“Well,” said Mercer…“my personal favorite was when Rimbaud publically slapped the camel man.” “There it is,” intoned Bardey, nodding soberly, ever the apologist for his unfortunate protegé. “He was too mentally…aesthetic.”
-Disaster Was My God, Bruce Duffy
This is how Rimbaud’s colleagues in Harar remembered their friend of ten years on the day he set off, ill and dying, for the Red Sea coast. I sometimes wonder how the drovers remembered us after forty days. I had wanted to interview them at the end of the trail, sitting them down in a circle and asking the prompt question, How do you rate the Khawajas’ camel skills? I am sure they would have laughed and said something like, Da’īf, Weak, or Ka’ab, Dispirited, Sad, but unlikely would they have said, Jamāli, Aesthetic…a word not to be confused with Jammāli, Pertaining to a Camel Drover.