A camel has no real price. The buying and selling of camels merely represent a rough equivalent of their value…One can drink camel milk, use its hair, make it carry things- even eat it. And with the blessing of God it multiplies under your hand. But what do you do with the bits of paper that the merchant gives you? You put them in your pocket.
-A Kabbāshi tribesman quoted by Talal Asad, Seasonal Movements of the Kababish Arabs of Northern Sudan, Sudan Notes and Records, Vol. 45, 1964
KhairAllah told me when describing the responsibilities of his job as Khabīr, I am driving before me millions in the form of camels. Millions of what? I should have asked him. But I already had the answer in the name of his employer, the export merchant Hajj Bashir Abu Jaib, Father of the Pocket.