Judd: That’s the trouble with boys these days. Plenty of gall but no sand. Now you take that race today. Heck (who runs a camel racing scam in an Orientalist-theme travelling carnival): What about that race? Judd: There’s no horse in the world that can beat a camel at that distance. Heck: Are you calling me a cheat? Cowboy (whose horse just lost to the camel): Well, if he don’t, I will. (Fist fight in saloon)
-Ride the High Country, 1962, a film directed by Sam Peckinpah
I wish Hajj Bashir had seen this Western, a genre he dearly loved, even if it wasn’t about a cattle drive. On the day we first met at the Cairo camel market he had asked me about John Wayne, Raa’i al-Baqar, Herder of Cows, he called him. This movie has Peckinpah’s usual rough-and-ready violence, Randolph Scott’s (in his last role) usual rough-and-ready good looks, and all the California gold a Sudanese merchant could ever desire. Plus one camel. Too bad he didn’t see Voice of the Whip. It has hundreds more.