So one August night I found myself a part of a Saharan caravan, one of the vertebrae of a monster sand snake which wormed its way through the Great Desert.
-The Gateway to the Sahara, Charles W. Furlong, 1909
No one would mistake our shape-shifting Dabouka’s jostling camels for the neat nose-to-tail back bones of a sandworm, in Dune called Shai-Hulud, from Arabic, Shai’ al-Khulūd, Thing of Eternity, because most were sent to slaughter as soon as they had arrived in Egypt.