…the Devil drives.
-Richard Francis Burton, letter to Monckton Milnes
The progress of an Arab caravan (where the camels march each after their own inclination, straying to the right and to the left, nipping here a straw, there browsing on a bush) must be rather slow in districts where the stubborn animal finds an abundance of food. This way of proceeding is extremely slow and fatiguing to the rider…
-Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa, 1848-1855, Henry Barth
When the grazing was good and the tree browsing better, yes it was work to regroup the dabouka after a tea break and then to keep them bunched and moving forward to make up that lost time. It was called the Way of the Forty, not the Forty Five, even if sometimes they’d make Binban after closer to fifty. But not if KhairAllah could help it. Tea and sugar might give out before that, and then he’d really have trouble on his hands.
I have never been so sore than that first day in the saddle thinking how much fun it was to cluck and crop my camel into higher gear in order to pick the laggards and lame out of tree cover and catch them up. David and I rode drag those early days, eating dust alongside Muhammad and Adam in the rear. Masood and KhairAllah rode at the two forward points where it was cleaner. No dust in front, no need to push camels that were already walking fast.
After that, my throat dry from calling to the slower ones and my body stiff from whipping up the slowest, I chose a calmer spot off to the right behind the khabeer where KhairAllah and I could talk. Let the drovers do the driving, I told myself, I’m just along for the ride, hoping to make Egypt in one piece and forty days. That first trip took us forty three.