They lamented the price of camels (1 £E for a full grown) and asked where all the money had gone. I said, God knows. The Hajj then talked about Mecca and the government of Ibn Saud and especially his short way with thieves (decapitation) which the Arabs much admired…
-October 7, 1931, Trek Journal, C.A.E. Lea, A.D.C. in Dar al-Kababish
KhairAllah should have told Billa Ali that it wasn’t worth the risk to steal a camel. Not because today 1 Egyptian Pound is worth just a nickel, but because the Dabouka’s owner Hajj Bashir punished camel thieves not with one big slice but rather with a thousand small cuts, that is, words of personal condemnation and insult that would forever blacken the name of a rustling miscreant, even to the ends of the Wadi al-Milk where Billa Ali roamed fifty years after Assistant District Commissioner Lea had cleaned up the place.