However, I’ve found that even the poetry of the best-known people’s poets, such as Ahmad Fuad Nigm, is little-translated.Well, Marilyn Booth has some compelling translations, but her paper about him screams NO CITATIONS WITHOUT THE AUTHOR’S PREVIOUS CONSENT. You can click over and read it. But shhh.
Ahmed Fu’ad Nigm, or Al Fagoumy, was born in Sharqia in 1929, and thus has been in a position to criticize more Egyptian rulers than most of us. When a radio producer told Nigm that a poem of his didn’t have a single reference to then-president Anwar Sadat, Nigm apparently answered:
I am writing about martyrs; let him become a martyr and I will write about him.
This anecdote is lifted from Kamal Abdel-Malek’s A Study of the Vernacular Poetry of Ahmad Fu’ad Nigm (1990). Abdel-Malek has translated some of Negm’s work, although mostly bits and bobs, and mostly for “meaning” and not for rhythm or enjoyment or a love of the words.
But such is what we’ve got:
Creator, you know our adversities.
Purveyor, who counts our steps,
We ask for a favour
Out of your generosity
We ask that your justice
And your power be manifested
We ask that a fellah from among us rise up
To pluck out our effendi
And our thief.
يا خالقنا وعالم بلاوينا
يا رازقنا
وحاسب خطاوينا
نسأل فضلك
من إحسانك
يظهر عدلك
وبسلطانك
يطلع فلاح من وسطينا
يزعط أفندينا
وحرامينا
Arabic version taken from ArabPoetry.Blogspot.Com. It was apparently written in 1986, five years after Hosni Mubarak assumed Egypt’s presidency.
I’m sure many of you have better protest poetry than this. So…
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صيده للضحك على سعد الصغير فى اغنيه بحبك يا حمار