One of the few poems by Hafez Ibrahim available in English translation, Describing a Suit is an excellent illustration of Ibrahim’s famed use of irony and sarcastic humor to call attention to social issues. A leader of the neoclassical movement in Arabic poetry in the early 20th century, Hafez Ibrahim was dubbed the “Poet of the People” for championing the poor.
In this poem, Hafez Ibrahim condemns social inequalities in early 20th-century Egyptian society through a comparison between his speaker’s old suit and his newly purchased one. Hafez Ibrahim begins the poem by describing his speaker’s reaction to wearing his new suit: “I have a suit, blessings upon it. / I strut around in it, a superman.” Unlike his old suit, in which “people I visited / Shunned me like someone quarantined by the plague,” his new suit has instantly changed the public’s reaction to him. Now, “[p]eople who see me think I’m grand! / My standing is that of a mayor or prince.”
In this materialistic society, wealth equals status, and the speaker observes that “[a] gracious appearance is all [my people] love.” But the poet knows that a social standing based on superficiality is precarious. Even his new suit—and for that matter, his body—will become old eventually. The poem ends with the biting statement: “A person to them is as valuable as the splendid / Rig he wears, as a brand new pair of shoes.”
In these concluding lines, Ibrahim criticizes the nobility, who fail to see the humanity in those poorer than themselves because they value people only for the objects they can acquire. The speaker is revealed as a tragic and misguided figure in that he will never gain the respect he desires as long as respect is based on external trappings rather than internal worth.
The poem’s overall structure emphasizes Hafez Ibrahim’s ironic message by using an overly lofty tone and formal language to describe an ordinary commodity, thus hinting that the poem’s subject is not worthy of its poetic praise.
Bibliography
Allen, Roger. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Badawi, M. M. A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.
Hafez Ibrahim (Muhammad). Describing a Suit. Translated by Christopher Tingley with help from Christopher Middleton and Salma Khadra Jayyusi, in Modern Arabic Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Salma Khadra Jayyusi, 77–78. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.