Ali Quli Qarai, The Qur’ān with a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (2005)
questioning each other.
51 One of them will say,
‘Indeed I had a companion
52 who used to say,
“Are you really among those who affirm
53 [that] when we are dead
and have become dust and bones,
we shall indeed be brought to retribution?” ’
54 He 1 will say, ‘Will you have a look?’
55 Then he will take a look
and sight him in the middle of hell.
56 He will say, ‘By Allah, you had almost ruined me!
57 And had it not been for my Lord’s blessing,
I too would have been among the arraigned!’
58 ‘Is it [true] that we shall not die [anymore],
59 aside from our first death,
and that we shall not be punished?
60 This is indeed the great success!
61 Let all the workers work for the like of this!’
62 Is this a better hospitality, or the Zaqqūm tree?
63 Indeed We have made it a punishment
for the wrongdoers.
64 Indeed it is a tree
that emerges from the depths of hell.
65 Its spathes are as if they were devils’ heads.2
66 Indeed they will eat from it
1 That is, one of his companions in paradise.
2 ‘The devil’s head’ is either a purely imaginative metaphor, or a simile that likens the spathes of the Zaqqūm tree to that of an Arabian plant by this name, or to certain rocks to be found around the city of Makkah which were called ‘the devils’ heads’ because of their hideous appearance.
