On the day they left Timbuktu you could see grown men with beards anxious to mount a camel but trembling in fear before it. When they mounted the camel they were thrown off when the beast rose, for the righteous forefathers kept their children indoors until they grew up. Hence they had no understanding of practical matters…
-Tarikh al-Sudan, Abd al-Sa’di, mid-17th C.
Abd al-Sa’di writes of the departure in the year 1324 of the haj caravan of Mansa Musa, ruler of the Malian Empire and said to have been the richest man in the world. His pack string included eighty camels each carrying hundreds of pounds of gold dust. When he passed through Cairo en route to Mecca they say he flooded the souks with such extravagent coinage that prices went wild for a decade.
Our departure from al-Nahud was a bit more modest. We slaughtered a ewe and marked the camels’ necks with our sheep blooded hand prints. Neither Daoud nor Mustapha nor Nedu nor I had ridden camels before, but we neither trembled nor feared. We were practical Americans.
We watched KhairAllah mount as he reached back with his left hand to grip the rear saddle pommel and ahead with his right to hold the fore. That way when the camel jerked up off his knees like an unfolding jack knife KhairAllah was ready for each direction of tilt. A tight girth helped too. We didn’t yet have beards- those would grow later- but we just like Mansa Musa’s 60,000 man entourage were eager to see Cairo.