You Don’t Know With Fire They Burned The Door,

By: Sayyid Baqir al-Hindi (d. 1329 A.H.)

The great scholar and the prominent poet, Sayyid Baqir son of Sayyid Muhammed al-Hindi, has said,

You don’t know with fire they burned the door,

Thus they hoped to put out, with fire, the noor.

You don’t know what nail had to do

With Fatima’s chest, if you only knew

In what condition her broken rib was

What miscarriage, why red were her eyes,

Why her ear-rings on the ground did scatter,

Unveiled was she when her house they did enter,

As Ali looked on, the man of manliness

The honorable, the fearless.

The Lion of Allah did they harass,

Like a camel did they lead him in duress.

The Batal behind them stumbled

On the tail of her robe which they pulled

With moaning that in the hearts did it ignite

The fire, and in anxiety that melted the stones of height.

She called upon them: Let my cousin Ali alone or I

To the Hearing One, the Seeing, shall I cry.

They paid her no heed,

By them she was scared indeed,

So they took Ali as a captive away,

Tied, like a captive; they had their day.

 

He goes on till he says the following:

 

Ali sees and hears, and the sword is sharp

And Ali’s might is not to be taken lightly

But his Brother’s will restricted what he could

Which was more than one really would,

So patience, O one entrusted with the affair

One whose judgment is wise and fair

One with a calamity that is on and on

One that melts one whose heart is stone.

How many calamities my narration of them to prolong

Wherein purity was stripped in time not so long?

How, eyes being quite red, can thee control,

O Son of Taha, a sweet slumber at all?

So weep and sigh for her foes

Did not let her weep and wail her woes.

As if I can see him saying, as he does weep,

With little solace but with tears high and deep:

May I after her never take for my relief

A home of happiness after her “house of grief.”

So when, O son of Fatima, you will bring to life in a way

The tyrants and the oppressors even before the Judgment Day?