ڈھاکہ سے واپسی پر - ہم کہ ٹھہرے اجنبی اتنی مداراتوں کے بعد

ڈھاکہ سے واپسی پر

فیض احمد فیض

فیض نے یہ نظم 1974 میں ڈھاکہ سے واپسی پر لکھی

 English translation of the poem by Agha Shahid Ali

Sweet victory, sour grapes: Bangladesh’s almost win

[This blog was published in 'Express Tribune Blogs' on March 27, 2012. Link to the original blog is here: https://tribune.com.pk/article/10837/sweet-victory-sour-grapes-bangladeshs-almost-win]

We are strangers now...

There have been deliberated and continued efforts to forget the 'East' Pakistan in the remaining Pakistan, probably contributed by all of us -universities, politicians, intellectuals, journalists, military and even by the ordinary people. There was extremely bloody price given for this black incident of Pakistan's history and yet we are unable to learn the lessons from this.

Read the poem by Faiz’s poem on the East Pakistan tragedy, written in 1974, and feel the pain of those who became estranged after being so close. 

The sun of United Pakistan had to set in the east in the sea of blood and tears...

Urdu Poem by Faiz can be found here: 

Dream Crooner: ڈھاکہ سے واپسی پر - ہم کہ ٹھہرے اجنبی اتنی مداراتوں کے بعد

English translation of the poem by Agha Shahid Ali:

After those many encounters, that easy intimacy,/we are strangers now –

After how many meetings will we be that close again?

When will we again see a spring of unstained green?/After how many monsoons will the blood be washed/from the branches?

So relentless was the end of love, so heartless –

After the nights of tenderness, the dawns were pitiless,/so pitiless.

And so crushed was the heart that though it wished/it found no chance –

after the entreaties, after the despair — for us to

quarrel once again as old friends.

Faiz, what you’d gone to say, ready to offer everything,/even your life –

those healing words remained unspoken after all else had /been said.