Dabour Hub EGEgyptian Curriculum 2026/2027
The first idea (verses 1-7): remembering and longing for Egypt

The first idea (verses 1-7): remembering and longing for Egypt

Point 4 of 10 — Lesson 1: Exile and Longing for the Homeland by Ahmed Shawqi and the Revival SchoolQuestion bank: 0 questions (0 with pictures)

04The first idea (verses 1-7): remembering and longing for Egypt

Simplified explanation

  • He begins with a maxim: the succession of night and day makes a man forget what is old.
  • Yet he remembers his youth and his days of happiness in Egypt, and so he asks two imagined companions to recall his youth to him.
  • He describes those days as having blown past like the sportsmanlike breezes (al-sa), or like a nap of sleep, or like a pleasure snatched away swiftly.
  • He then asks a question whose purpose is negation: "has the heart forgotten her?" — that is, the heart has not forgotten Egypt nor healed from the wound of exile.
  • He says that as the nights pass his longing grows finer and more tender, while the bond between people hardens and is forgotten with the nights — so he contrasts his own faithfulness with the change of others.
  • He describes himself as terror-stricken when the steamships sound early in the night or howl after a bell: every ship's whistle wakes his longing.
  • He paints his heart as a monk inside his ribs, alert to the ships, ringing its bell and seeing them off whenever they stir and sail.

Idea drawn

  • Sincere longing for Egypt, and a yearning for any means that connects him to his homeland.

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