And he gathered up all the food of the seven years, which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities…And Joseph gathered corn as the sand of the sea…
-Genesis 41:48
Some of the camels in our Dabouka were sold in Upper Egypt as draft animals but most were butchered in Cairo as food for the poor. I never asked KhairAllah what he thought about seeing their dressed quarters hang from fly-ridden meat hooks in sūq stalls, the irony of them being DOA in Africa’s largest city, the opposite perhaps of Bernardino de Sahagún’s visit in 1550 to the food market in Tenochtitlan, Pre-Columbian America’s largest city, and seeing dog meat tacos for sale to the rich.
