Try and coax him to do something out of the beaten track, and you might as well attempt to stem the torrent of the mighty Nile. To gain your object you must drive him, teach him you never will.
-The Camel, Major Leonard
We urged the camels forward when they were tired by saying Sūq, Sūq, Drive, Drive. A drover was called a Sawāq, the vocational form of the noun. We didn’t bother to teach them, for we were taking them to slaughter, not to school. Mu’allim, Teacher, was what we called a coffeehouse attendant who put a fresh piece of charcoal onto our water pipe. Ya Mu’allim!, O Teacher!, we would call to him, looking into the hookah’s bubbling glass base, seeing in it the smoky torrent of the mighty Nile and nothing of the Darb.