2979-2762 The Hythe Review 2979-2762 Open Library of Humanities 10.16995/thr.29428 Poetry Freedom Mersal Iman 1 Cresswell Robyn robyn.creswell@yale.edu Modern Languages and Cultural Studies 05 06 2026 2026 1 1 1 3 Copyright: © 2026 The Author(s) 2026 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

A poem by Egyptian writer Iman Mersal. Translated from the Arabic by Robyn Creswell.

 We no longer fear the punishments of the grave or life in foreign countries. They’re all dead now, the well-intentioned women who warned us about hymens and whoredom. We angry teenagers, starring in our own nightmares, have morphed into pillars of the family. We wear glasses because our eyesight is weak and swallow painkillers in the middle of the night. We’re like those soldiers who imagine they’ll recover their dignity once the king has left the scene. We’ve become our singular selves, the whole company of us, and now face the harvester’s scythe. We got old with no warning, before we understood that this is what happens when your dreams come true. Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.