The transition from camel to car is underway; it cannot be checked. The passing of a romantic tradition is certainly sad. But we can console ourselves with the thought that it has all happened before…when the hideous camel was introduced…destroying the romance of donkey journeys.
-Libyan Sands: Travels in a Dead World, 1935, Ralph Bagnold
The Kababish never were told their Jamal days were ending. Camels were still driven up the Darb fifty years after Bagnold, the original Saharan Motor Punk, first bashed the dunes in Model-T Fords, and I’d never met a Kabbāshi who knew First Gear from Irkab! Mount Up! But that was back in the 1980s. Now there is a blacktop road to Cairo, high gear all the way.