The Scented Garden

The Atheist. 99 Allah’s the atheist ! He owns no Allah. Sneer, thou dullard churl ! The Sufi worships not, but drinks, being himself the all-divine. Come, my Habib, the roses blush, the waters gleam, the bulbul sings — To pierce thy podex El Qahar’s urgent and immi- nent design !7 1. God — not Noah. But the grape here means the physical basis of Ecstasy. 2. The word used here is not [Persian text] but [Persian text] the square root (arithmetic). Possibly a pun with the word [Persian text] jazbat, which I have translated “ charm.” However there is (ac- cording to Mahbub) a mystic truth con- cealed. Arithmetic like all sciences was at one time considered magical by the vulgar ; to this day the “ magic squares ” of numbers of which the simplest cast is : 492 357 816 are attributed to the planets, and credited with su- pernatural powers. There is an Arab saying — I think by Averrhoes — “ God is the square root of man ” : and a certain very holy Fakir (only recently dead) determined to discover the nature of God by working out √3. He is said to have engraved over a thousand pounds weight of thin silver plates — supplied by the faithful — with the minute charac- ters of his calculations. At his death these plates were distributed and of course worked innumera- ble miracles. Should such a plate come in the pos-