إِذَا مَا بَكَى مِنْ خَلْفِهَا انْصَرَفَتْ لَهُ
بِشِقٍّ وَتَحْتِي شِقُّهَا لَمْ يُحَوَّلِ
Whenever her child cried behind her, she turned one half of her body toward him, while the other half remained beside me and did not turn away.
Idhā mā bakā presents a recurring situation. In response to the child’s crying, the mother turns part of her body toward him while the rest stays where it is, forming an unusually specific physical image.
The rhetorical effect lies in division and contrast: the child’s need on one side, the speaker’s claimed intimacy on the other. Repeating bi-shiqq and shiqquhā makes the divided posture central to the verse.