Poetic Renditions
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لاہور کی ایک سنیک بار کے نام ۔ سرمد صہبائی
Translated into English
by Bilal Tanweer, Sherdil Awais Rashid, and Sarmad Sehbai
Introduction by Bilal Tanweer
A rendition of a work focuses on conveying its essence while a translation of it focuses on accurately conveying the originally intended meaning. There’s a fine line between the two, and you may find a bit of both as you read each piece in this section, where different poets from around the world offer their version of the same poem in a new language. Together, they are a celebration of the original work.
لاہور کی ایک سنیک بار کے نام
روشنی میں ابھرتی ہوئی سیڑھیوں سے پرے
نیم تاریک خواہش کی مہلت
فقط چند سانسوں کی دنیا ہے
آؤ کہ ہم
اپنی آنکھوں کو
جھوٹے دلاسوں کے ہاتھوں سے ڈھانپیں
چلو ہانپتے شہر میں
چند لمحوں کو ٹھہریں
بدن میں امڈتے ہوئے سرد ہیجان کو
لڑکھڑاتی ہوئی انگلیوں سے چباتے رہیں
قرض کے چند سکوں کے روزن میں
خواہش کی دلھن کو دیکھیں
بہت دیر تک میز پر پھیلتی دوریوں کی مسافت میں
پوروں کے بل یونہی چلتے رہیں
اپنی تنہائیوں کو مسلتے رہیں
A reading by Sarmad Sehbai of his poem
سرمد صہبائی اپنی نظم پڑھتے ہوئے
Reading Sarmad/Reading with Sarmad: On Translating ‘lahore ki aik snackbar ke naam’
Having worked with Sarmad Sehbai for over a decade – as collaborator, translator, and friend – I’ve come to know well that Sarmad does not prize literal recreations of his work. “When real poetry is translated,” he has said to me many times, “it sends tremors into the new language. The receiving language must undergo a transformation in order to accommodate poetry from another language.”
Like a true poet, Sarmad’s work is animated with currents of deep cultural codes, symbols from classical Urdu poetry, as well as images pulled from everyday city life – all elements that resist direct translation. It’s no surprise that Sarmad looks for translations to transmute the feeling and impression of the original rather than hanker after exact words.
My own approach to translation follows the dictum of the Biblical translators: as close as possible, as free as necessary. For me, any text that reveals its marvels demands an attentive heart and alert imagination, but just as much the rigors of our mind. I try to cut myself as little room as possible, staying as close as I can to what I find essential in the original. This fidelity to the original text might seem at odds with Sarmad’s vision of translation – but the tension in this case was productive and exciting.
For this feature, Sherdil Awais Rashid and I translated our own versions, followed by a wonderful discussion, which made us reflect and edit what we had translated. I then requested Sarmad to edit a version of his choosing. His edited version of the translation is the third translation of the same poem. I am deeply grateful to Sherdil for collaborating with me on this feature (for, in fact, leading it in many respects; for instance, the choice of the poem is his and not mine) and contributing a version that allowed us to have a rich discussion on the art of translation.
For a Snackbar in Lahore
translated by Bilal Tanweer with Sarmad Sehbai
across the well-lit stairs
opens a dim space:
a tiny world of desire
lasting a few moments
come, let us bandage our eyes
with hands of false consolations
let us breathe a few seconds
in this gasping city
let us seek with our keen fingers
the surging passion cold in our veins—
let us steal a glimpse at the damsel of desire
through the skylight of borrowed coins
let us keep walking on our fingertips
across the weary distance of our table
let us keep chafing at our emptiness
§
In the name of one of Lahore’s snack bars
translated by Sherdil Awais Rashid
Besides the stairs shining in the bright light
lies the half-dark want’s respite —
a world of just a few breaths
Come, that we may
our eyes
veil, with the hands of false comforts
Let’s go to the panting city
Let’s stay for a few moments
Let’s keep poking, with unsteady fingers,
the cold passion that swells in the body
Through a hole made by the debt of a little money,
let’s go see someone married to want
For a long while, sat at the table
traversing growing distances,
let’s keep walking like this, on our fingertips
Let’s keep crushing
our lonelinesses
§
For a Snack Bar in Lahore
translated by Bilal Tanweer
Out behind the well-lit stairs
this half-dark desire—
a reprieve lasting a few brief breaths—
is a whole world
Come, let us drape our eyes
with hands
of false consolations
Let us breathe a few seconds
in this gasping city
Let us probe our surging passion—
cold in our veins—with fumbling fingers
Let us steal a glimpse
at the demure bride of desire
through the skylight of borrowed coins
Let us keep walking
across these distances stretched across our table
on the tips of our fingers
Let us chafe away our loneliness
On Aching: Thoughts on Bilal’s Reading of Sarmad Sehbai
by Sherdil Awais Rashid
For me, and others like me, “khwahish” represents a fraught and dangerous realization, something dark and almost always secretive that the heart asks of me. While this is in many ways sad or unfair, it also means that khwahish is always an instance of thrill, and vulnerability – it tingles with a whole range of possibilities, between pleasure and harm, light and shadow. This is where I read ‘Lahore Ki Aik Snack Bar’ from, this picture of want and wanting as tense, unsure, visceral. Half-dark. When Sarmad turns us away from the stairs dazzled with light for that “neem tareek” world of “khwahish”, I thought of how it is to leave the well-lit world aside for the dim, underworld delight of a really sexy party and all of a sudden I was fully in his world of promise and few breaths, a pull into activity murmuring in each verse. Therefore, this is to me a tender, secretive, shady, and slow-music date spot of a poem.
While my rendering of “khwahish” as “want” orients itself towards a kind of dark raciness, what I am immediately completely taken by in Bilal’s translation is his figuring of “khwahish” as “desire”, and how this ends up animating his version with a kind of buoyant force. I love the ways in which he is committed to an essentially hopeful and curiously rousing reading of the poem – his bandage to my veil, his keen fingers to my unsteady ones, his passion that lies cold to mine that is cold. He has a skylight where I’ve made a hole.
I think it’s so beautiful the way his version seems to me to have this soft kind of glow. His translation is oriented towards a light. He is attentive to the “neem” in “neem tareek”, to the “half” in “half dark”. And I think it is precisely because of this careful, multivalent attention that Bilal’s version is able to deliver a final verse so (dis)quieting – all that hope, and all that rousing, is shown to be struggling against this final “emptiness”, paralleling so well Sarmad’s equally sobering last line. Like the original, it reveals a deep, I would almost say fundamental, ache at the heart of the poem. Another reason why the translation for “khwahish” is a gorgeous choice; it immediately and particularly understands that ache as the desperate, perhaps hollow, ache of “desire”.
This ability of translation to not just render the original as new and more exciting but to also tell you something about the translator, about the character of their attention, through the piece is everything to me. I loved meeting Bilal in his work, looking around and seeing inevitable evidence of his thoughts, feelings, and reactions. How he read the ache of Sarmad’s “khwahish”. Rushdie calls translation a “bearing across” – I’m saying I loved seeing the handprints.
§
An Invitation Into Darkness: Thoughts on Sherdil’s Reading of Sarmad Sehbai
by Bilal Tanweer
In my reading, Sehbai’s poem reads like a plea – a cry against the oppressiveness of the city, but also a rebellion against one’s own alienation from one’s body. I hear it most sharply when I encounter the image of a desperate probing to wake the body up from its sard hejan: “badan mein umadtay huay sard hejan ko/larkharati huee ungliyon se chubatay rahein.”
In Sherdil’s version, though, the poem turns into an invitation – an opening into another possibility of inhabiting the city. “Let’s keep poking with unsteady fingers, the cold passion that swells inside the body.” Somehow, Sherdil has managed to stay true to the original while turning what I read as a desperate plea into a sensual invitation. The darkness of the poem becomes not a darkness that is being fended off, but an opening where darkness turns into a space of possibility for a sensual reconnection with another body. To me, such a translation is a gift. I marvel at how it remains true to the original while opening a new dimension in the poem.
Sherdil’s translation beautifully captures what translation done right brings to the world: with attentiveness and care, every reading becomes precious, and every mind invaluable in what it can illuminate about what we think we already know. Translation at its finest shows us without doubt how we help each other see. Without which we’d only inhabit a tiny fraction of the world that is available to us.
Sarmad Sehbai is a poet, playwright, novelist, and director. He has published two collections of plays and four collections of poetry in Urdu. His tele-film Fankar Gali (Standby Street, 1991) and documentary Moghuls of the Road (1999) have been variously screened in London, Moscow, and Oslo. Bachon Ka Park (Children’s Park, 1989), his play on political prisoners, won the Pakistan Television Best Play Award. His dramatic adaptations of Saadat Hassan Manto have been televised on Pakistan Television and GEO TV. Three of his drama serials have been aired by leading channels of Pakistan (GEO TV 2007 and 2016) and Hum TV (2008). He lives in Connecticut.
Bilal Tanweer is a writer and translator. His novel The Scatter Here Is Too Great won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Chautauqua Prize. His previous translations include works of Muhammad Khalid Akhtar, Ibn-e Safi, Sa’adat Hasan Manto, Bilal Hassan Minto, Sarmad Sehbai, and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. With Pauline Fan, he curated works from across South and Southeast Asia for Commonwealth’s addastories.org. His writings have appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Dawn, and The Caravan. He lives and teaches in Lahore.
Sherdil Awais Rashid is an undergraduate at LUMS. His writing has been published by Kitab Ghar and Olomopolo, and has appeared in The Lickety Split. He has also contributed to Jashn, an anthology of poetry from young poets across Pakistan. He is someone who lives in, moves with, and writes about desire as a twenty-something in Lahore.