Cuando salimos para Kiansis con una grande partida, ¡Ay! Qué camino tan largo, No contaba con la vida…Unos pedían un cigatto, Otros pedían que comer, Y el caporal nos decía, Sea por Díos, qué hemos de hacer?…When we left for Kansas with a great herd, Ay! What a long trail it was, I wasn’t sure I’d survive….Some [drovers] asked for a cig, Others for some eats, And the trail boss would say, It’s up to God, what can we do?
-Corrido de Kiansis, a Mexican drover’s ballad about a cattle drive from the Río Grande to Kansas, circa 1860
Cattle on the Chisholm Trail and camels on the Forty Day Trail shared more than their south-to-north direction. And when Mexican cowboys did the driving, their laments and longings sounded not unlike a Kabbashi’s frequent Shakāwi, Complaints. Wanting a smoke, needing some grub, relying only on God, they all drove the same trail…Mā Shā’a Allah, What Allah has Willed, an invocation in the past tense, because getting to Kiansis or Qāhira, or not, was foreordained by Díos.