The Ababda: We ride the stallion camel on the attack/We ride the tall rutting camel/Who but us guard the desert?/We jest with men who jest with drawn knives.
The Ja’liyīn: We are not Arabs of common blood/We ride the rutting camel on summer nights/We do not hire out our camels to others/You wretched Arabs are bought for money.
-Sudan Arabic Texts, S. Hillelson, from a Disputation Poem between two warring tribes
Hillelson’s job in the Sudan colonial service was to record tribal folktales, riddles, nursery rhymes, gossip, anecdotes, proverbs, and prophecies to help the British Crown exert its authority. His transcribed texts offer many insights but none mention men like Billa Ali al-Grayn, who made a monkey of drovers by convincing them that he had found the camels that he in fact had stolen from them, and then talked them into giving him a handsome reward, and on top of this then inviting him to dinner.
