What do you see, Walt Whitman?…/I see the jungles and deserts,/I see the camel…
-Poem of Salutation, Walt Whitman
Beside the camel, what else did Walt Whitman see? He saw nomadic tribes, muezzins and muftis, goats, fat-tail sheep, gazelles, and the tracks of expeditions, ancient and modern. And so did we, but more. Wadis and well flats, watering troughs of mud and the village of Wawa, where we would have seen pre-historic artifacts of the Chellean type had we crossed the Nile to the east bank when we were passing Soleb Temple on the west. But KhairAllah whipped the herd fast that day and we had no time to stop.