رقصة ليلى [Raksit Leila] [English translation]

The Evil Eye doesn't always work1

And as for me, there's two million between me and you2

Sing to me about eggplants3

Anything4 but how tired you are

The situation is in Maameltein5

And personally I'm not following two sets of commands

A prince, a king, and two policies6

Bringing in two rackets/paddles isn't working7

1. The Evil Eye symbolizes greed in Middle Eastern cultures. The line's literal meaning is "Not everything useful has an Eye hitting it".2. This line could be read in two ways: either "and I, [just] between you and me, [feel like] two million" or "and [as for] me, between me and you [are] two million." The latter is probably the better reading, and the two million likely refers to money or something of the sort.3. The idea being just to sing about something pointless.4. It actually says "everything", but "anything" works better in English5. If they had sung "maamaltein" then the word would've meant "two treatments", but they sing "maameltein", which is the name of a region in Lebanon where a lot of shit goes down. The line could mean either "the situation is in Maameltein" or "the situation in Maameltein [is...]". Either way, the point is probably that the situation is messy.6. The word "mlek" that we hear in the song should mean "angel", but considering we're talking about politics and a prince, it might instead be a dialectal pronunciation of the word "malak" meaning "king".7. What the line literally says is unclear -- the last word, madrabein, means "two rackets/paddles" (and not "jar", which would instead have sounded like mortbein). It could either be "it's not working to bring in two paddles [just to hit us]" or "it's not working to stay between two paddles".

• Artist:Mashrou’ Leila
• Album:Mashrou' Leila