A beast gentle and tractable, but in the time of Venery; then, as if remembering his former hard usage, he will bite his Keeper, throw him down, and kick him: forty days continuing in that fury, and then returning to his former meekness.
-A Relation of a Journey Begun An. Dom. 1610, Containing a Description of the Turkish Empire, of Aegypt, of the Holy Land…. by George Sandys
Forty days of Venery! That’s a long time with something you can’t get off your mind. I know that forty is a significant number in Near Eastern religions and folklore. Forty days of fasting in the desert or forty years of wandering in the desert. We were not wandering, rather going in a straight line, as straight as the grazing permitted, but still trying to arrive within forty days.
Both times I rode the Way of the Forty, it took a bit more than that. But luckier for us, our camels were never in their time of venery. For them, it didn’t matter whether it was four, or forty, or four times forty days on the trail. No need to return to meekness when entering the abattoir. No reprieve for a camel at the end of the Darb al-Arba’een. The knife and then the fork awaited. Khilis al-jins [see April 29], then ‘itfaddal. The sex is finished, then bon appetite.