My Experience Translating Ahmed Saif Hashed’s A Space Too Confined to Cradle Even a Bird

Yemeni mp

Mohammed Al–Mekhalfi

On the occasion of completing the translation of Yemeni parliamentarian Ahmed Saif Hashed’s book A Space Too Confined to Cradle Even a Bird into English, I would like to share my personal experience as its translator.

When I began translating the book, I assumed it would be a matter of time, effort, and concentration. However, from the very first pages, I realized I was accompanying someone who had endured life’s harshness and hardships, someone trying to open a window into his weary soul within a constricted world.

Spanning 688 pages divided into 19 sections, the book carries on nearly every page a story, a wound, or a profound moment that cannot be overlooked.

As a translator, the challenge was not only in selecting the right words according to the context but also in attempting to grasp the author’s emotions before placing any word on paper. Ahmed Saif Hashed writes with remarkable sincerity, using refined, precise, and poetic language that is charged with honesty and nostalgia, capable of conveying feelings of pain, loss, and longing with absolute clarity.

He reveals his life as it is, without embellishment, recounting his childhood with all its poverty, deprivation, and loss, and describing his youth in all its intricate details.

Throughout the long months of translating his work into English, I took great care to preserve the spirit of the narrative and the author’s tone exactly as they were. My goal was not to add anything of my own or diminish the text’s authenticity, but to convey his experience in all its details and emotions.

I carefully reviewed every sentence, balancing meaning and accuracy, ensuring that each word reflected what the author intended to say without beautification or exaggeration. The process was at times exhausting, yet simultaneously rewarding, because I felt I was a temporary companion on the life journey of someone who had written his story with integrity and honesty.

When I completed the translation a few days ago, I felt as though I had traveled an entire journey with Ahmed Saif Hashed. I lived through the harsh moments of his childhood, understood his struggles, and witnessed his experiences as if I were close to him, despite the distance of time and space.