4640 If ever the presence of Allah is felt, or at the time of J udgement, a glimmering of truth comes to the deceived soul, and it cries to its evil companions in its agony, "Would that I had never come across thee! Would that we were separated poles apart!" But it cannot shake off evil. By deliberate choice it had 4641 Distance of East and West literally, 'distance of the two Easts'. Most Commentators understand in this sense, but some construe the phrase as meaning the distance of the extreme points of the rising of the sun, between the summer solstice and the winter solstice. Cf. n. 4034 to
37:5. A good equivalent idiom in English would be "poles apart", for they could never meet.