46 
The Innocence and Reputation of Man. 
za) on your face ?  In order to stick a Ghazi to your 
bottom ! ” 
3.  Black-violet :  so in text [Persian text].  A 
black mole, in Sufi cipher, means the “ point of in-
divisible unity.”  But El Haji more scandalously 
and obviously chooses the podex itself throughout 
most of his masterpiece. 
4.  Friday.  This appears at first sight an obvious 
misreading.  But (if you please) Mahbub says :  
“ When a boy opens his podex, the hairs depart one 
from another like true believers quitting the mosque 
on Friday.  [Persian text] (mist) also means a worm 
in Arabic and the passage implies that all Arabs 
have tape-worms ! ”  As is well known, they pay re-
spect to Abu Bekr and Omar, and make things 
very hot for the ’Arami every year at Mecca.  The 
dragon is of course the universal one ;  Rahu in 
India ;  Caput Draconis and Cauda Draconis in the 
West, famed in Astrology as the powers of the Ec-
lipse. 
But I personally support the misreading theory 
for [Persian text] though I can offer no conjectural 
restoration.  The text makes nonsense, and Abdul-
lah, with all his puns and eccentricities, rarely 
does this.  In Morocco the appearance of hair on 
face or privates utterly disqualifies a boy for path-
ic). 
5.  [Persian text] This is one of El Haji’s “ port-
manteau ” words.  He will not specify [Persian text] 
(solar) or [Persian text] (lunar) eclipse :  so calmly 
invented a word with the third possible guttural to 
include all kinds ! 
6.  From the Q’uran.  Used however to reject 
amorous advances, as they say “ Allah is bountiful ” 
to a beggar, meaning “ I am not.”  But here it is 
meant seriously, or at worst to imply ;  “ This is 
very disgraceful conduct — let us blame it on Al-
lah ” !