The camel was associated with the lands of the Bible, but also with power, luxury, and the exotic.
-Camel fresco, possibly 1129-1134, San Baudelio de Berlanga, Spain, Metropolitan Museum, The Cloisters
You are driving thousands in front of you, in the form of camels.
-KhairAllah Khair al-Sayyid, speaking of the financial trust given him by Sudan’s largest camel exporter, Hajj Bashir abu Jaib
KhairAllah was no stranger to power, the mere flick of his whip could turn the herd, but luxury and the exotic? No. He slept on the ground and ate millet paste for forty days on his each trip to Egypt, nothing luxurious about that. And when he arrived in Africa’s largest city, Cairenes may have thought him exotic with his hippo hide whip and Kabbāshi dialect, but as his friend and companion Yusuf Hamid said, The work of a trail boss is just a job, and a miserable job at that.
