I come from no country, no city, no tribe. I am the son of the road, my country is the caravan, my life the most unexpected of voyages…And you will carry the memory of me with you.
-Leo Africanus, Amin Maalouf
My Country, the Dabouka. On the trail no one felt that way because each man’s tribe still claimed its jurisdiction. KhairAllah, Kababish. Adam Hamid, Hamar. Ahmad, Kawahla. Bilal, Shanabla. Luwees, Daoud, et al., Khawaja. But for those forty days I did feel I was Son of the Sikka, the Road. And still now I carry the memory of them with me. Leo Tregenza said to me of the Ma’aza men with whom he travelled in Egypt’s Red Sea Mountains sixty years earlier (I travelled with one of them sixty years later), When you see them next, say that I think of them every day. I laughed to myself then, thinking that was so long ago. No longer.