Perhaps the most ubiquitous and enduring theme in Egyptian folk poetry is the Shakwa, literally “complaint”, specifically complaints about the vicissitudes and injustices of fate and destiny…in poetic form these must be expressed in the world of folk symbols: the camel (jamal) is a stalwart man…the camel’s burdens (ahmāl) and wounds (ajrāh) are human troubles and woes…
-Dwight Reynolds, in his essay in The Ballad and Oral Literature
The Jamal and all his Ahmāl and Ajrāh were an enduring theme on the Darb, not as a Shakwa but rather a Shawka, a Thorn in our side. Our Shakwa, Shakawāt in its countable plural form, was something else, for we were not the stalwart men our camels thought us to be and on each of our days on the Darb- from Day 2 to Day 40- they heard us complain about this Shawka or that.