We suppose that a second millennium [BCE] camel would have been a prestige item for its owners, not unlike a sports car or Cadillac in our world…might not one of the messages of patriarchal camel ownership be that Abraham and his family had done very very well in Canaan.
-Sweeter Than Camel’s Milk, Wayne Horowitz, Bible Lands e-Review 2014/S3
If a Chaldean can make it in Canaan, for sure a Kordofani can make it Cairo. And that goes double for Hajj Bashir when I rode with him to the camel market there in his chauffered Mercedes saloon car. When five years later I found that he’d brought it back to El Obeid, it was as if he’d returned home in a Triumph, as if Abraham had returned to Ur driving a Jaguar XK-E