It was disconcerting to have ridden forty days with Sudanese drovers to the Cairo market and then to find them nowhere about after we had arrived. They stayed mostly out of sight, their work complete, resting in the back rooms until their return journeys home to Kordofan were arranged, the chore of managing camels in the paddocks left to Egyptians such as this one, his galabiyya’s floppy peasant sleeves giving him away as a man unaccustomed even to a camel’s mouth.
©David Melody