Moreover the saide camels are of a gentle disposition and are imbued as it were with a kind of humaine reason; for when they have a day’s journey to travel that is more than their want, their masters cannot drive them on, being so tired, with whips, but are faine to sing certain songs to them; wherewith being exceedingly delighted, they performe their journey with such swiftness, that their saide masters are scarce able to follow them.
-Description of Africa, Leo Africanus, 1550
Like a fish sleek and tasty, Your eye like a Seiko watch.
-a Dubayt, a camel-driving couplet, composed and sung by Idris, a drover in Bilal’s dabouka, 1988
Did they sing to themselves or sing to their camels? Why the rush? Certainly the camels didn’t care to hurry, they were going to their own slaughter. Yes, the drovers wanted to hurry, the lights of Cairo awaited, but as Yusuf said, I want to be rid of this miserable job. The sooner he’d arrived, the sooner he’d have to start it all over again. Nothing to sing about there. So maybe best for both man and animal to take it easy in the desert…not much grass, not much water, but where time stands still. Like an unwound Seiko watch.