Notes on the Bashgali Language consisted of a grammar and a collection of sentences. Reading the 1,744 sentences in their English equivalents, I began to form a disturbing impression of the waking life of the Bashgalis. “‘Shtal latta wos ba padre u prett tu nashtonti mrlosh.’ Do you know what that is?” “What?” “In Bashgali it’s ‘If you have had diarrhoea many days you will surely die.’” “That’s not much use,” he said. “What about this then, ‘Bilagh do na pi bilash.’ It means, ‘Don’t drink much water, otherwise you won’t be able to travel.’”
-A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, Eric Newby
I had several occasions to learn the Arabic word for diarrhoea, or as I spelled it, squitz. Ishal, the verbal noun of the fourth form of the verb ‘sahala’, meaning literally ‘easement’, is something that the camels suffered from depending on what they had been eating. If they were eating normally, it came out in dry pellets and could be burned in the camp fire. Otherwise you stayed away from it. I had heard that the best medicine for ishal among humans was bananas. Since there were no bananas to be found in the Sahara, drinking much water was second best, whether it stopped you from travelling or just plain stopped you, it didn’t matter when there was no choice. Yinbah al kalb wa maashi al jamal, The Dog Barks and the Camel Moves On. The caravan stops for no man, beast, or stomach trouble.