On the road they are not driven with sticks and scourges, but the camel drivers walk after them, singing thus: Han na yo yo an ho ho oyo o ho, and so on.
-The Wanderings of Brother Felix Fabri Through the Holy Land, Arabia, and Egypt, 1483
Its function is to express a surge of passion on the spur of the moment. This may be a sudden recall of a past encounter, or an expression of joy or bewilderment at a given moment…or commendation of the rider’s mount, boasting, and love.
-Yousif Babiker, University of Edinburgh, on the dubayt poetical form of rural Sudan
Brother Felix should have had a better translator. That was not wordless scat singing he heard but rather finely rhymed and metered poetry, quite possibly a classical dubayt intoned as song. On the other hand, we had the best Sudanese man at the BBC who knew all the western dialects, including Kabbashi, so his understanding of the dubayt form from Dar al Kababish was excellent, and he translated this poem, sung by our drover Idris while on Day 25 of the Way of the Forty he was driving camels on foot at that day’s Mile 20, to a high level of fidelity.
Rocket, My camel of the Soviet Union,
Have you yet passed Addika?
Have you found her wadi and entered?
Have not I said to tell her that
Your rider is raving for her love?
Rocket, My camel of Sudan,
Have you yet passed Addika?
Have you found her smoky scent?
Have you told her that I am sick in love?
You deny every lad living between Kojam and this place,
Leave the water, you have slain the best of us.
Your strap is thin, your girth hangs loose.
Your rein is like an arrow aimed for gazelles.
Astride you I leave this world and all its fleeting comfort.
Beneath your rein your head glistens,
Blood boils through your neck.
Rocks strew the way to Majozer
And the morning will find you
Beyond the sands that none dare cross.