Those dromedaries and camels which are constantly ridden and carry heavy burdens are less vicious and will sometimes even place their lips against your cheek. It is the custom of the kind master occasonally to put his face against that of his own dromedary while speaking gently to it. Moreover the Bedouin seldom or never beats his dromedary, but treats him with as much kindness as his own children. If one runs away which it sometimes does for many miles in search of food or water, he will follow it and by using soothing sounds invariably induce it to be retaken.
-The Camel: Its Anatomy, Proportions, and Paces, 1865 London, By Elijah Walton
Ned and I had a pitch meeting with Robert Gardner, hoping he would support our plan to make a movie about camelmen from Sudan driving their herd to Egypt, of how they ride for 40 days then return to Sudan by ferry and lorry to ride with another herd, doing this sometimes five times a year. I told him I knew the trail boss from a previous trip and what we expected to film of their chores and life on the trail.
The pitch failed. He said that the film should be about the camels, not the men, and the extreme injustice with which they are treated after finishing the trail- with the slaughter house as their reward, or the lucky ones with a plow harness- and not like the men with a paycheck. At the least, he told us, we should focus on how the men and camels bond on the trail.
Gardner had a point. The camels and the men did not travel separately and apart, but rather together and as one. That is why camelmen are sometimes called camel ticks, rukaab, literally meaning “riders”. I cannot say how the camels felt about their riders, and I never saw their riders express anything like love and affection for their camels, but I did see what the camels, whether they were riding camels or herd camels, gave of themselves to the men. Their freedom. And patience. And direction.
We ended up making a film that I call an anthropology film, about men, but it is really a film about their camels. And that last scene, when they are being loaded onto rail cars for shipment to Cairo slaughterhouses, all those not sold in Upper Egypt for farm work, while the drovers observe silently from a distance and Egyptians load the train with clubs and shouts and whips, is a sad one. I think Gardner was right after all.