When- with a heave- he is launched. The porters hoist him skyward, up like a flag, sixty two kilos of meat such that he is camel high, eye to eye in fact.
-Disaster Was My God, Bruce Duffy
Our departure from Nahud riding on newly bought saddles, there having been no time to refit them individually to our over-sized dimensions, was nothing like the cancer-stricken Rimbaud’s departure from Harar in a camel-borne stretcher. Except that both our camels and his knew they were carrying on their backs something they should not and never should have been asked to carry, too much Khawaja meat.