tea at dawn

Qirba, a Waterskin made of a whole goat, comes from the verb Qaraba, to Be Near, which gives the noun Qarab, a Night’s Journey to Draw Water, and the active participles Qaarib, One who Seeks Water at Night, and, more strangely, Muqrib, a Woman, a Mare, a Goat, a Ewe, or an Ass [and expressly, Not a She-Camel] Near to Giving Birth, all meanings from Lane’s Lexicon. One waterless night KhairAllah appointed Masood as our Qaarib to make the Qarab to fill a Qirba so we could drink tea at dawn.

©David Melody

Early morning, sorting them out

Daboukas that travelled together by day also camped together by night, sometimes so close together that the camels mixed even when hobbled. The morning after the drovers always knew which ones didn’t belong and they whipped them back into the proper herd before they counted. Stray Whites were easily spotted but not Blues, Blacks, Reds, and Yellows, of which there were so many that I simply called them all Jamals. The Whites I called Kabbaashis, after KhairAllah.

©David Melody

The nile, at last

Al-Bahr, the Sea. For men and herd alike, Day 20 was worth the wait. From then forward, for only one week, we had all the Nile water we cared to drink and all the Nile-watered pasture they cared to eat…and rechew and reswallow..and regurgitate and rechew and repeat.

©David Melody

©David Melody

Bateekh, biteekh, and ibl batikhah

It was a surprise to find an abundance of Bateekh, Watermelon, grown in the Sahara Desert, as it was to learn from Lane that fat camels are called Ibl Batikhah, Watermelony. But he insists that the Egyptian vowelization that I learned in the classroom and used in everyday speech, Bateekh, is “vulgar and incorrect…as expressly stated in law books”. Instead, he writes, it should be voiced as Biteekh. KhairAllah never called me vulgar and lawless because of my mispronunciations, to my knowledge.

©David Melody

Outside the sown

Usually we drove the dabouka in the sand and far from the sown unless we came to graze them on field stubble. Out there we usually saw nothing but tire tracks. We couldn’t quite make out what we were seeing- were they wind blown plastic bags?- when these girls in their white school uniform thobes approached. Only when they saw two Khawajas on camels did they smile. And only then did the unmarried Adam Hamid shout, Ya Sukr! Ya ‘Asl!, O Sugar! O Honey!

©David Melody

Masood drinking, adam thinking, muhammad looking

Seeing this scene now after almost forty years, I ask myself, where was I when these pictures were taken? I often felt obligated to leave the frame when Daoud was shooting, even if at tea time, in which case I would not have been happy. Like Masood, I didn’t want to think, I only wanted to drink.

©David Melody

©David Melody

At the elephant rocks

Sometimes we made camp so late with no moon that I didn’t have a sense of our immediate surroundings until in the dawn light I saw that we were in an entirely new landscape. Waking up among such elephant rocks made me think we had travelled far from where we had been when the sun set in a flat desert.

From l. to r., Adam Hamid, Muhammad Ali Hassan, Masood Abdullah abu Dood, KhairAllah Khair al-Sayyid ©David Melody

©David Melody

Wasm and washm

Each camel carried two brands, the breeders mark and the export number. I asked the drovers about each breeders mark, the Wasm, for they all had unique names, such as crow’s foot or cheek star or half circle, and placements on the camel, such as the left flank or rear right leg. And they asked me about my tattoo, my Washm, and if in America we all were also marked.

©David Melody

Masood trussing a camel

A mechanic checks a car’s brakes by putting it on a lift. A farrier shoes a horse by picking up one willing hoof at a time. But camels can’t be lifted and they are unwilling. To patch an ulcerated foot pad you have to hobble the front legs and truss their rear legs tight, tie their mouth closed and the head back to the tail, then push them over on their side. Masood is just getting down to work.

©David Melody

Khairallah was disgusted

There was a she-camel in our dabouka who midway on the Darb delivered her young stillborn. It was a pitiful sight to see her standing there before the drovers whipped her back into the herd and we set off again. I asked KhairAllah if the Kababish ate such meat and he looked at me with incredulity. I told him that Saudi Arabian nomads thought it a delicacy and he looked at me with disgust.

©David Melody

4 butchers

As I recall, this camel belonging to another herd had gone badly lame and they decided to slaughter it and distribute the meat among the four daboukas which had converged the day before. Each Khabeer sent one of his own drovers to help the butchering. KhairAllah sent Adam Hamid in the sleeveless sweater, eager to use his knife on a big job.

©David Melody

knives out

Adam Hamid steadies the carcass with his left hand while with his right he readies a knife to carve up the tenderloin. Nazir from Muhammad al-Humri’s dabouka in the gray sweater uses a two hand grip. He must have been working on a tough cut. I remember that Adam was very pleased with his share of the spoils, fresh, before they spoiled. We ate well that night.

©David Melody

Sharmout, never sharmouta

They cut the leanest parts thin and draped them over ropes between saddles, hoping that the night breeze and moonlight might make them jerky- from Quechua, ch’arki, dried and deboned camelid (alpaca or llama)- by dawn. We had no salt and it did not work so the meat turned putrid in a day. Wehr has the noun Sharmouta to mean Rag, Shred, Tatter, Whore, and Slut. The drovers called it Sharmout and laughed when I added a final A to the word.

©David Melody

The Last tasty bits

Nazir and Adam Hamid made fast work of the tasty bits just before leaving the remains to Abu Jumjum’a, Father of the Skull, the vulture that followed our dabouka on the last miles of the Darb, knowing the camels were on their last legs and some might not reach Binban. The Quranic phylactery tied at Adam’s right elbow he wore as protection from that same fate.

©David Melody

Axe and knife

This was the butcher in the Dongola souk. It was lucky that our herd stayed outside town that day. If it had not, there would have been stew in every kitchen that night. Camel meat is tough and must be slow cooked.

©David Melody

Dongola bakery, next morning

The bakery, our midnight meal, bread straight from the ovens, bakers from Kadugli, wide smiles, soft low voices, they brighten when I tell them we’re coming up from Nahud, on the way back to their Nuba Hills…from my Trail Diary, Day 23, 1984.

I remember that Daoud and I returned to the bakery the next day in full sunlight. The night spell had broken. The bread was all made. Now was the tedious job, milling flour on noisy machines. The bakers were tired and wanted only to sleep.

©David Melody