Abu Zayd mounted his running camel/And went from them a wanderer/And he cut a road through the void/The empty plains and the mountains…
-from the Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare [from the Sīrat Bani Hilāl], trans. Lady Anne Blunt, versified by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 1892
The 11th C bedouin hero Abu Zayd al-Hilāli, his epic tale once sung before sedentary audiences, no doubt entered the minds of Binban’s camel merchants when KhairAllah drove his Dabouka into town. Would that they had seen- and not only heard, as in a poem- his exploits in the desert, facing down thieves, losing the trail after fierce winds had scoured it clean, pushing hard the herd without resting his men, risking their rebellion. When later we screened the film in Binban, they saw all this with their own eyes, and believed.