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-