When we had been on the road for a few hours I ventured the opinion that we had taken the wrong route, and a halt was called while I examined the map I had with me. The guide Hassan was equally certain we were on the El Agia road. A discussion ensued, which ended with Hassan telling me, with what he intended to be withering sarcasm, “I have never walked on paper (meaning the map); I have only walked on the desert…”
-A Prisoner of the Khaleefa, Charles Neufeld, 1899
Like the fox and the hedgehog, I knew many small things while KhairAllah knew only one big thing: How to get the Dabouka to Egypt. Rand McNally, Michelin, Freytag…it didn’t matter to him what I said I knew. Maps were printed on folded paper in those days, and that, from what KhairAllah saw when I walked off from camp each morning with folded paper in my hand, somehow always ended up covered in Khar’a, of which Lane gives the cognate Kharā’a, Retiring Alone and Sitting Down to Satisfy a Want [of Nature].