In Karrada at night, wind and rain before dawn,
when the dark is a roof or a drape never drawn,
when the night’s at its peak and the dark’s full of rain,
and the wet silence roils like a fierce hurricane,
the lament of the wind fills the deserted street,
the arcades groan in pain, and the lamps softly weep.
A guard frowns as he passes with trembling steps,
lightning shows his thin frame, but shadows intercept.
Swept away by the floods, torn to bits by the cold,
the night trembles with dark, shivers when thunder rolls.
At a bend in the road, the threshold of a door
to a house that nobody lives in anymore,
lightning flashes and shows, lying there, fast asleep
a young girl, skin ripped raw by the winter wind’s whip.
In her eyes’ innocence, in the pale of her cheeks,
the thinness of her frame, her eleven years speak.
She sleeps there, on the frozen marble of the ground,
while around her small form the November wind howls,
tiny hands clasped so tight in exhaustion and fear,
the wet pavement her pillow, her blanket the air.
She can’t sleep from the fever, the thunder, the flame
that insomnia lights deep inside her small frame.
She is thirsty for sleep, but sleep never takes hold.
What should she forget first—fever, hunger, or cold?
Twice redoubled by sleeplessness, still the pain gnaws
reignited by fever with merciless claws.
With their devilish screams, these harsh pictures inspire
specters rushing around to feed the fever’s fire,
and she covers her eyes, but her hands can’t conceal
that the dark doesn’t know, and the fever can’t feel.
The small girl goes on trembling until the sun shows,
‘til the hurricane dies down, and still no one knows.
She spent every day of her childhood in tears
body broken by homelessness, hunger, and fear,
for eleven long years, sadness never expired
her whole life she was hungry, and thirsty, and tired.
To whom should she protest? Her cries all go unheard,
for humanity’s now just a meaningless word,
and people are a mask, artificial and fake,
their sweet, gentle exteriors hide burning hate,
and where mercy once thrived in our society
now it’s merely a word in the dictionary.
Those who sleep on the street will remain discontent,
no one pities their fevers or soothes their laments—
it is savage injustice, no consideration—
what a farce that we call this world civilization!
Translated from the Arabic by Emily Drumsta
This is the Mask 
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