Pisthetaerus- What are you shouting for? Euelpides- Why, it’s another kind of bird. Pisthetaerus- Aye indeed, and this is a foreign bird too. What is this bird from beyond the mountains with a face as solemn as it is stupid? Epops- It is called a Mede. Euelpides- The Mede! But by Hercules, how, if a Mede, has he flown here without a camel?
-The Birds, circa 414 BCE
Aristophanes has a gathering of birds who hope to supplant the gods. One was a Mede, a Persian, who to an Athenian was as rough-hewn an exotic as is a Kababish drover in the eyes of a Cairene. How could either come here from anywhere except on a camel? they might ask. In Arabic, the words for bird, airplane and to fly are all close cognates. KhairAllah would point to a jet leaving a con trail overhead and ask, Why don’t you fly to Cairo? I would answer, I prefer camels. No one laughed, no one thought it a joke.