Ichthus The desert is the garden of Allah. a Moslem saying In the sea of the desert of the self, in the wind and sand, desire lives without meaning. In the garden of the city of waters it lives– desire for a deity who lives before words, who makes of the desert a garden, daily prayer his empery, what food and drink are to the body. Without our hearts he has no being. Who does not want to touch into the kingdom at the secret heart of language, so close within the heart beneath skin, that rules by silence and desire -making in the desert the stream, the river, the sea.