Cairo, three days getting to know her again. What has not changed since last time? [5 years earlier] Ahmad the Bawwāb, Doorkeeper, false teeth still broken, his wife still outspoken, he puts to me his request from Sudan, a hippo hide Kurbāj, Quirt, to carry in front of the building and show who is boss.
-Diary, January 12, 1984, Days before leaving for Sudan to set off on the Darb
How many have you slain at Dinshaway, Do not mention the Kurbāj of his days.
-Qasida by nationalist poet Ahmad Shawqi, about the 1906 Dinshaway Incident in which Egyptian villagers were collectively punished, some flogged with a kurbāj, some executed, for allegedly interfering with a British officer's dove shooting party
Ahmad was not alone in Egypt being half fascinated, half frightened of the Kurbāj. It was an emblem of mastery, the lethal equivalent of a flywhisk. But to a Sudanese cameleer like KhairAllah, it was just another tool in his toolbox.