The man who has stolen a camel shall return it to the rightful owner and pay the victim with nine animals of the same sort. If he cannot pay he shall give his children in place of the animals and if he has no children he shall be slaughtered like a sheep, his legs bound together and his belly ripped open and his heart squeezed by the slaughterer’s hand until he dies.
-Yassa (Legal Code) of Genghis Khan, 13th C
Lucky that the camel thief of Wadi al-Milk, Billa Ali al-Grayn, didn’t live in Mongolia. If so, it would have been he we slaughtered like a sheep and not the small goat we then roasted and invited him to share at dinner to show that bygones were bygones, so much that he smiled when Daoud took his picture the next morning.
.
©David Melody