But as the shout kept getting louder and nearer…it became clear to Xenophon that here was something of singular importance…And in a moment they heard the soldiers shouting Thalatta! Thalatta! and passing the word along. Then all the troops of the rearguard likewise broke into a run and the pack animals began racing ahead…then indeed they fell to embracing one another with tears in their eyes…
-Anabasis, Book IV
They say that every well-educated British schoolboy post-Dunkirk feels the same way as the Greek rearguard whenever they read these lines and hear the words, The Sea! The Sea! I can tell you from personal experience that Kababish drovers do not. When we reached the Nile, al-Bahr, at Khileyu on Day 21, it was the camels who celebrated most, not the men. The camels were dead dry thirsty and drank their fill. The drovers unlike Xenophon’s men did not think the sea, as they called the river, was the last step of their long way home. They were still outbound, on their catabasis, and none of them knew how to swim. Cairo was their Babylon and KhairAllah was not their commander, only their khabeer.