The camel is a means, not an end.
-Thoughts on the Bedouinisation of Arabia, William Lancaster et al., Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, Vol.18, 1988
Lancaster was on to something, that there were many ways to consider oneself a Bedouin, not just by herding camels, and he cited as other examples the fishing Arabs living at the sea shore who had given up their desert mounts for ocean going skiffs, leaving out of this world altogether such working stiffs as Ahmad the drover and Yusuf the Khabīr, who showed me their passports and recounted airplane flights to Iraq as contract laborers.