Come, bestir your camels, Brethren, it is time Ye were away! I incline to other comrades; solitary let me stray.
-Al-Shanfara [“He of the Large Lips”], first line of his pre-Islamic ode to camel brigandry, Lāmiyyāt al-Arab, trans. George Hughes, 1896
Could Billa Ali recite the Lāmiyyāt? Unlikely, unless his memory was as rich as what he wore, bright white cummerbund, pin-striped silk vest, and ‘Imma, Turban, jauntily skewed over a trimmed goatee. But He of the Large Lips could have stolen the verse from Billa Ali’s very own mouth when we mounted the next morning, the matter of a stolen camel having been settled over dinner, he going one way and we another, to Egypt.
©David Melody. Billa Ali, Camel Thief