I halted my she-camel in that place as if she were a high palace where I might perform the wont of the lingerer.
-from the Ode of ‘Antara Ibn Shadād (525-608), in the Mu’allaqāt, the Hanging Poems, trans. F.E. Johnson, 1893
I reined in my camel, big as a fort-/I needed to weep, needed the shame.
-same verse, trans. James Montgomery, 2017
I rode a Jamal not a Nāqa, and because I am tall he did not tower over me, and I had little time to linger long feeling anything in particular because we were hard pressed to arrive in Egypt within forty days. But other than that, yes, I could well have been in the company of ‘Antara Ibn Shadād, Son of the Camel Saddle (not to be confused in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic with Ibn Shaddād, a Heavy Smoker of Hashish), the pre-Islamic African-Arab poet-warrior and likely progenitor, at least in the mind of this Khawaja, of Kabbāshi camelmen like Mas’ūd Abu Dūd, Abdullah Mansūr, Muhammad Abu Sha’r, and KhairAllah Khair al-Sayyid.