- English translation
"Dad, come on, make us look distinguished!" He answered: "Sure, once everyone who knows us is dead."
- Literal wording
O father, get up and honor us. He said: when the one who knows us dies.
- Meaning and lesson
The saying mocks attempts to claim high standing while witnesses to one's ordinary origins are still around. A child urges the father to raise the family's prestige, and the father answers that this can only happen once everyone who knows them has died. The plural "us" frames honor and origins as the family's, not one person's.
The father's reply works as dry realism: reputation depends on what others remember, and memory cannot be talked away. The joke lies in naming an impossible condition. The rhyming endings, sharrafna and yiʿrafna, give the Arabic its punchy, quotable shape.
- When it is used
Fits moments when someone puts on airs or claims an impressive background in front of people who remember their modest beginnings. It can also be used wryly about one's own family, admitting that any show of grandeur would convince nobody nearby.
- Register
- colloquial
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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