How can you say, “I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Baals?” Look at your way in the valley; know what you have done- a restive young she-camel running hither and yon, rushing into the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind! Who can restrain her lust?
-Jeremiah 2:23
The hump should not be very big. A very large hump is a sign that the male is a poor breeder and that a female is sterile.
-A Field Manual of Camel Diseases
It was true, our camels were very lustful. Like Jeremiah’s haashi with interlaced tracks, they were always veering this way and that with sexual intent. Putting their nose into another’s backward-aimed urine stream and then sniffing the breeze- as Egyptians do in shamm al-naseem, a pre-Islamic holiday celebrating the spring fling the day after Coptic Easter- really turned them on.
So it is odd that an overly big hump is a veterinary symptom of sterility and impotence. After weeks of only aseeda we lustily ate roasted camel hump, the sanaam, after we butchered one who fell lame in our herd, but we didn’t drink maa al-tasneem, the Water of the Fountain of Paradise promised in the Quran to those who are saved. I doubt if it is the water stored in the fat of the sanaam, a word from the same s-n-m triliteral root as tasneem, and the sanaam we ate did not really taste heavenly, just chewy. Our water came from goatskins and I preferred the liver.