It is not advisable for anyone to travel in the East without a medicine chest, and sufficient confidence in his knowledge of its contents, to attempt the cure of himself and servants in ordinary circumstances…The superiority of his judgement over that of the uncultivated peasants alone gives him the ability to do much good.
-G.A. Hoskins, Visit to the Great Oasis of the Libyan Desert, 1837
Daoud thought he might be dying that night, of a chest cold. The next morning at first light I found his Field Guide to Emergency Medicine next to his sleeping bag opened to the last chapter, Disposal of the Corpse. But he said he was feeling better after he’d rubbed chapstick on his chest thinking it would work the same way he remembered Vick’s VapoRub working from his childhood. But he didn’t understand the raw marks. Yikes, said he, That wasn’t chapstick, it was a Double A battery, in the dark I couldn’t tell, and I rubbed it and rubbed it. I told him, If you’d waited for KhairAllah to finish cauterizing that lame camel’s foot, he could have used the branding iron on you next.