…the enjoyment was only broken when Ibrahim Ahmed, a young soldier who had been given charge of a rutting camel, bent down to prepare its evening feed. To my horror, I saw the camel dart its head down, seize Ibrahim by the neck, lift him up and shake him like a rat while grinding his neck to pieces. He was buried in the Northern Hills.
-The Wind of Morning: An Autobiography, Col. Sir Hugh Broustead, Commander of the Sudan Camel Corps
When I was in Cairo in 1979 a movie with the actress Suad Hosni was playing in reruns, Khali Baalak min Zouzou, Watch Out for Zouzou, a slapstick musical about a free spirited belly dancer named Zouzou whose profession complicates her romance with an up-tight college professor. One of my classmates quoted the movie title whenever she’d answer our professor’s questions, her way of mocking Egypt’s problem with independent smart women.
I must have picked up the habit of saying that too, instead of, for instance, Baalak!, Attention!, or, Bi’Iznak, With your permission, whenever I pushed past people on the sidewalk, which was often. And I took it with me to Dar al-Kababish five years later, and whenever KhairAllah or a drover would inadvertantly spook a couched camel and it would growl and try to rise to its still hobbled feet, I’d say it to him too. Who knows what they thought I meant by it, most of the time I’d swear they couldn’t tell if I was speaking English or Arabic anyway, and if I’d been there to warn Ibrahim Ahmed I doubt it would have saved him either.