The following anecdote from the thirteenth century has the value of a parable: “My uncle,” a merchant says, “undertook a voyage to the south to trade gold. He bought a camel to get there. While traveling, he found himself in the company of a city-dweller…Both of them took the caravan back home. My uncle felt comfortable and free from worry: if the caravan left, he mounted his camel; if the caravan halted, he rested. But our city-dweller was exhausted and overwhelmed with worries.”
-The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages, François-Xavier Fauvelle
Mustapha was a tight planner and he assumed the Way of the Forty would get him to Egypt in forty days, not forty-one or forty-five, in time for his trip to the French Alps. It wasn’t likely KhairAllah would have understood if I’d asked him to drive the herd faster on sand so Mustapha could ski on snow, so I said nothing about it.