One year ago, I first read a beautiful poem of Faiz Ahmed Faiz. With my limited understanding of Urdu, I laboured over it, reading two different translations, a transliterated version, and the Urdu original. Consulting with my partner and my mother-in-law, both native Urdu speakers, I struggled to understand it. Even for my mother-in-law, who was born and raised in Pakistan, she was using just as much of her High School Persian as Urdu to try to comprehend this poem.
One year later, I am reading Shahab Ahmed's What is Islam? and he discusses the poem in conjunction with the concept of kajkulahi. And though Ahmed's translation is surely much better than mine, I will provide mine here anyways as a collage of my understanding, my mother-in-law's understanding, and other English translations:
Through my breath, in the street of crazed obsession,
the sheikh's cloak, the emir's robe and the royal
crown stand abashed and ashamed,
through me, Mansur crazed with God and Majnun crazed
in love, are still living,
through me the flowered coat and the lopsided cap,
live on.
Further reading:
What is Islam? by Shahab Ahmed
Poems by Faiz Translated by V.G. Kiernan