1. Our talk between al-Ḥaditha and al-Karkh recalls to me the period of youth and its prime.
2. I said to myself: 'After fifty years, when through long meditation I have become as weak as a young bird,
3. It recalls to me the neighbourhood of Sal‘ and Ḥájir, and brings to my mind the period of youth and its prime,
4. And the driving of the camels up hill and down dale, and
my kindling fire for them by rubbing the ‘afár and the markh together.' 1
1-3. He says: 'Our praise of God (###), telling of the Divine Revelation, recalls to me the time of pilgrimage in the station where the veils were rent and lifted from me by acts of devotion that produced spiritual feelings and aspirations of which I was unconscious, and brings me back from my present state of acting in unveiledness and without being conscious of consciousness to the former state of acting in which I was veiled.'
4. 'My kindling fire,' etc., i.e. the things generated by veiled secondary causes whereby the reality is doubly disguised.
119:1 ‘Afár and markh are the names of trees whose wood was used for this purpose.
