelistic politics.

A warning: out of your efforts to portray the facade of freedom and democracy by creating the “simulated” infrastructures that please the western watch groups, a veritable version will seep through the political boundaries and come into existence one day. But that’ll prevail just like how chemo does. It’ll destroy the healthy cells along with the carcinogens. It’s usually a lose/lose situation.

No ones going to listen. All that money and power has bloated your egos to vast proportions, the compromise of which would cost so many lives. So many wasted lives for the pleasure of a few diseased ones. That’s the only genuine impression you’ll leave behind.

And if there's anything reasonable that I want you to conclude from this, it's that we're significant based on how sincerely we serve the majority.


And, God is greater.


You'll see.