The camel can endure thirst for four days, and when it has the opportunity for obtaining water, it drinks, as it were, for its past and future thirst.
-Historia Naturalis, Pliny the Elder
Before we watered the camels we had to let them graze on the driest grasses and acacia leaves we could find because not one of them would drink on an empty stomach. Just like an alcoholic who throws one back after another to celebrate what has past, al-Maadi, and what has yet to come, al-Mustaqbal, but not for what still is, al-Hadir, whether it be Day 1 or Day 40, because that would be a burden too heavy to bear.