By the 1970s, when the dictatorship of Zia thwarted any democratic possibility, Faiz was put under house arrest. Feigning to go smoke a cigarette, the poet escaped his captor and fled the country. He became the editor of the Afro-Asian magazine, Lotus, and became a resident in Beirut. Faiz absorbed Beirut. He befriended the radicals (including a young Yasser Arafat), and found himself at the center of the city’s concerns and its imagination. The energy of Lotus reveals some of this, as do Faiz’s poems written in Beirut. Among them is ek nagma Karbala-e-Beirut ke liye (a song for the battlefield of Beirut), written in June 1982 in the throes of the Israeli invasion. Faiz returned to Pakistan in the middle of that war.
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Beirut, ornament of our world
Beirut, exquisite as Paradise’s gardens.
Those shattered mirrors once were
The smiling eyes of children,
Now are star-lit.
This city’s nights are bright.
and luminous is Lebanon.
Beirut, ornament of our world.
Faces decorated with blood
Dazzling, beyond beauty.
Their elegant splendor
Lights up the city’s lanes.
And radiant is Lebanon.
Beirut, ornament of our world.
Every charred house, every ruin
Is equal to Darius’ citadels.
Every warrior brings envy to Alexander.
Every daughter is like Laila.
This city stands at time’s creation.
This city will stand at time’s end.
Beirut, the heart of Lebanon.
Beirut, ornament of our world.
Beirut, exquisite as Paradise’s Garden.
(Translated from the Urdu by Vijay Prashad)
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