“What? A camel? My daughter leave here on a camel? Not likely! There must be a Toumbeel!”
-Diary of a Country Prosecutor, Tawfik al-Hakim
That is the thing about Arabic linguistics, especially among the illiterate, and the difficulty of learning certain words from them. Drop a few long or short vowels here, add some there, and an Automobile becomes a Toumbeel. Or Kalābish, as KhairAllah called the Pharaonic temple Kalabsha when we drank from its sulphurous well and all got sick within the hour…a place I will never forget in any pronunciation.