Poetry: Ashraf AboArafe
IN Cairo — where the East inhales its ancient light,
a hall was kindled, not by candles,
but by the memory of a nation
that wrote its freedom in blood,
and had a poet sign it
upon the parchment of the sky.
Muhammad Akif —
a heart dissolved between two homelands,
resting in Helwan,
leaving poems for the Nile,
tears for the Bosphorus,
and an anthem for Türkiye
that rises whenever time falters.
Here, within Türkiye’s Embassy in Cairo,
and on this — the 89th year since your departure,
the voice of Ambassador Salih Mutlu Şen
rose like a star shaken awake,
summoning a journey
that did not end in death,
but continued — living inside your verse.
He said:
Struggle was never merely a weapon,
but faith that fought in silence,
a spirit returning from Anatolian minarets
to hold history’s colonnades upright,
to guide the Turkish soul
back to its dawn.
In the cafés of Khan el-Khalili,
your shadow still sits —
inside the stones of memory,
while in “Çanakkale Martyrs,”
you left the voice of a whole nation
ascending to God,
carried by the wings of its fallen.
Akif —
you were never a guest in Egypt,
you were a son
laying your head on a mother’s shoulder,
whispering:
“My journey was long — let me rest.”
And this land embraced you
as only a mother embraces
the final breath of a faithful child.
Eighty-nine years have passed,
yet nothing of you has vanished:
not the anthem,
not the lines of fire you etched,
not the tear that still clings
to a red flag
the winds once tried
to steal away.
Peace upon you —
you who taught generations
that a homeland is not written in ink,
but in will,
in prayer,
in wheat,
and in a hymn carried on tongues
like a people’s quiet prayer.
Peace upon your spirit —
when it crossed from Istanbul to Cairo
like a cloud
seeking a larger sky
from which to rain —
and make a nation bloom.
