After a long lonely wandering you meet a caravan and listen in the evening to the talk of the grave sunburned men around the campfire: they talk of the simple, great things of life and death…and you never hear idle babbling, for one cannot babble in the desert.
-The Road to Mecca, Muhammad Asad
Abdullah: Why don’t you saddle your camel? Yusuf: You’re the one who wants to saddle. Abdullah: Go saddle. Yusuf: Why don’t you fall in a hole?
-Voice of the Whip, Day 25, testy dialogue between drover and trail boss, with an expurgated translation of the last line
Muhammad Asad was the father of anthropologist Talal Asad who wrote an ethnography of the Kababish. If Talal had briefed his father about campfire conversation in the Sahara, as opposed to the Nafud, he would have known just how much they babbled in that desert at night. Perhaps I was at fault, but I acted in the spirit of linguistic curiosity.
I wanted to know the difference between a dhurta and a fuswa which the drovers discussed at length fireside. If I had my Lane handy I would have read, Dharata, v., Dhurta, n., [a course word signifying] He broke wind from his anus with a sound [when it is without sound you say fuswa], Hence the proverb, The ass had no power except breaking wind from his anus with a sound. But the drovers did not enlighten me about the verb in Form IV, Adhrata. As per Lane, He made him break wind from his anus with a sound, or its useful secondary meaning, He imitated to him with his mouth the action of breaking wind from his anus with a sound. Babbling, indeed.