البالونة Balloons

البالونة

فيه حاجات لازم علشان نعرف درجة قوتها بنكسرها
وحاجات لازم علشان نعرف إننا عايزينها بنخسرها
كدّبت في عمرك كام صاحب علشان كان نفسك تطّمن...وخسرت صحابك واطّمنت
طب كام بالون فرقعوا منك وانت بتنفخهم عالآخر ....وعرفت آخرهم بس ندمت
دلوقت فهمت أنا عايز إيه .... وأنا كنت بافرقع بلالين ليه
أنا عاوز حاجة بدون آخر... أو حتى بآخر ماوصلّوش
كام حيطة في ضهري أضرب واهري في بدنهم بس ما يتهدّوش... شيء مش مغشوش
مضمون دايمًا ... من غير ماحتاج إني أتأكد أو حتى أخاف إني أتنكد لا يكون في الآخر برضه فشوش
 
يابشر عارفاني وعارفة أنا مين ... بلغوا أسفي لكل البلالين
كلنا كنا في يوم بالونة وفقعتنا تجارب بني آدمين
بلالين عايشين نفسها تلقى حد يصدق ويقدرها... ويتأكد من إنه عاوزها
من غير مايجرب يخسرها
 

Balloons

To know the strength of things, sometimes we need to break them.
To know we want some things, sometimes we need to lose them.
Craving certainty, how many friends did you call liars?
Attaining certainty, you lost your friends.
How many balloons did you burst inflating them beyond their limit?
Discovering that limit, you found regret.
 
I now know why I burst balloons:
I longed for something never-ending -
or with an end I'd never reach.
Walls that have my back.
Walls that will stay standing, even when I knock them down.
Something certain that, when tested, will not break.
 

Balloons

Some things, to know
Their strength, we have to bruise.
Other things, to know
We want them, we have to lose.
How many friends have you accused of lying
Because you needed to be reassured,
And to be reassured lost your friends.
How many balloons have popped (?)
As you went blowing past their limit,
So you knew the limit but also knew regret?
 
Now I understand what it was I wanted,
Why all those balloons have popped.
I wanted a thing without an end,
Or with an end I'll never reach.
Walls that have my back and will keep standing
Even as I hit and kick at them.
Something real, not fake,
And always there,
With no need for reassurance
And no fear that when tested will break.
 
Those who know who I am, please
Pass on my apologies to all balloons.
We've all been there one day, balloons
Pushed past our limits by another's experiment.
Balloons that live and want to be wanted
For what they are, by someone who doesn't
Need to lose
In order to believe.
 

As always, translating from Arabic proved to be both rewarding, frustrating – and very slow!

We decided not to try to translate Mostafa Ibrahim’s famous poem, ‘Manifesto’, written in response to the ‘Arab Spring’ in 2011; composed in Egyptian dialect, ‘Manifesto’ is a polemical and powerful call to arms that inevitably would seem clumsy in English translation.

Instead we decided to translate one of his lyric poems, ‘Balloons’, that was published in Mostafa’s first collection of poems, Western Union, Haram.

‘Balloons’ achieves it effects through using a loose variant of the rhetorical figure known as chiasmus. Once we had found a structure of our own for the opening lines, the poem began to fall into place.

After much discussion, we decided to leave the final stanza untranslated. In English, it seems rather sentimental and detracts from the concision of the translation we produced.

Sarah Maguire, Workshop Facilitator

Original Poem by

Mostafa Ibrahim

Translated by

Nariman Youssef with The Poetry Translation Workshop Language

Arabic

Country

Egypt