“Two camels,” shouts the auctioneer from the block. The animals in question move wearily into the ring, their humps lop-sided and sagging pathetically. The asking price is too high, there are no bidders. “C’mon,” says the auctioneer, “Feed ‘em a little bit and those humps will go right back up.”
-Mangy Elk and Crippled Camels, The Wall Street Journal, June 14, 1996, on an Exotic Animal Auction in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
That was not how the Cairo camel market functioned in 1979 when Hajj Bashir invited me to sit beside him on his bench in the busy sales paddock and explained its ins and outs. Let a prospective buyer, he told me, squeeze the hump as many times as he wants. Start the bidding low and watch the butchers gather. Never tell an Egyptian he can fatten a trail-thin camel, because everyone knows they get marched to slaughter within the hour.