In the past, I responded to Emad El-Din Adeeb in a well-known article titled: “To Emad Adeeb, and to every Emad Adeeb in Egypt: We will not reconcile over blood, not even with blood,” when he raised the issue of reconciliation with the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, however, I find nothing to reply to him with, after he has ventured into matters he neither understands nor concerns him, except for verses by the great poet Ahmed Abdel Moaty Hegazy, with a slight adaptation on my part:
From what mind, resistant to understanding, do you draw your path?
If you weep over it, we dwell within it.
O you who speaks on every matter, yet
Hardly masters a single one, nor even approaches it.
I compose my satire about you—and this is its beginning—
While you are the last to be satirized, and the most fitting.
You live in our homeland as a guest, yet you insult us,
While to its rhythm we sing and create.
And we grant wars what they demand,
And within them history has forged our claim.
In you, neither our past is radiant nor our future,
And in you lies the most faded and the most false within us.
You claim an opinion in matters in which you stand accused,
And you question us about what you yourself have ruined.
It is folly—not opinion, nor character—
That the Lord of Creation grants you a head, and you merely mount it.
Mustaf‘ilun fā‘ilun mustaf‘ilun fa‘lun
Mustaf‘ilun fā‘ilun mustaf‘ilun fa‘lun
