Both camels and women serve men’s needs/Time never stops turning/The riverbank keeps falling/Let’s drink our wine at home/Let’s pass our time with women/Let’s roast our meat on fires/We all go to Paradise just the same.
-Song collected in, English-Arabic Vocabulary for the Use of Officials in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Captain H.F.S. Amery, 1905
Captain Amery worked for British Intelligence in Sudan immediately after it was retaken from the Mahdists in 1898. And what was one focus of his espionage? Camel riding songs. The lyrics of KhairAllah’s friend and poet Bilal Bakhīt’s riding song went like this…She isn’t flabby and her hips are wide/Her bum is high yet my hand reaches ‘round/Upon the life of the Prophet!/Upon the Meccan Pilgrimage!/Upon the Day of the Feast!…Both camels and women indeed. Report to MI6 that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.