…written partly in the saddle and partly in the tent…
-Palmyra and Zenobia, from the Preface, William Wright, 1895
No, it is impossible to put down a single legible word in a camel saddle, and I had no tent. I wrote my trail diary seated on the open ground, often with my back to the wind or my face to the fire light. In pencil because, as KhairAllah would say, the sand Yākul, Eats, the pen. He didn’t say if it would also Yishrab, Drink, its ink.