Lepidus- What manner o’ thing is your crocodile? Antony- It is shaped, sir, like itself; and it is as broad as it hath breadth; it is just so high as it is, and moves with its own organs; it lives by that which nourisheth it; and, the elements once out of it, it transmigrates. Pompey- What colour is it of? Antony- Of its own colour too. Pompey- ‘Tis a strange serpent. Antony- ‘Tis so. And the tears of it are wet.
-Antony and Cleopatra, 2.7
After 21 days we finally reached the Nile. Everyone drank and washed. David and I went swimming, to the drovers’ great consternation. The Nile will eat you, they said. Al Neel biyakulkum. We laughed and swam deeper and farther into the current. I wondered how it would feel to leave the camels there and then and just keep swimming to Egypt. No more waterless nights to pass around the campfire, no more empty goatskins at our midday stop. But then I thought, what about all the tamaaseeh? and swam back to shore. Better to be picked at by vultures than swallowed by crocodiles. I had heard there were still many living in the Nubian Reach of the Nile. So it wouldn’t be the Neel that ate me, it would be the Neel’s strange serpent, a timsaah.