Note- first published in Smithsonian Magazine, March 1987. The export camel trade to Egypt now follows the new tarmac road, on lorries, no longer on the hoof across the sand. I am still in touch with trail boss Khairallah, see Aramco World Magazine, March/April 2018..
Muhammad glanced uneasily from the dented, sooty teapot over to the four slack waterskins and back to the empty pot. Masud and Adam followed his eyes and understood what worried him: there was neither water to boil our asida, a meal of millet flour and dried okra, nor, more important to the camel drovers, to brew our evening tea. For the Kababish Arabs on a 40-day camel drive from the Sudan's Kordofan Province north to Egypt, heavily sugared tea is the sole reward at the end of a 15-hour day in the sa ddle. To pass the night with out a glass of this warming fuel is to feel the desert's cold and thirst all the way to the bone.
A friend and I were accompanying these three drov ers, their trail boss Khairallah and a herd of 109 cam els on the 1,000-mile drive to the camel market in Cairo (see map , page 122). We'd been invited to join them by the owner of the herd and one of Kordofan's leading camel merchants, Bashir Abu Jayib, in order to document a way of life much like that of the Old West's cattle drovers as they rode the Chisholm Trail. Our route would take us from the heart of the camel breeding grasslands in the central Sudan, northeast through the desert along the dry Wadi al-Milk, along the Nile through southern Nubia and finally again into the open desert to skirt Lake Nasser, bringing us to the village of Bimban, north of Aswan.
A dancing Pygmy as a gift
The Kababish call this overland route the Darb al arbain, literally the Way of the Forty, for the journey's average number of days. Part of the route has been in use since prehistoric times and was first documented during· Egypt's Old Kingdom when the emissary Harkouf, sent by the boy Pharaoh Pepi II, returned this way from his exploration of the land of Pun t, bringing a dancing Pygmy as a gift to his master. When riverine unrest disrupted trade links, a western desert route was established following a string of isolated wells running north through Egypt's Kharja oasis to Asyut. This more secretive route is still sometimes used by camel-riding runners of contraband.
To our dismay, night had fallen before we reached Umm Kharwa, our first watering place since beginning the drive ten days earlier at al-Nahud (the female breasts), named for two enormous sand dunes to the east of the village. Earlier this morning Khairallah had ridden ahead to Umm Kharwa to make arrangements with watering agents for our camels' thirsty arrival, which we had hoped wo ld be before dark. Now with our waterskins empty, the drovers were upset by the prospect of camping with neither food nor tea after having driven the herd all day through the hot and dusty Hamar territory.
When all the camels were hobbled, a nightly task taking the men only 20 minutes even in pitch dark, Muhammad rode to Umm Kharwa for water . Four hours later, well past midnight, he returned and the teapot was put on to boil. We dr-ank tea until breaking camp at dawn and by midmorning had entered Umm Kharwa's camel-packed well flats.
The camel trade from the Sudan to Egypt is thriving and promises to grow despite Egypt's increasing dependence on subsidized frozen-food imports distributed through government fair-price shops . In contrast to the crowded and under-stocked government stores, clean and convenient neighborhood butchers sell the freshly slaughtered camel meat at just above the price of government-subsidized frozen chicken and lamb. Here the customer can freely inspect the meat, picking and choosing from one slab to the next.
Each year, some 50,000 head of camels are driven north along the Darb al-arbain. Sudanese merchants like Bashir Abu Jayib and their purchasing agents throughout Kordofan Province buy camels from Kabbashi breeders at local markets and consolidate them into herds of up to 200 head. Transfer agents in Dongola, the halfway point on the Sudanese Nile, reprovision the drovers with essentials-tea, sugar and chewing tobacco. At the village of Bimban other agents sell off part of the herd for the market in Upper Egypt and provide onward transport to Cairo for the rest.
Camels three or more years old are driven north. The younger ones are prized for their succulent veal. If fed supplementary grain along the route, they prove strong on the march and command the best prices in Egypt. Older full-grown camels, five to ten years in age, are bought for $350 to $500 in Kordofan and are sold for twice that in Egypt. While a few are used as draft animals , most are bought for slaughter.
Because of the female camels' high local value as breeding stock, few are taken on the drive. In our herd there were only ten, all to be sold to Egyptian breeders. Cow camels also pose special problems: their presence in a herd of bulls causes stampedes and duels.
The morning of our departure from al-Nahud, Abu Jayib's purchasing agent Sadiq Abd al-Wahab had slaughtered and roasted a lamb as a token of karama, or esteem, on the trail. The drovers feasted on entrails and ribs before packing the hindquarters and gather ing up the herd. All the camels had been freshly wa tered, grazed and branded on the left side of the neck with Abu J ayib's trail number.
As we left behind al-Nahud's sand dunes, passing camel riders saluted the drovers and wished them safety in the desert. When standing face-to-face, the Kababish greet one another in an elegant ceremony of gentle handshakes followed by simultaneous palm strokes over the other's left shoulder , all the while whispering Islamic salutations . When mounted, they invite each other to dismount and drink tea. Indeed, not more than two hours after leaving al-Nahud, we dismounted to share a pot with a cousin of Khairallah.
Failed rains during several previous years had parched the northern grasslands where the Kababish lived and forced much of their breeding, grazing and marketing activities south to the region of the Hamar people, a tribe of melon, millet and peanut cultivators. (More recently, with improved rainfall, the tribe has begun moving back into its traditional homeland.) For ten days we traversed this land of savanna grass and baobab trees, whose stout trunks are used as remarkable above-ground cisterns. After the two or three rainfalls of late summer collect in the broad depressions at the base of each tree, the water is scooped with leather buckets into a hole high in the trunk. This living reservoir provides the village with its sole water supply during the 11 month dry period.
For the first days of the drive in Hamar country we made excruciatingly slow progress, allowing the herd to graze freely while on the move and making count less tea stops, where the camels foraged unattended. Reherding them was difficult work in the sometimes dense underbrush and among the acacia trees, whose long green thorns they preferred to the dry grasses. Before setting off again they had to be driven single file past Khairallah, who counted each one with a lazy drop of the hand.
The men would then take up their customary places around the herd, analogous to the point and drag posi tions of cattle drovers of the American West. Masud and Muhammad rode ja’ab at the herd's rear, urging the camels from behind and picking up strays. Adam rode makhruja at the left front and Khairallah rode maddaja at the right front. As camels tend to drift to the right when moving together , the maddaja, with a slight flick of a whip, controls the herd's direction. This place is always reserved for the trail boss or khabir, meaning expert. Khairallah's verbal commands to the ja’abs determined our driving speed. At a fast pace the air was filled with the drovers' cries of Hut, Onk, Heh and Birah (Easy does it)-the four notes of the Kabbashi chorale.
Umm Kharwa was to be our only plentiful water before we reached the Nile in another 15 days. Most herds on their way north pass through this dusty vil lage, whose economy depends on the migratory-live stock watering business. The owner of a well, the watering agent, and the water drawers split the $3 fee for each 25-foot-diameter mud trough that is filled. The deep-voiced bellows and growls of thirsty camels, mixed with the lowing of cattle and braying of don keys, produced an eerie welcome as we approached from the distance. Drawing closer, we heard the softly hummed work songs of the water drawers, described by one ethnomusicologist as being similar to the throat songs of the Inuit.
The desert widened to both horizons
Upon leaving Umm Kharwa and entering the Kababish territory, the thorn trees and grasses thinned and the desert widened to both horizons. A steady north wind drove fine sand into our faces-and at meal times into our millet paste and tea. The logic of the Islamic ablution before prayer-cleansing ears, nostrils and mouth-became clear after several days and nights in the Umrn Duhayr, Mother of Little Eternity, as the Kababish call their desert when the wind is strong.
The Wadi al-Milk , a dry narrow riverbed with low trees and thistles that cuts diagonally across the desert, appeared three days beyond Umm Kharwa. We kept the wadi to our left for the next ten days, staying a mile or so out in the desert in order both to avoid ambushes laid by camel thieves and to push the herd at its fastest pace across flat, empty ground. Every few days Masud was sent into the wadi to fill our waterskins at isolated wells. Being newly tanned, the skins made the salty water as black as our tea.
This was the part of our route where we would cover up to 45 miles during each day and half-night of travel. From dawn until many hours past dark, when Canis Major had already rotated 180 degrees since dusk, the camels crossed this enormous sealess beach , leaving their droppings and cloven prints in the wind-rippled sand. The only break in the monotonous view was an occasional outcropping of rock or a white honeymoon tent erected at the edge of the wadi. These tribal "wed ding announcements" always brought forth rowdy talk and speculation from the drovers, who spend most of the year away from their families.
After the dusk prayer at a 15-minute rest stop, when all the camels would urinate in unison, we remounted and watched the desert's reddish hues, only fully ap parent seconds before sunrise and after sunset, fade into darkness. Navigating by night was easy for Khairallah in the open desert by "keeping the North Star on the left cheek." I was always amazed the next morning, after hours of a moonless night ride, to find our camp alongside the tracks of previous drives. Old campsites that we might pass at midday, with three blackened fire stones , dung piles and perfectly aligned sand nests made by camels sleeping nose leeward, evoked the same nostalgia for tea and fellowship cele brated by Bedouin poets in pre-Islamic odes.
During the precious hour when we stopped at noon the drovers were never at rest. Camel chores, such as patching sore foot pads, refitting saddlebags and fetching wandering camels, occupied every minute. Muhammad stayed busy with the fire, teapot and millet paste, whose simple recipe of flour and water required constant stirring with a heavy stick. After the paste was mixed and hand-patted into a dry round lump, the sauce was made from dried okra, tomato and chili powder. The informal Kabbashi word for this thrice-a day meal, lukhma, is best conveyed in English as grub.
On the 17th day, while waiting for Khairallah to re turn from his search for a camel separated from the herd during a night drive, we brought the camels into the wadi at Idd Ahmad, a small outpost of settled Kabbashi goatherds. A band of locals met us at the wells and filled the mud watering troughs. Though shallow, the wells needed constant dredging and shoring up from the inside with tree branches. For every half-bucket of water, out came two buckets of sand. Upon the empty-handed arrival of Khairallah, who had ridden all night in his search, we prepared tea.
The goatherds, conscious of their un-glamorous life compared with that of their camel-driving tribesmen, were eager for us to stay and tell stories. So too was Billa Ali al-Qurayn (Little Horned One). A resident of Idd Ahmad, he was reputed to be a notorious camel thief of the wadi. He had met us at the well with a shifty greeting and a complicated story concerning the camel he now rode. At one time it had belonged to one Osman Billi, was then bought by Abu Jayib, then lost on a night drive and recently found by Billa Ali in the wadi. He demanded a $50 reward from Khairallah before handing it over.
Billa Ali's elegant attire-clean white riding tunic and turban, silk vest, silver earring, tooled leather car tridge belt and saddle, and conspicuous carbine-was in vivid and suspicious contrast to our dirty and rag ged clothing. Even more unusual about this character was that after sharing our meal, sleeping by our fire and pocketing the reward, he shouldered his camel gear and carbine and walked off across the sand to no discernible destination. Khairallah later explained that Billa Ali's modus operandi was to demand reward money for camels that he himself had stolen. Because the carbine was the only law within many days' ride, an unarmed drover had no choice but to meet his terms.
Two species of carrion-eating birds followed our herds like seagulls over a fishing boat; when we broke camp they watched for the occasional exhausted camel that could not regain its feet and had to be left behind with its throat slit-a mercy killing. The Kababish called these birds Urnrn Rakhrn Allah and Abu Jurn juma, Mother of the Vulture of God and Father of the Skull. The trail was littered with sun-bleached camel skeletons; often the gleaming bones, some carefully stacked, served as trail cairns. Given our chronic hunger, it seemed strange to me that the Kababish considered the meat of camels that died of trail fatigue too "tired" to be eaten.
Still days before the promise of the Nile, we marked our progress in passing barren mountains with such names as Father of the Ax and Daughter of the Mother of the Sea. They appeared on the horizon at dawn, stood beside our midday camp and disappeared behind in the dusk light. Rare thorn trees st nding alone made much-appreciated campsites in spite of the hundreds of spotted ticks, also enjoying the shade, that would swarm up our legs. Luckily, these ticks had been spoiled by camel blood and had n.o taste for humans. The night before we were to reach the Nile, a baby camel was born. The next morning it lay beside its mother with kinked, white curls glistening wet in the sunrise, too weak to rise to its feet. ,ve would have had to abandon it had not a donkey rider come upon us on his way to a Nile village and accepted the foal as a gift. He hefted it behind the saddle and went happily on his way. Although eager to reach the Nile ourselves, we had to delay our arrival until mid-morning in order for the thirst -weakened but fickle camels to be more disposed to drink in great quantities.
We saw the Nile's thin green sleeve
Our first indication that the Nile was near, several days before, had been the cloud masses in the north east of a normally empty sky. Today, more tangible evidence was a loosely strung telegraph line that we could barely pass under. Coming over a dune, we saw the Nile's thin green sleeve of date palms, winter wheat, beans and water grasses. Drovers and camels alike scrambled for the riverbank and a long-awaited drink. While Muhammad brewed tea from Nile water, we unloaded the riding camels, watching from high on the steep bank the frenetic watering scene below: camels snorting, pawing, slurping and finally just staring at their own reflections. Local farmers left their fields to sit with us and admire the herd that was now half way to market. Our walking bank account of $50,000 would soon be doubled in value.
After a second pot of tea, a profligacy unknown in the desert, we resaddled and set out due north, staying well into the sands but within view of the river. It became our game to count palms, minarets and curls of smoke from a cook fire- anything to remind us of the food, drink and rest nearly within reach. But confined to the camel on the desert fringe, with the unexplored pleasures of riverine life now beckoning, and being passed by honking trucks on their way to Dongola, I soon tired of the unbearably slow pace of what momentarily seemed an anachronistic, romantic stunt.
On our 25th day, Dongola promised to fulfill our desert-driven expectations of urban reward. The day was spent squatting, sitting and reclining on the floor of the market stall belonging to al-Amiri Yasin, Abu Jayib's agent, smoking and recounting tales of Billa Ali and the wadi for all the assembled merchants. The trail boss is a celebrity for anyone who must earn a sedentary living measuring out dates, rice and beans. Dongola is an agricultural town and the political and cultural cap_ital of Sudanese Nubia, a foreign world to the Kababish of the desert.Unused to bountiful supplies of fresh fruit, water jars on every corner, and unveiled women transacting business, Khairallah barely ventured out of the stall's doorway and cared to taste not one mango , orange or banana. Instead, after purchasing dried chewing tobacco and our resupply of sugar, tea and millet flour, he hired a Toyota to drive us back to the camels waiting on the edge of town. He seemed to have no regrets about leaving this land of plenty with so little to remember of the visit.
The next several days offered dwindling succor to our tired backsides. Signs of modernity thinned and the electric line from Dongola terminated , darkening our night rides once again. The truck route had now crossed the river, so we were left to ourselves and the isolated Nubian villages on the west bank. We slowed the pace to feed the camels on water grass and the rubble of harvested beanfields. It was possible to walk most of the day beside the river on the firm bank and to scavenge for remains of last year's date crop. The fruit of the twin-crowned doom palm, a large nut with a rock-hard graham-cracker crust, provided the mind less diversion of an all-day sucker.
After the fifth day of riding past verdant fields, mud villages ablaze with brightly painted doorways, and the pharaonic temple of Sulb, we topped off our waterskins north of Dal Cataract, near where the Nile be gins to back up from Lake Nasser, in preparation for the last leg of our journey. This was to be a forced march parallel to the lake but far enough into the desert to avoid contact with the over-officious and bribe-hungry border authorities. Our encounter with a date wine-drunk officer of Hamid village had already cost us one day and 25 Sudanese pounds for the infraction of herding "underdocumented" camels.
One day just before our noon break we came upon three large herds being driven from Darfur Province, west of Kordofan. The trail bosses brought their cam els to the ground with the customary sh-sh-sh command of the far west. Khairallah kh-kh-khed his camels Kordofani style and greeted the strangers.After swapping their news-the headline story was about an armed night attack by thieves in the wadi-the Dar furis invited us to share the meat of a crippled she camel they were about to slaughter.
The skin was laid open like a picnic cloth
We arrived at the scene just in time to see the squatting camel pinned to the ground with its neck pulled out taut by the rein, and the knife make a 180-degree slash on its under side. The body strained backward, the eyes bulged and blood sprayed over the sand for yards. When the heart had pumped the body nearly dry, the skin was laid open on either side like a picnic cloth and four men undressed the corpse with flashing blades. The ring of onlookers shouted instructions, and fin ally such choice parts as the hump fat, chest call us, hoof jelly and liver emerged from the shrunken carcass. Each of us had a share of the liver and hump, still hot and raw.
Our drovers collected their quarter-side of camel and returned to the herd. We ate a hurried meal of millet paste before setting off on what seemed like the longest, hottest, most fatiguing afternoon march of the trip. We stopped only for the sunset prayer and continued until after midnight. I was too exhausted to stay awake at the fire for the meal to be prepared, but my sleep was interrupted throughout the night by movement at the fire and much laughter. I could even make out the animated whistle and chatter of the gen erally stone-silent Muhammad. The earliest light revealed the cause of my insomnia. All night the drovers had chopped the camel meat into thin strips and hung them to wind-dry on rope slung between saddles. The hundreds of bits of darkening red meat were to be our movable and slowly putrefying feast for the last seven days of the journey.
After several uneventful days, again riding very la te, we watched the bright glows of, first, the Aswan Dam and then the city proper approach and pass behind. We crossed an asphalt road, frightening the camels as we climbed steeply up and over its embankment in the midst of the sand flat. There were other finish lines to cross the next morning-electric lines, more roads, rows of windblown garbage- before seeing the Nile Valley for the second time since leaving al-Nahud.
The mood, however, was much different from our arrival on the Sudanese Nile near Khaliwa 20 days before. The drovers sensed they were in strange surroundings, perhaps at a disadvantage at the hands of Egyptian hard bargaining and double-ta lk. Their status as men of the desert was not esteemed here. Still a mile from the village of Bimban, we were met by four donkey-riding merchants who swarmed over the herd with barely a word of greeting, eager to mark and reserve camels for later purchase. They regarded our mounts only as business opportunities and not as the beasts of God-favored beauty and strength that they were to the Kababish . The fragile spell of the desert was completely broken now.
Abu Jayib's transfer agent, Ahmad Hassan Abd al Majid, met us at his stable in Bimban with a large tray of food, which the camel buyers managed to crowd around first and nearly keep us from altogether. The drovers were fully occupied with the camels, keeping them herded, carrying straw from Hassan's stable and cutting out the ones for local sale. Khairallah accepted a Cleopatra-brand cigarette and withdrew from the clamor. Merchants in pursuit with offers to buy his saddle, knife or camel were met with the otherworldly expression of one just awakened from a long sleep.
At Bimban, Abu Jayib 's camels were fed, watered and, because the seasonal price was strong, many were so ld for the same price they would ordinarily bring only in Cairo. After much shouting between agents, merchants and drovers, 60 of the 109 in our herd were sold . The remainder were driven two days north to Esna and loaded onto trucks bound for Cairo.
Five hundred miles and 24 hours later, the trucks rumbled into Egypt's principal livestock market. The Cairo camel market , near lmbaba across the railroad tracks on the city's west bank, comes to life every day well before dawn. More than camels trade hands here, as one can find horses, donkeys, water buffalo, goats, sheep , animal harnesses and clothing in any one of the many mud-walled enclosures. Camels take center stage, however, the paddocks filling throughout the morning with herds recently arrived from the drive, their drovers, white-robed Sudanese merchants like Abu Jayib and his son Mahdi, Samsonite-carrying Egyptian meat-broker millionaires and their bagmen, bookkeepers and fallahin - all revolving around the kingpin of this kinetic panoply: the camel market's own King Solomon, Muhammad Abd al-Aziz .
Holding court from behind sunglasses
This portly gentleman, always sea ted on the wide reviewing bench in the middle of the paddock , surrounded by eager buyers and sellers, acts as auctioneer, price fixer and deal guarantor wrapped into one. His grandfather emigrated from Saudi Arabia at the turn of the century with an acutely discriminating sense of camel flesh and founded this market. The Abd al-Aziz family quickly established itself as the indispensable trade link between the Sudan and Egypt, the desert and the metropolis, the herder and the wholesaler. Now attended by his many offspring, one of whom will eventually be named heir to his throne, Muhammad holds court from behind sunglasses and under a distinctly folded turban.
Sales are conducted one-on-one-one buyer, one seller and one camel at a time. Muhammad eyeballs the camel cut from the herd, mentally weighing its dressed meat, and now sets a fair price containing a small margin for his commission. His authority is usually sufficient to settle any differences, but if either buyer or seller cannot accept the price they both must withdraw and are replaced by another willing pair. Each sale is recorded in a huge ledger and no money can change hands until Muhammad assents.
The Kabbashi drovers remained at the camel market until all of their herds were sold off, perhaps up to two weeks. Even on the outskirts of a city of ten million , Africa's largest, they continued to fill teapots from waterskins and boil millet flour over an open fire. With their wages the y made purchases for friends and family in Kordofan, visited the mosques of al-Azhar and Sayyidna al-Hussayn in the old city, and settled old debts among their fellow tribesmen. Many other groups of drovers were at the market at the same time, and most were acquaintances, friends or relatives from home villages. The spirit in the open-air drovers' dormitories was similar to that of the summer camps at their tribal wells; this was a time to reaffirm the bonds between lineages and clans. Only when all of the camels from our herd had been sold did the drovers prepare to depart for Kordofan.
Each proudly wore a newly purchased garment; each carried at least a token of the metropolis. They loaded wooden saddles and burlap sacks stuffed with cooking pots and the beloved teakettle onto the Toyota that would take them to Cairo's main railroad station. Their return would be to Aswan by train, thence across Lake Nasser to Wadi Halfa by steamer, on to Omdurman by rail and , finally, to Umm Badr by lorry. The entire journey would take more than a week, one day for every six of the camel drive north. Joined by another group of drovers also homeward bound , they formed a circle in the paddock and, with arms outstretched and palms open, recited a rhythmic prayer for safety while traveling. With solemn handshakes and words of farewell, the drovers left us and the Cairo market. In several months, before the blasting heat of the Saharan summer would end the drive season, they promised to be back with another herd. Khairallah's easy laugh as he asked us to accompany another drive almost made me forget the still-fresh body aches and hunger pangs of the· Way of the Forty.