Venous Towards the Penis

Those anatomical drawings of blood circulation in the leg make it look so easy. Blue veins and red arteries. But the femoral vein and femoral artery are like twins where they run close together and parallel down from the waist. And when you next find yourself flat on the floor, waking up from a fainting spell with an EMT leaning over you pulling down your pants and looking for the right place to stick his needle into your groin, and he has a puzzled look on his face, remember the nursery rhyme that just might save your life, or at least a lot of blood if he mistakenly hits the artery instead of the vein. Venous Towards the Penis.

Riding Herd with the Kababish, Part IV- 1984 Trail Diary of Forty Days from Sudan to Egypt

Day 36

Predawn. After another late night ride, the Dog was rolling over, the Dipper spinning, the police post glow passing on the right.  How far out of our way did we ride, how many extra kms in order to avoid a confrontation, and what awaits us in Aswan without proper passport formalities at the border?

 Over loose flat rocks, clinking and rattling, faint sanded trails between flagstones, we caught up with the other two groups and are camped on a sand flat between the stony ground.     Missed the first tea call again last night, ate hurried aseeda before turning in, managed to get my jeans off beforehand, makes for a better sleep all round, wind blowing cold this morn.

Last evening just before sunset entered a narrow pass, saw it coming even before lunch, a break in the mountain ridge ahead.   As we neared the drama increased, a huge portal of entry, official arrival into Egypt, passing out of what seemed like Death Valley into the defile of Abu Simbel with loose rock mts on both sides, long shadows cast east, and the sun disappeared still fully yellow. Predusk glow lit the route for an hour but we rode on, M. the K. leading, and Masood on foot most of the long night.

 Where oh where is the meat we've taken and so eagerly awaited, thinking the last days of the trip would be a gastronomic celebration.    Do they plan to take it back to Um Badr with them, sell it or give it to women and children?    But it's not to be had here, well the Aswan feast will be that much more sumptuous coming after the last desert leg just as the first.  Skin stained and flavored water, aseeda, and long cold night rides, tired sore butts, and blowing sand.

 Midday. Dawn broke and we were grouped with each Fasheri herd, bunched together then strung out this morn, passing through more sand pans and cone mt passes, lunching now beside a rocky outcrop.

Spoke with 3 of the boy drovers from Fasher, first trip for each one, paid LE 300=LS 600 when they arrive in Cairo, live west of Fasher, all in late teens looking, mixed array of clothing, corduroy yellow housecoat, tight bluejeans, yellow warm-up track pants.

Fetus and afterbirths dropping like flies, 2 breathing hawaars, one still wrapped in embryonic sack peeling dead skin membrane, 15 hour days and restricted diet sure labor inducer, but no weepy mother camels, they drop their loads and keep the pace, only the first one in the Wadi al-Milk had a distraught mare sniffing about.

Muhammad walks off stiff-legged after a swinging dismount, and stooped Khair is always stiff at the waist, a protruded rear prominent, Masood's quick small steps, often at a trot to pace a walking camel.

 Murray's Erinmore Mixture, Murray and Sons, Muhammad's tobacconist. Cumin, shamaar, 1 rutl for LS 1, ran out too soon, a real milaah turn-on. At breakfast this mom  surprised with a big pot of choice camel tidbits in gravy, the light oil in the pot's bottom sizzling quickly, reheated from last night's stir fry, Muhammad always at your service.

Dead tired, slept through tea, Muhammad brought over aseeda to the bedrolls, watching them chop meat longingly, finally David asking, Iahma dil waqti, meat now? Adam, bukra, tomorrow. Goodnight to all that Bar-B-Que.

 As we rise, look what's strung out on a low rope slung between camel saddles, camel meat jerky, sharmuut, red socks to dry in the wind. we eat filling pot of liver and odd meat parts in gravy, 2 1/2 teas, and off we walk.

 The other group has dug a pit filled with old camel dung for a slow fire, added camel hooves and shoulder blades, khuff and lauh, and smoldered all night, this morn they pass it out on the trail, hoof gelatinous like pigs knuckles, shoulder blade sinewy and charred black, good chew and reminder of better days at the open pit, Maulling our meat.

 Over hard sand flats, black eroded mountain cones, sediments layered and sculpted.  A grain of sand, a day in the desert.  Adam inhales, sun crosses sky. Camel swallows and regurgitates 7 day cud.  How many days to Abu Simbel, Aswan, how many kilometers to the titan statue?  Ramses II stopped time and awed the Modems, a $36 Million job for UNESCO in 1965.

 Today is February 27, the Mother of Eternity blows, petrified wood is used as cairns, fire blocks, and nose weights on a chastity ring.  The morn moon's last crescent in a particularly bright orange dawn, and dusk was hurried. Heard Um Kalsoum on Radio Israel, Kawkab of the East, and tea.

Masood and Saeed ride off in the distance for water, as we pass the rise the lake appears within reach, a broad khor stabbing at the sand.  Adam  has muzzled a groaning camel to patch with high reprimanding squeals, Khair working quietly nearby on a passive beast.

Muhammad the Younger, can write, has one year of secondary school, age 22, working the darb now for 3 years, with camels since he was 16.

 Nasir, his first drive at age 13, now aged 30-32, rides 2-3 herds each year to Cairo, lives in Um Badr.

 The haashis are wandering far for dried grasses, we take turns fetching them in, ahh! with little ones the day is never done, just ask Muhammad, each night after cooking and chopping he feeds the babes.   The four lie together to eat and sleep. The quads in the nursery, only the dubaisa does all the screaming.

 2 riders from the Fasheris' camp approach, the blowing sand picks up, Muhammad stirs with a full-fisted grip, his 'arad (stick) is for anything, "men or wild animals".

 Khair's favorite command, Kubb milaah, kubb shay, pour sauce, pour tea.    Muhammad's favorite, Louees, ta'aali li shay, jeeb kubayya li shay, Louis come for tea, bring a cup for tea.  Adam  sang many verses this morning, said he'd let me record later.

 Apparently 2 khabirs from the Fasher group.  Khair walks over to M.'s camp to greet, they squat over tea.   I can see the pouring ritual from across the sand, one is named Yussef. The other group stirs and loads, our grub still boils. The next landmark, an Egyptian police stop and then Wadi Kalabsha.

Now we feed the riding camels. The yellow sand crawls with ticks. count of 15 ticks. Dave notes the fat ones still sucking our mounts have come a long way from Urn Kheirwa'.

This morning we discuss the impact the darb may have on city lives, the lessons learned.    40 fifteen hour days go by fast but a 5 minute wait in line even faster. One can pace the day by the sun, or Sirius, or moon cycles, or the part of the ride (morn-afternoon-night), or the stilling and stiffening of the wind, not by the clock or the evening news or hunger pangs before mealtimes.

How better to move the day, squeeze dry the noon sun, a lemon, and drink in the dusky glow as juice from an orange.  Wait out the afternoon, cross the sky, remembering the look of yesterday's sunset, eye ball the falling light, stretch the shadows.

Khair says we'll see the lake again if God has willed, beside Wadi Kalabsha.

Day 37 

Midday. Camp on the other side of Black Mt. from the army camps, in loose yellow sand.   Awoke early, still dark, Khair said bring the glass, the crescent moon in the last phase in the east.  Soon a new i Islamic month.

We spend an hour grazing in the scrub surrounding the Sadat miracle agricultural settlement of Toshka, the beginning of pajama couture-culture, a desert civilization born by presidential decree.

 Felaheen cane out to greet the herd from the model village, sell us 4  kgs of sugar at LE 1 per. Say they have no water, we ride up the newly dug canal to the bridge and draw from a standing pool, emerald green slime, with good meat for dinner and oasis coffee. No shortage of firewood, a late bedtime nursing my second glass, watching Orion, Tosca, swivel.

Adam asks if he can drink,says Khair has forbidden them our coffee. Ahlan wa Sahlan, and Masood and Muhammad scramble for their cups too. Khair has shaken himself awake for dinner, good and plenty, Dave declining the grease in the bottom, the shurba of the Kababish

Warm morning, I left off my heavy sweater, and now am hot with the brown, wrapped an 'imma out of the shawl yesterday, cool and elegant. Pass an easy morning talking on the subject of food, groceries, and donuts.

Day 38

Midday. No breeze yesterday, hot for the first time since the Wadi, but windier today.    Still hot enough for all sweaters off but mu'ammim, turban-wrapped.

 The camels pass over fresh camps, lower their heads without stopping to sniff, urine stains, dung and sand nests. A melancholic feeling, recently there was fire tea food rest and sleep, now the wind erases the traces.   Was our morning camp already half disappeared?    Will someone see it before its all gone, feeling as I do now?  Or has the desert reclaimed our minimal imprint of civilization, the blackened rocks at the fire-ring and discarded tea leaves.  Is a tire track more lasting?

The wheel of fatigue, ride walk drag remount rewind the body's clock. Must drink water midmorning, a strong thirst from such a meaty breakfast, and sugary tea.

 Tracks converge, the Abu Simbel-Aswan barrel markers pace our progress, 2 pass in a low jeep and stop to gawk, Masood rushes over to bum a pack of Cleopatras, all four light up and Khair pockets the rest.

 Muhammad has wrapped in a new white cloth thaub, Adam in a white gallabiyya. Muhammad answers Khair's call in a falsetto, Whou! Whew! We record Khair's story of Billa Ali and his interview with Masood about dates. M. sings softly, unconsciously at the fire, onions sizzle, Hanaan sings through dinner.

 Kalabsha promised but the landscape refutes its existence or of any water and greenery, we're still on an enormous yellow sand beach, no cover for a needed squat I feel coming on strong.

 Khair and Adam argue over a camel subject, M. says let's leave it, tries to quiet their tongues, each at work patching, nose rings cut off today.

 Day 39

Predawn. Sounds of pre-light: camel cries, Khair's murmurs, sizzling onions, chopping wood, cuds chewed and rechewed.

 The tremendous ring emerges from darkness, the fire as epicenter of heat light sweetness.

 We advance through sand flats, black stony ridges pass, the arcing horizon laid flat and colored yellow, recedes before us up front, it surges closer behind with each jerky pace.

 Saeed over for tea and a butt last night after dinner. M. the younger taught him to write his name, Saeed Faraj Abdullah.     Infectious laughter, clownish smiles and teases, always welcome at our camp, his nom de camp is Abu Nuwas the Poet of Tea

 Yesterday came upon kilometrage markings, 146 km to Aswan, 180 km to Halfa. Last caught sight of 137 to Aswan, glad the gauge is no longer with us, the daily time estimates from Khair et al. are more entertaining.   Four days ago Nasir said 3 days to Kalabsha and 2 more to BinBan.  Last night it was 1 day to Kalabsha, There is hope, said Nasir, and 3 more to BinBan.

 A map drawn in the sand had east as south and west as east, the Nile running backwards, the lake downstream from the dam.  My body can take just about anything anyone can dish out, it’s been toughened and hardened by the darb. But it’s the head problems that trouble, food reveries are the most therapeutic, they last forever, easy to embellish, and we're never at a loss for new edible ideas. The bananas and peanut dream the most recurrent.

Originally it was 15 days Dongola-Aswan. The absurdity of using a road map and an archeological guide for desert landmarks and correct Kabbashi pro­nounciation, viz. Kalaabsha or Kalaabish?

 Yesterday and today are hazy, flat dull light and color, cool breeze reminiscent of a California morn before the sea fog burns off. Wish we were stopped for the day in the trees.

 Masood and Saeed ride up to the abandoned stone quarry buildings looking for water, Sugar, oil, and butts- Saeed folding the LEs into his vest. Yom Abyad, white day, I shout and he beams. The rock piles and rubble have that indeterminate look, who made them, man or God?   The 55 gallon barrels overturned, rubbish heaps, the tell-tale signs of an overused but temporary homesite.

 The becoming of a Khabir.  Khair says some ride 10-30-50 times as drovers before stepping up.   Hasab al-Mokh, Accordirg to one’s brain.   He rode 24 times before his first drive as boss.

Masood rides up with full waterskins from behind.

 Day 40

Predawn. Happy Birthday Peter. Camped in Wadi Kalaabsha, with nitil, a tall bushy green moss ferny tree good camel eating, and sureeb, 20 foot dry grass with 8 inch seed heads, and ba'shoorn, coyote cries all night.

Entered the wadi after all day in God forsaken terrain, painful stony ground scarified by bulldozers and discarded barrels through haze then intense heat. Just as the sun set in the low haze the wadi appeared in the distance as a stretch of brownish red with barely visible green clumps.   Up ahead the camels trot forward to graze, we ride through the high growth, well over camel head, grabbing snatches along the way, and settle down on the north side of the wadi clear of the dense undergrowth midst fire clearings and pits 2-3 feet across made when the water went down and the fish struggled in tight circles.

A mountain was low and hazy to our east and the sun still fought through until dark. A tiny bird's nitil tree invaded by hungry camel mouths, stripping off the soft feathery greenery one branch at a time, frantically hopping from one to the other. Check Uwe George on the doves of the desert, smaller than mourning, colored brown in flocks of up to 7, flying short distances along the ground and landing together.   Also Nile River ducks, black and white markings.

 How fast he landscape charged upon entering the wadi, internal and external. The desert turns the thought process inside-out, oblivious to surroundings, food and future.

 The wadi's trees and dry grasses, marvelously unusual, could get lost easily, camels with mouths full. The suspense of the unseen ahead, water? people? Khair said shepherds, gazelles and many wild animals frequent the wadi.   Saw what could be gazelle dung, tiny black beads, smaller than goat scat.   And at night the coyote cries closed in.

The camels up feeding, last night's dinner of camel sharmoot in peppery gravy not the best except for the bread, one ragheef per person.   I ate mine separately without dipping into the greasy sauce, pure taste of wheat.   I thought it would have been better with well-seasoned milaah, but lately even that has been bland. Cumin ran out long ago and M. often under -salts and -peppers, yesterday lunch was awful.

I've been on a 2 day bowel movement program for the last week or so, today's came before breakfast, they previously had been at the lunch hour. Must be the meat we're eating.

 M.'s camp is already out of meat, M. the Younger came by to fetch a platter last night.   Adam took over the cooking pot last night for the first time since Day 20, muttering that our M. was too lazy to cut up the meat and cook.  Apparently the menu depends entirely on the chef, so we have meat to spare for the other camp, they enjoyed theirs fresh 3 times a day plus on the move as a BBQ snack.  Now we are eating suspicious tasting sharmoot.   For breakfast today after the camels were rounded up we face last night's sharmoot leftovers, out of 8 pieces of bread this morning between the 6 of us I managed the smallest.    Even the taste, a small taste goes a long way, from a nibble of the real thing I could mentally clone an entire meal.  The bakery feast of Dongola came back in a hurry.

 Yesterday we talked food again, every other day I have a real urge to elaborate, improvise on, and reprise the few recipes I know

 Camel driving sounds: often singing in rounds, canons M. will pick up Masood's refrain, Adam has a 3/4 part series, Khair usually silent except for direction and speed commands.

 The khabir has his camel fetched to him when he wants to mount in mid-march. A perquisite of the office.  Khair's whip handling, elegant like a fan, Jomo Kenyatta with a fly whisk, never touches the camel, really too short to reach out, the fine brown and red braided handle with 3 rows of tassels as ornament. The other 2 whips in use, M.'s and Adam's, strictly ordinary and functional. Adam's extra whip, the long rag-wrapped handle, has the tip dragged in the dust all the way from Nahud, never used.    And Masood carries only sticks.

 Camp is broken without realizing, sitting here in a fish pit with the sun to my back, meat leftovers packed up- to add to our lunch milaah?

 Watering now at a pond at muddy banks, some camels fall to their knees to drink, when full they turn around back to the water and urinate, saddles slip forward as they crouch to sip, another camel herd emerged from the greenery to our left.

 Plenty of ducks flock and fly, looks like they have black heads and wings with white bodies.     Same as on the Nile at Dal and elsewhere, putting up quite a quack.

Unloading camels and splitting wood, our breakfast delayed, underway it seems, cold sharmoot to appetize!    Clean socks to celebrate day 40, my feet breathe again, but shirt and jeans so dirty they get clammy, my body tired too, the 40 day clock has run out.

An old pumping rig nearby and empty oil drums, the nitil gets dry and powdery, turns white and dusty when it falls, another low green plant, leathery bright green leaves, goes uneaten.

Khair says we stay here till afternoon to feed and water, if I understand correctly, a lot still gets by me especially regarding distances and logistics. Shoot the ducks with a shotgun (cartouche), army gun (geem), or rifle (bunduq).

 At our water stop, 3 khabirs fromthe Fasheri group rode up for tea, sh-sh-sh-shed their camels to their knees and talked camel prices with the Kababish.   Western camels ie, Darfuri, are 1/2 the price of Kordofani, "You don't gain in the Nahud trade" I heard one say.

 A water truck with 2 Egyptians drives up, Sabah al Full, Jasmine Morning, and the boss says its 50 km to Aswan.

The sounds of the drive. In sand, swish swish dull muffles water splash like the baffled cuds. Through the grasses, crackling brittle sharp like flames are the dominant sounds of 109 on the move, punctuated by the drovers' cries, bits of half forgotten songs, repeated verses, snatches of Hanaan.

 Time Immemorial, we are leaving eternity and reentering measured time, clock time or real time or the sun's time, moon months, seasons of grass, where days have names, weeks mean, months disjointed from moon phasing and seasons have their holidays. The oddest sight in Um Kheirwa', a bold black numeral Feb 1 staring from the wall of the store next to the telephone brand pineapple and LS 2 candy bags. When did they last have customers?  The BBC gives Greenwich Mean Time but not the date, month, or day of the week.

 Time Immemorial, Billa Ali's time piece, a crystal ball stolen? Days have orange cool dawns, warming mornings, hot noons, insufferably long afternoons, then a welcome cheering and inspiring light fall to sunset, then a color wash out, greying and darkness, and a cold wait for rest and sleep.

 The Sahara once was the Sea, the Sand the Ocean floor, Wind as Waves, Dunes as Surf, Sea Shells now Grains of Sand, entire trees now felled and soon to be sand or fire rings.  The Baobab's last stand, petrified hard as steel, as solid as they are tall.

Muhammad's bismillahs: before slicing onions, stirring aseeda, adding a handful of flour.

 Day 41

Rode till 11 pm, approaching city lights. The Big Dipper, 'angrape, handle points earthward, our road sign for many nights no.v, rraker of the way, arrow in the sky, seven flashing blinking stars, now obscured by Aswan's glow as the night fell, our pot of gold at the rainbow's end.

 Other lights to our left, police and stone quarry, we move past, cross newly laid asphalt. The camels hesitate on the blacktop, high step light foot across before we set down.   Khair says tea/grub stop only.    M. the K. suggests we move on a bit then camp, agreed.

 I'm past the stage of knowing, caring how far we'll go, startled when VOA starts the 11 pm Arabic program on great Broadway hits, the Music Man, 101 trombones. I switch to BBC.

Before breaking our midday camp where we had settled 2 hours, made tents, ribs and old meat.  A dispute ewer drinking water rights, only one skin of water from the kheima, tent, is left, sweet, stained stuff.  We had filled 3 skins from Birka Kalaabsha with sulphurous awful stuff for aseeda, washing and drinking. Sweet water reserved for tea only.    Dave and I ask for sweet drinking water and Adan lays down the law. Masood says he drinks camel urine in the jizu for days on end when on a grazing ride.    Now it comes out he has camel milk, in his tea even.    Adam says you drink blood, no water.

 Dave's comment, "3 not good, one good" adds mystery.  Adam smugly thinking he means the skins, I suggest alternate reading, men, and Khair laughs and repeats my Allah huwa 'aalim, Allah is the knowing one, with an understanding nod.  He sees the humor, but Adam is confused and worried, thought he had gringo lingo all figured out, more complicated now than it looks.

 We ride off with the Fasheris brirging up the rear, finally have a sweet water stop at dusk gratis to Khair, Masood drinking too, ain't no urine you're guzzling.

The unseen odors of the night, invisible pestilences, fresh camel carcasses. Adam thinks no more than a week old, pointing off wind doesn't help, where are they?   In daylight the birds have opened them up, assholes and eye sockets, widened the slauqhtering hole at the jugular, bird shit streaked, guano marking the perches.

3 vultures dance a minuet nearby a fresh kill, then fly off midair they whirl with long lazy flaps, gliding round cruising carrion.

This morn early start, sleep facing north, the Dipper pinwheels all night, Arcturus awakens, the bad water from yesterday catches up, diarrhea party for one, pant-less and sweatered in the heavy blow, weak and shivering in the desert.  If it ain't the aseeda it's the milaah.

See a discarded leopard skin shoe, Khair recalls Ahmad Abbas from Hamid Village, yaakul rishawa, he eats bribes, like the naar yaakul Muhammad, the fire eats M.

 Pass at least 15 rimma, skeletons, scattered close by, the war's last battlefield at the doorstep of home, 2 drover from the Fasheri group, now ahead, drop back driving 2 slowpokes, as we stop for lunch they pass without the camels, slaughtered behind us.

A solarized mountain to our west, gun metal grey streaked with light tones, the hazy sky also grey, grey broken lizard skin ground we tread, and a low ridge of yellow sand highlighted with grey gravel patches windward, the mirror image of mountains passed before where the sand blow does the toning against black rock massifs. Egypt through the looking glass, where everything is backwards.

Here we fear the police, in Wadi al-Milk we feared the thieves.  Traveled late last the asphalt road and quarry to avoid encounters with Aswan's authorities dodging our way into BinBan, so far 1000 camels have gone undetected for over a week.

Khair says midmorning, this time tomorrow we'll be sleeping in ianBan, but tonight we ride later than last, now counting down the last 24 hours to make it an even six weeks, I can take it all, food fantasies give way to restaurant planning.

Adam in a difficult argumentative mood, dispute with Khair, numbers quoted, as usual a count of something or other is involved, money camels etc. Masood says Adam is no good.  M. stays out of the crossfire, rides back quiet his way is to stay aloof in a dumb looking manner, gets teased for not remembering Imbaba, but he does remember Sayyidna Hussein, his moulid, and al-Azhar.

Pass a grave marker, Khair says was M.'s uncle Manjeel, died of thirst 5-6 years ago, laid out beside his camel, man and mount eternalized under loose stones.

The other group always in song and laughter, Cairo works its magic, the joys of arriving.   Our camp is matter of fact, even sullen, a long night ride ahead dampens the spirit, or simply too tired to celebrate, the 3 of them having worked twice as hard as the 6 in M.'s group.

No patching this lunch break, tea and coffee.  M.'s haashi for slaughter, camel veal, tastes like lamb says Khair, must suggest to Mahdi for our anticipated arrival banquet.    A skin stretched yellow carcass sun dried, 10 feet from my pen, the camels lay down beside it, just a statue, dust unto dust.

We bum some fresh water off the passing Fasheri, reserved for tea, adds M. as I ask how much he got, still jealous of their tea service. 'The sulphurous water turns the aseeda yellowish green, adds back the salt and flavor M. always forgets.

The water and grass the camels dawned in Kalaabsha catch up with us, sulphurous farting nonstop, the dried mud had the same strong odor, the leeching of ground salts, the High Dam's ill-effect in action.

Day 42

Arrival in BinBan, between Esna and Aswan on Nile’s West bank, through the electric portals, twin double-poled lines from the High Dam.    The Valley appears, we put in at the stable of straw boss Ahmad Hassan abd al-Majeed.

Yesterday predusk, tea stop dung fire, prepare for the long night ride, we stop early unexpectedly, bright lights north and east.  High Dam. The sun a 3rd glow.   Early morning call, we see sky lighten, Venus Rising, on the move for sunrise. 

Masood has stomach problems from Kalaabsha, M. puts on new araagi, Adam in washed turban, unwraps the handle on his long whip, braided like Khair's, red and black, and poses the hero, particularly difficult with one and all. Masood and M. chuckle when I say he's selfish and greedy, they agree, with water, tea, food. They say he refuses to eat with Christians, but is first with his glass from the Christian coffee pot.

'The camel traders swarm our herd still in the desert, donkey back, riding in and out, charcoal marking their first choices.

M. gets right to work with the fire and tea, Abd al-'Azeem suave English, apologetic over the Cleopatras, sorry not Marlboros, cozies up.  Ahmad Hassan explains his business, shows off his straw, tibin, and the net bags shabaka. Our camels will eat LE 150 of straw, honestly.

The Egyptian traders create the familiar uproar, angry gestures, loud voices.

Last night the sky was a planetarium, in the round with stars reachable, dim city glow, simulated sunrise from another planet.

 Stripping Sugarcane, sweet water from an earthen jar, they'll stay here today, then 3 days to Esna.

 Our men dump straw in piles, traders choose and hobble, huddle, eager for any info on Nahudi prices, my misinformation campaign has worked, overhearing them repeating my outrageous sums. And our donkey pads in high demand, Khair's three are snatched, Egyptian variety are red cheap plastic.

We grouped up with the Fasheris yesterday afternoon for the procession into the Valley, distant fires as we camp nearby, visiting between camps, sweet water in the milaah, morning tea before first light.

Abu Jaib's selling agent is Ahmad al-Bayoumi.   M. got LE 420 for 2 of his haashis, didn't look happy during the negotiations, Khair and Hassan did the shouting, a circle of onlookers shouting Iftah! Iftah! Open! Open!, like Let's Make a Deal, Curtain! Box!, I join in.

Ahmad Hassan provides a meal of thick bread, tomatoes, onions and fuul, many traders join in, Adam ostentatiously abstains, M. boils the pot for the Egyptians, desert hospitality reaches this far, but not the reciprocal genuine thanks and obligations.

BinBan arrival is a mirror of Khileawa 20 days ago, with green line, electric wires, entry delayed.    A ship captain having crossed the stormy seas cruising the coast for a safe harbor, knowing the most dangerous part of the voyage is navigating the shoals, the sailors grumble impatiently, only the captain knows the risk of an untimely anchorage, the sailors see only plates of fresh foods and sweet drinks in their fantasy.

Masood's abandoned sidri is on a junk heap, the men still cutting camels from the herd and hobbling, the fat traders chew their cuds and beat their donkeys.

Masood and M. get our tarps and cotton pads, I say wait for the party in Imbaba, he smiles, the frenzy subsides, the good buys are sold, Al-Bayoumi has gotten his prices.

Adam struts with his whip, Masood offers us two hobbles as souvenirs, Ahmad Hassan offers and reoffers his home's hospitality for the night, wishes to host us grandly, word passes in whispers we've arrived from Nahud, Khair and M. co­ordinate the next haashi sale.  M. truly needs help at this business, making profits from a simple trade, he's used to working hard for his pay, the import/ export game confounds an honest man, where LS 2=LE 1, where prices double, 2000 kms add surplus value, where a word and a handshake are not true.

Money, count it twice in Egypt.

Riding Herd with the Kababish, Part III- 1984 Trail Diary of Forty Days from Sudan to Egypt

Day 31

Tea stop midmornirg. Burning young green thorn branches, sweet smell blows this way, the 2nd pot already on.

Khair and M. still looking for sugar and a sheep, yesterday sat with 3 men outside their field hut, questioned them about the police in these parts, "Zift (garbage) here", stories of Ahmad Diyaab giving 2 lashes for driving camels without a permit.

We would have gone around Hamid altogether like Khamees did but the young cop Ahmad caught us coming off Jebel Dowsha, and confiscated our passes and passports.

Yesterday afternoon short cut across the Abri bend, left Jebel Abri behind, and entered Selima district, population and palms thinning, the Nile's bounty closing in, people here seem more like Wadi al-Milkers, isolated from the main­ stream despite the Nile, more like oasis dwellers than riparians.  The desert separates and encloses, Tayyib Salih's story of the first steamer to visit the village kind of like the first truck to visit Selima c:asis.

 Saw the turn off sign for Selima 130 Krns, Khair says he knows the way to Laqiyya, out from Hafeer al-Mushi just north of Dongola.

 We sat and talked stgar prices yesterday as the sun set, M.'s thumb-less left hand I've just noticed, must be one hell of a story behind it. He rolled a gumshaw ( aw grass) cigarette, asks the man's name, “Ismak kareem? ( your generous name?)" and then addresses him personally in the middle of his sentence.

We ask about the next hilla (camp) and the price of a kharouf (sheep) we want to slaughter.

With Ahmad Diyaab talked of our long road and adventures on it, about Billa Ali "famous" thief of the Wadi, he holds Khair responsible for our safety.

 The Nile widens, flattens at the banks, white caps and black flow in the north wind, furled sails, all boats banked, the houses are poor in Selima, little adornment, plain portals, simple architecture.

 Adam played his metal flute last night for the first time, odd 4 note repetition. Khair cooked lunch yesterday, good and plenty, ate like horses, camels have softer stools by the Nile, like date-eating humans.    They gorge on green palm fronds and Nile saw grasses, now browsing on sand piled thorn tree stands, we shelter behind one, the wind blows overhead.

 Last night troubled sleep, camels closed in, the fire illuminated the scene, Hanaan sang, ate from a dark plate, dinner always the most difficult meal to get up for but always the most hungry, have to catch as catch can blindly. Breakfast is usually cold and little appetite, lunch is a gorge fest, but dinner stills the night.

 Many over for tea this noon, M. the Younger, Khair the Younger, Saeed. A rabbit races past and all give chase throwing camel clubs, let's hope

M. finally makes the tess (goat) connection.

The Nile's west Nubian bank, untrafficked, forgotten by the police, plenty of places to put in, long blank banks, the sand meets the water without a break. Could use sane more dates, my bowels finally getting used to the idea of major fruit infusions, a heretofore unknown treat on the darb al-arba'iin.

 Drinking my 3rd glass of tea, an unprecedented quantity for a mealess stop. Dave produces a few old dates, the sun warming deep, still quite tired from yesterday's walk, surprised to have gone so far without knowing our distance, we stopped for lunch just after we had mounted.    Strong wind all day, made patterns in the sand like the print of sane muted gene under gross magnification, the slanted shadowing

Our Muhammad has many voices for story telling, can twist and stretch a word to express distance, deceit, or a Koranic truth, M. and Khair sat with him this morn as the coals cooled listening to his story.  Khair said last night he was possessed by Jinns in his sleep, he moaned and whined, what secrets does the leather pouch around his neck hold dear?

 Khair came back with sugar, says 3 days to Abu Sirnbel, through the desert and strong wind. Grazing the camels here before the last big push, or will it be the last?

 Muhammad fills his mouth from his Erinmore tobacco tin, Ireland's finest blend, he picked it up all rusted and bent on our way, he wants us to take back fond memories of our trip, to visit him in Um Badr next time and give him money for his service.    I'd rather not be left alone with him anymore money seems to come up.

 Grub's on the fire, easy morning ride, easy does it here cane the clowns A.dam and Masood, rabbit hunters empty handed, more pitiful than hounds.

Day 32

 Moming Last night dinner and Rutaana recording in the home of al-Hajj Hassan Sayyid and his sons, and an English speaking gentleman Farid, who reads everything but pornography.

 Midday break. Clirnbin;:i the border mountains, Dal Cataract, island of Dif, the Dal breaks, the bounty of dom trees, ready to eat when they look like deep brown strawberries, the red ones with a bit of juice are bitter, this year's crop without the distinctive aftertaste, like dry sherry, fermented dom, simple graham crumbs, the little boys pole them down for Dave and me before we run to catch the herd.

Last night with the Nubian menfolk, the Hajj's son Ahmad Hassan has a wooden leg from Beirut 1958, 4 dead in a shoot-out at the coffee house, rival Christian groups just before the marines went in, Voice of America addict.

Al Hajj has a grizzled grey beard trimming the perimeter of his face, a skull cap and demeanor of a household servant, seating himself on the ground with­out pause.

 The thin 2nd son, friendly with dates, and Fareed who only later revealed his Englsh, "reads everythirg but pornography", how does he know erglish?, "an Egyptian mother", wants me to practice my Arabic more than he wants to how-dee-do in ingles..

 Tales of NYC skyscrapers, ask if in 100 story buildings there are really groceries on the 50th, and must one ask the bawaab for the weather report on the ground floor.   Can't believe Phillipe Petit tightrope walked between World Trade towers.   Beirut politics blamed on the Syrians.

 We wait past the milk tea for the peas and lentils and tomatoes, the kisra brittle like communion wafers, hard to grip peas with, but Dave and I eat more than is decent in any household, coming after a full meal with Hassan Sayyid.  can't really taste the relish.  Back to camp under the bright stars, dinner by lamplight prepared our eyes for the sky's full splendor up:m entering their open courtyard.

 our men asleep and I catch some thoughts before sleeping, my hat empty of dates, Masood took my invitation to have some literally.

The afternoon, at while yet another Nile side grazing stop, Dave and I walk up to the village 6 well spread houses, children and old women meet us with suspicion, no menfolk in sight, we wait on a rock.

 Along comes Hassan Sayyid Hassan in a brown gallabiyya.  He's somewhat startled when I take his invitation to tea, with milk?   Yes please.  With kisra? Not ready, just five minutes.

 We smoke a hand rolled gumsha cigarette, he is Dahab Fadil's nephew.   We have already passed his house by, missed our last chance for aragi.  And here canes Khair and M. just as kisra comes on, pancake thick and scorched black, campfire style heavy doughy and lining the bowl with a tomato and onion sauce.  As we dig deep the bread dissolves and absorbs, we eat it all, Hassan said he'd been so hungry but sits out the meal so we guests can eat hearty.

 And Maima Mountain, red layered plateau on the east bank, guarding the entry to Dal, M. still in search of a lamb, no luck but we hope.

 Everyone in Dal speaks Engish, a noble teacher 30ish in an Egyptian style embroidered gallabiyya and head stacked turban, donkey boys producing dates and dom.    We camp early, wind has stilled, time to go visiting, Fursa Sayyida Happy Occasion, with al Hajj and Sons.

 This morn passes to say goodbye, photos and the name of a Sudanese driver for the Saudi Embassy in D.C. from Dal, Hassan Ali Bukaan?  More tales of babuur, mechanical pump, ownership, co-oping, 50/50 ownership of crops with farmers.

Prices of dates quoted by Hassan Sayyid, , jiraab (small bag) LS  3

shawaal (large)   LS 45

Run along to North Dal in search of the falls hearing the roars in the distance and directed to a croc skull over a doorway.  As the carrels disappear we make one foray to the Nile, see waterwheels and Dif Island, Dal's greenhouse, and wide mastabas wet mud-palmed smooth. The camels swing back to us as we chat with Abdu- my wife is waiting in NY I say in quick parting-, he says 10 more days to Aswan.  Ahmad Hassan Sayyid had said 12 days last niqht, Masood this morn said it was not known, Khair says about 10.

We've climbed away from the Nile, the green has died.  The lake begins behind Dal, it has dried the land and washed the mud, buried the fields and sub­merged the centuries.  Large boulder fields all sand-piled and blown, winding through ledges, around the summits, feels like we're topping the world. Camel skeletons proliferate all neck twisted, the urine euphoric posture, and vultures come to land, dirty white with yellow beaks, Um RakhmAllah, the Mother of the Vulture of Allah.

Day 33

Midday break. In the sand flats, plateau riding- between the zalats, smelling corpses freshly red tanned hides. An early start with M. leading-, another naga in his herd miscarried last night, quick squat and out popped a mouse grey camel maybe 3 months premature with heaving ribs as we pass and slick wet skin soon to dry in the wind and sun.   The skin will soon stretch tight and thin and crisp as on the rimma.

 Adam points out cold clouds indicating stiff wind and they are picking up. KhairAllah the SkullFace lives in Wadi al-Jamal (Camel Valley) near Fasher, on his 13th trip.  He does a little camel breeding- on the side.

 Our Khair patches my camel's front left pad, he's calm but the lame Fatima­-handed one Adam has hog tied and he's gurgling- and groaning-.    M. chopping­ on the large limb of silim wood, hard as rock.  Plenty of coals for

jibna, bunn, qahwa;- Ya Allah let's drink some Joe.

Last night Saeed came over and recorded some poetry, spontaneous verse about the drive and his khabir, a long- humming pause between verses, the bard's holding pattern awaiting the muse.  Each verse same length and meter.  He seems proud of his skill.   Hanan '84 is awful by group consensus, even Khair and Adam say she's "useless".

Last eve we set in to the Nile at Umka West to fill skins drink tea and gather strength for the desert haul.  Didn't expect to see much of the lake until Abu Simbel, Khair says the next three days over the sand.

A young arab leading 3 yoked ga’uuds each haltered and roped to his rear saddle horn, Khair says he's headed up across from Halfa for a sale. 

Masood also at work patching, no rest at lunch today for the men, M. has patched our tea pot with aseeda, stuffed it into the cracks from the outside, now dry like cement, but new leaks everyday.   Will this dawr be its last? 'Who owns it and who will throw it out?

Day 34

Predawn. M. stirs the sorghum paste, the crescent moon bottoms out and fades as the glow brightens. Masood squats behind a camel 5 meters away, ma feesh sagat, there is no cold wind.

 Last niqht we camped in the cold and the camels romped for sex, paired off in pursuit, how to see who to beat in the dark?    We were stopping anyway.

 At lunch, joked over the teapot, they say, not appropriate for a man of Abu Jaib's status to have such a poor pot, Adam says I should have a word with Mahdi about it when we reach Cairo.     I joke, I eat with one finger and they with 3. No they say, I with 2 and they with 4, so I should eat by myself unhurried.

I say no, I eat with Adam. They say, no, he eats too much.  Aha, the secret to his solitary dish the last few days.

 Camel breeding, 1 jamal to 20 nagas, must be helped with the coital act, put it in Ya Arab.  In his budding frustration he positions and becomes brutal and dangerous to the mare.

Adam thinks the army tent under the hill is Abu Simbel.  He asks if we want to visit, I say yes to the statues, he asks what statues?, never heard of the monoliths, never seen them, and Khair explains ancient history to the boy.

 Last night while driving, Saeed's voice in song is heard Over the cries and yelps of the men, sun up now, fell asleep listening to Arthur Blythe, woke up to the World Saxophone Quartet, Dave said the jazz lullabies had played a long time last night.

 Noon stop. The Aswan-Halfa ferry puffing up behind the coastal range, dark smoke headed south, will arrive Sundays in Halfa.  Khair said the lights were visible last night, is it Egypt yet?

Saw Khamees' 4 groups like ants on the horizon, hours ahead, then Adam races off to the left.     A red Lump, fresh slaughter, probably from Khamees' herd this morn, all the men follow, cries of excitement and joy.    Khair and M. sit quietly, his ruby red ring flashing, waiting for the word “meat”.  It's a fat naqa, we pack what's left behind, a large leg bone with bits hanging..

 Looks like Nasir and Khair the Elder from M.'s group carrying stomach and entrails, hanging in folds fran their hands, Khamees took the best cuts naturally. Anticipation of our luncheon feast ripens, talk and laughter. Still don't understand why we left old whitey without even a bite.  Tired weak bad meat, ta'baan da'eef wihish.

 We stop for Nasir to perform a small surgical procedure on one of the sexually active males, pierce his nostril and upper lip and strin:;J it with a rope tied to an 8" piece of fire wood, making him think twice when trotting after a naqa with the wood flopping around pulling at his nose, cooling down his powers of pursuit.

Make our midday camp just over the rise from Khamees, surprised we didn't go up to greet and get better handouts, knowing well that desert hospitality requires the choicest cut for the guest.

Update post-slaughter. Not Khamees after all, 6 drives with 700 camels and 40 men from Fasher, now 30 days on the trail.  Slaughter another slow-walking naga, Nasir and Adam assist.  Sadiq in brown gallabiyya and 2 others, all young black thin with cheek scars. We arrive after the neck is cut, head to red sand, could be asleep, tossing and turning as in a bad dream.

Peeled skin in a flash, laid it down each side like table cloth, peel off hump fat, cut meat off legs ribs spine, and dismember. Nasir an expert with the knife, often regrindirg it on whet stone.  Adam mounts the carcass barefoot with eyes twinkling, let's get comfortable while we butcher he seems to say.

 Nasir and Adam take the right side working together, Nasir makes the cuts. Three boys take the left, they aren't greedy, the morning slaughters are plenty even for 40 men.  Close now to Aswan, no more aseeda from here on out?

 Run for an axe to crack open the rib cage, out it all spills, careful with the knife! Huge deep red liver, 2 small kidneys wound in white fat, heart, valves open, leaving the stomach lung and tongue.    Front leg shoulders have a cushion of heavy white fat, within the zurr (chest callous) good for cooking, take the ribs dala'.

 The zurr for eating grissly, but thrown into the fire, fat fried and crunchy. Return with a full sack, the morn's haul pitiful in comparison but it's already cooking, lovely peppered hunks in brown gravy. We eat and celebrate, looking over our shoulders at the fresh full sack, tonight to be celebrated again.  How many camel recipes do we know between the 6 of us?  I'll borrow a few from DG’s Bar-B-Q.

 In 20 minutes the camel was mostly gone, much more left on the skeletons we pass, gone are the meat and ribs, skin flayed, guts there but sweetmeats gone. Legs akimbo, crows awaiting.

 Unusually little interest paid to the slaughter by those not at the scene. Khair and Masood patching as always, Muhammad at the fire, M. at his fire absorbed in thought.

 I help right the carcass as Nasir slices, good grip on the spine.  What's the story behind the butchery?  Bone broken from a brutal act or simply badly lame from the drive? The boys say the former, the same male did the same to this morn's other slaughtered naga.   Adam says no, just tired.

There is a peek of the lake, a blue strip under the brown mountain, between the yellow dunes, the afternoon wanes, another pot on to boil, spirits up. Give me another 40 days of this.

 Day 35

Camel back midmorn. Late ride in the wind and cold last night, we leading.

M. the K. finally rode up to say stop here.

Now lunch break. Add a new color saphire blue to the camel driver's palette. Passed beside the first large western bay of the lake, grasses shrubs and junipers growing where the water has risen and fallen. The Fashireen's camels are grazing now, 2 herds stopped just ahead, last night late saw their fires to our left as we dismounted.   A distant glow in the east, Simbel or Halfa or errant car lights

Riding Herd with the Kababish, Part II- 1984 Trail Dairy of 40 Days from Sudan to Egypt

Day  20

 Predawn. Orange arising in dune country, long perfect horizons, fading contour thinning trees, across the yellow empty map.

 Muhammad the Khabir rode into our lunch camp yesterday, his black greatcoat folded, wearing his thin riding araagi, turban coiled carelessly, big hellos for me, big mock arguments sly smile hollow anger for Khair, problem with the Sugar "why didn't you stop?" "no tea to serve, we're low on water" "no grub to eat", h rode off, we loaded up 16 logs on the pack animal and rode through black rock to join his men.  After tasting their clear cold water they led us.

 Rode into Wad Tom, hamlet of brush squat dwellings, goats one donkey, children, black-dressed red-scarfed silver-ankled women, to buy sugar at LS 1 per rutl.

We've also run out.

Rode through the gravel pans of Wad Tom, clump of thick trees, goats herded fire glows through brush doors, tree-hung dried meat.

 Into the dunes and clear-skied morn except for one mare's tail picking up the sun before its risen, last afternoon's clouds, dark thick northeastern, blown out fine sand has loose low spots, dunes crest and curve sharply always moving southeast in the northwest winds.

 Decided to do some serious site recordings they will all be gone before I know it, only voices and pictures to remember living hard -working men of the desert.

 And tire tracks converging each day, reentering gov't access territory, the old lady in the hovel thought Dave was the police when he photographed, empty cigarette pack in the sand.

 From Khair, the other route from Nahud skirts the Abu Dum hills, "according to one's moods" (hasab al-mazaj)

 B'ir Adam, the story book desert well, between dunes a truck tire rings the 30 foot rock lined well, clear water, leather bucket, bring your own rope,

3 donkeys cane from nowhere to inspect, we fill 4 skins Khair the Younger and Saeed of the other group do likewise, Masood soaks his leather camel rein.

 I'm mounted on a new camel, strong and leading the herd and stout, over very soft sand he strides and old whitey la;is, gets nipped, hump shrunken, blood stained, last night he collapsed more than once before we dismounted.

 News from Wad Tan finally filters down to me, 600 camels from El Fasher 2 days ahead, 200 from abu Jaib with 2 Khabirs and 400 from Sadiq, deep tracks

 The Great Waste, where in fact nothing is wasted, a Victorian concept of the metropole, a colonial misnomer, how many insects rodents livestock herders and planters can live even thrive. there are will be rains. the green was will return.

 Across more flats, soft sand walk this morn, My new camel a pleasure to ride, we will be good friends even if he is gelded. Flour for milaah called duraaba, like Um Duraaba, flour for 'aseeda called dukhun.

 writing by moonlight in 1/2 moon words: fadayya- lizard skin ground, hiyalla- heavy sand, rimma - camel skeleton, rasab - small gravels, zalat- rocky ground

 Day 21 at Predawn.

Muhammad cooked last night and up early this morning in the darkness, stirring 'aseeda, crazy chemist over the fire concocting magic brew, so much oil in the milaah last night it turned thick, but sticks to the 'aseeda hunks better this way.

 Muhammad the haashi nursemaid, last night and yesterday lunch feeding time, millet grain and dried hay force fed the millet mixed with water, throat massage to swallow, has to drag them together bawling all the way, squealing like pigs, kicked dogs cry babies.

Saw Little Dipper and Arcturus before it turned orange this morning.  What's that bright star in the morn east beside Venus?  Also what's that constellation around the Southern Cross? Scorpio? and the 5 pointed polygon and the lambda along the side of Orion and Sirius, towards Cassiopeia?

 M. the ragbag. At B'ir Adam, Saeed needed a rag to wipe the skin, asked M, and tore off a piece of his araagi, his turban already gone, no shroud for his grave.

 Camel carcasses as cairns, died in midstep to Cairo, within nose range of the Nile's waters, bleached bones held together by slowly rotting sinews, rawhide erected by rigor mortis and the wind, more visible in the distance than black rock cairns, they catch the sun and sound the warning, camels sniff their fate and mouth a bone to taste their brother's salt, The Great Waste?

 Khair doing a lot of prayers lately.  Yesterday asr and maghrib, this morn fajr too.

 Camel sex party yesterday at lunch break, couldn't keep a big white stud off anything warm, 6 inch pencil eraser penis whipping back and forth like a car antenna, foamy saliva and pink throat bubble gurgling, backwards mount!

 New words:      lunch camping spot- deira, ­ night camp- miraah or manzal

Counted 103 turds under my camel's tail this morn

Day 21 at Midday.

Um Duheir, Mother of the Smaller Eternity, wind blown sand streams, Nile mist, like climbing Tuckerman’s in winter, snow coming over the ledges burying boots, fine enough to drown in.

 Sandflats 360 degrees razor edge horizon, now breaking up as we drop to the Nile rocky outcrops again, good walk into the wind but better finally mounted,

my new camel like a good easy chair, I sit any which way in comfort, at ease

he walks steady, discovering new safe postures, an expanded repertoire of seating for late night rides.

 Long ride last night, I did better than before, didn't think about the end until we were headed down, celebrated the end of Day 20 with 2 1/2 glasses coffee black bitter grounds as digestif, and slept like a log

 Khair says we don't have far to go, promises as early camp tonight, the wind is Um Duheir.

 Masood goes on about marrying Hanaan al BuluBulu, the Tanya Tucker of the northern Sudan, Fitihaab her village near Um Ruweiba, I plan to stock up on her tapes in Dongola a real heart throb among the Kababish.

 early stop today just past the telegraph wires, Adam touched them overhead with his whip, crossing the finish line, trees along the Nile now in sight, we water tomorrow about 9 after the wind dies and the sun gets high, so the fickle camels drink well, no problem with us, I've already eaten 3 meals, cleaned. rested, shopped and eaten again, hard to get a grip on my impatience once I've sniffed the Nile.  But camp tonight seems like the edge of town, at its garbage dump, paper floating by, an empty bottle at our lunch place.

 We operated on the red camel with hand of Fatima, Swollen right front ankle, Nasir came over with a branding iron, heated it and tied the camel tight, back legs together front hobbled tipped him over like a car and he seared 3 vertical stripes and one lateral, skin blackened and parted, no reaction from the camel, still limping not surprisingly.

 I've explained our plans to go ahead to Dongola and rest a few days, for the border formalities but Khair volunteered a suggestion that we bathe and eat a little, that's what he'd like to do.

 The wind was blowing white powder all afternoon, its darkening now, past half moon overhead, M. stirring up lukhma, grub, we're sleeping in close to the boys tonight, spirits are all up, Saeed over for campfire tales, we're leaving Um Duheir, onto the Nile, river life

Day 23

Morn. Dongola.  Arrived late last night broken down truck left the herd behind. Our arrival at the Nile triumphant and frenzied and over in a second.  Rode the green line following tracks a wheel-less bus propped up beside the way, date palms in view, greenery in multiple shades, tended fields, past a long mud building with arched doors and brightly painted green window shutters.  Through the dunes, and voila the Nile's Bank, steep pebbly descent, the wind chopping against the flow, camels hurried to drink just as the square-rigged white sail puffed by laden with ladies.

 Lapping waves at the bank, like the Missouri on a windy summer day, many mirrored surface churning up sediment, M.'s camels close behind, frenzied herd mixing confused drinking many shouts of encouragement but no group celebration or recognition of a goal achieved, are Kababish not impressed with water?

 Conversation with 2 donkey riders, Abd al Maula and al Fadil, teacher at primary school, Dave and I go to visit make a presentation to the first grade girls up front and boys back, a lovely teacher looks on, al Fadil beside my seat explains our trip, US geography, and Ronald Reagan actor Jimmy Carter peanut farmer.

 Anxious to get into Dongola but reluctant to leave the herd. Rationalizing my escape, necessary recuperation if I will survive the 2nd half, time required for formalities and telegram, see Nubian life, Kawa Ruins, or just to stuff my self on my mind's feast prepared in the last 2 weeks. We rush from school, mount and ride north following car tracks, beyond clear sight of the green feeling very out of place, in a parking lot, "Arabs" as spectacle, dogs/children chasing, the end of the desert, our pure experience, an era an age a way of life all gone with electricity, motorized traffic and the Nile, stopped for lunch in a dirty place, no longer a sandy noble camp site, a miraah, literally “a place of rest”, no traces of fire or camel dung from past drives, within earshot of traffic, waiting for a passing truck

I'm fatalistic passive about our ride, don't want to go beside the sown in such a way, feel like losing ourselves back in the wastes, where automobiles fear to tread.

Wave down a truck, going to Dongola? without stops? "It all depends on God", good enough answer, pull into Goulad after 20 minutes, stuff ourselves on double orders ful, vegetable stew, and bread all tasting for the first time in our lives marvelous, continue on, settlements, newly laid out home sites model villages, empty quarters, the sun in that part of the western sky I remember so well from the rides.  Just now if I'd been still in the saddle, I'd be in pain, before the sun falls enough to cool and be beautifully aglow.

 Breakdown! Flat tire! No sewing needle to patch a tube!     Caused by a grain of sand wearing against a man-made fabric no doubt. A boy walks off for the needle we wait, get cold, hungry, our butts sore from constrained seating, steady but irregular bumping.  Is it possible to be colder, hungrier, sorer, more all around uncomfortable than in the saddle?  Just wait.   Repair. Wrap up in the blanket, I've got the outboard windowless seat, Talking Heads, David Byrne please outsing the whine of the motor as we climb the cold dune.

 Arrive Dongola, find a flea bag hotel, collective room, my neighbor snoring like a hog in my direction, I want to scream, even sleep is meaner, camels growl in the night but let me rest. Change rooms, all my dreams are caning true.

 The bakery. Our nightcap meal, bread from the oven, bakers from Kadugli, wide smiles soft slow voices, brighten when I say we left from Nahud, near their home, the Nuba Hills.

 An Egyptian in pajamas wise cracks about 15 piaster bread, big inflation after he leaves we sit together at ful and warm bread, Nuba bakers and gringos, the bakery boss waves off our payment for the 6 loaves we carry, the sole warm glow in an unfriendly night.

 Awake to donkey brays rooster crows and bird song, get out of the flea beg early, watch Dongola came to life, before dawn from a tea shop, tea with milk and cloves.

 To be sleeping indoors, as disconcerting as a 7 hour time zone change, NYC to Cairo, Sahara to City.

 Today to find al Amiri Yaseen, well known to the bakery owner, see Temple of Kawa, telegram and shop  for essentials, donkey seat, Hanaan tapes.

 Afternoon, waiting out the overhead sun, tea shanty bank of the Nile, walked through the backyards to get here following irrigation canals led by children a precocious hello from a white-thaubed maid.   Mango, dom, balah, lubia all abounding. Burtha'a, donkey seats for LS 13.  Enough ‘83 and ‘84 Hanaan tapes. Hanaan 82 is 'oud music, a collectors item.

 Find rest after a trying morn with the authorities.  Perils of the city. Ibn Khaldoun was on the mark.              The simple strength of the barriyya, the desert, and the baroque weakness of the madina, the city, and the passport control charged each one LS 28 just to go back to the desert, for exit visa and 15 day extension, a muttering captain, "My God", to show off his schoolboy expressions.

 And his smiling flunkies poking through broken file cabinets for the proper register, sharing among the three of them the sole military cap to go before their chief, in and out, on our way to the police for a travel permit, Gottcha!

Undercover agent cruising gringos in the market, got hot and bothered, finally cooled down when he read abu Jaib's letter of introduction and saw our documents, run around again, only cooled after orange drink bananas and peanuts and simsim candies.

 Khair will be amused by our urban follies.    It never would have happened back there, where central authority is afraid to show its face, scared by the likes of Billa Ali and his rag-wrapped carbine, the law of the gun the rule of wits. Where carbon copies make no difference, where gringo writes the notes, one word, one scrawl carries weight but not as much as a gesture or a flash in the eye.   Back here its the green team vs. the white team, out there its the thief vs. the upright, no need for color coded uniforms, the legend travels by word of mouth, no use for seated scribes outside post offices.

The ferry loads, Kawa awaits.

Day 25

 Midday break. Back where we left off in Khileawa, only old whitey has died; after we left the group, during the night, left the bones as a sign post.     Long morning walk today paralleling the green, plenty of tracks and a few passing Toyotas.   Adam patching a pad on a difficult camel.   Morning moon setting full, finally figured that the other bright star beside Venus has to be a planet, either Saturn or Jupiter, the other has to be in the evening sky below and south of Sirius.

 Grand reunion yesterday with Khair and M. the Khabir in al-Amiri Yaseen's Shop #22, lounging about, stocking up on luxuries, i.e. cumin, falafel, tomatoes, we bought fresh mint and got free dates and dried dom nuts from friendly souk merchants.

 Khair was amused by our misguided adventures since we'd left him, starting with the flat tire.     Explained to the group assembled in the shop the purpose of our trip. Their comment, "mokh kabeer", big brain?

 Took a Toyota laden with supplies and al-Amiri's brother Sadiq, (both sly old birds with frightening faces until they smile, then they light up the dim corners of the stall) and waited at the drop point. The camels showed up just at sundown after we'd feasted on falafel, tomatoes, and onions in oil and red pepper, lips burned until a boy showed up with a water jug.

 Sorry and Happy to be leaving Dongola, behind were hassles and fresh bread, cops and bananas, snoring hotels and restful tea shops, long days with the authorities and early mornings/late nights drinking clove tea and eating warm loaves.

 And we hope the next fifteen days are full of the new and unexpected, feel like the trip is coasting home here on out.    Hope we don't get bogged down in long marches along the beaten path, right now camped beside an international aid project all fenced in, mechanical wheeled irrigation pipes and pump houses

 Day 26

 Midday. Near a dried slough of the Nile, north of Simit Island.   A beautiful spot with camels eating Nile grass and rolling on sand bars.   I bathed my feet and drank deep from a clear pool left by receding flood waters.

 Last night cruising along the truck route picking up road dirt, a brief stop to drink from a clay jar kept for the benefit of travelers, rode late till 9 and entered a boulder zone much like a cataract without the flow, full moon rising orange 1 hour after sundown, the orange I didn't eat in Dongola. But wait.

 This morning cut across the desert, came upon what looked like an oasis apart from the river, but it was the Nile turning back and we followed the waters. Dates six months from harvest, delicate arching fronds, dom fruit in fan palms 2 months from season.

Invited to lunch by M. Osman and Houja abd al-Rahim, west of Simit Island, M. worked in Kuwait and now was home for 3 months vacation, ate oil-less ful, breaded fish (boulaati), dates, kisra bread and grapefruit, all while the camels munched outdoors.

 A saint's tomb, and passed a ruined fortress, black stone foundation, mud upper stories, still a way off from Sulb and Seddinga.

The 3rd Cataract has 2 sets of rapids, Kajbar and abu Fatima.

 Muhammad's bismillahs when he is:  filling the teapot, filling tea glasses, drinking tea, saddling up, mounting, adding spice to lukhma, pouring milah onto aseeda, etc.

 Resting under the tree, ducks at the pool.  At Kawa, there was a small green canary staring down a donkey, today by the Nile saw a pintailed green bird, black crows and white "friend of the farms", sadiq al mazaari’, landing on camel humps.

 Recession irrigation, ful and fasuliyya and lubiyya, the Nubian cultural zone of Mahas, check R. Fernea on Nile cultures, brightly painted gateways, charcoal making, date cultivation, rich bird life, river breezes, green plant life, broken by black boulders, mud architecture, arched doors, cool lime interiors, M. Osman had a bed lined, green shuttered sitting roan, ate with spoons and drank tea from a china pot, he works tawaali with Yanks and Brits.

 The routine of Nile encounters, people's homes, food, or simply water jars, and then the desert to tire and thirst and compare with the comforts of the river. I could ride this way a long time, this view this river feel is what I saw when I read the map in New York, 1000 km of Nile bank, no road lost temples like the one just behind, unmarked, passed by surprise and left behind unnamed, and the spontaneous meals to counter the 'aseeda, fresh fruits, even ful and bread, honest grub even though the season is early, pre-ripenirg, the sense of fertility and bounty to come, a desert antidote.

 We've earned this luxury, our stomachs our eyes even our legs (strorger now, and stops more restful) feel the difference.   In a land where celebrations mean oranges and dates, not a slaughtered sheep.

Day 27

Midday beside Mount Shubaaha. Turned away from the Nile across Sesebi Reach, Khair says we won't see more river until day after morrow. Iast night grazed the camels at dusk beside the banks, a stand of date palms on west bank caught the orange glow, a pump coughed, young man came to ask us to move the livestock up on the bank, his handal and fasuliyya crops were underfoot, Masood said Kuwayyis, kuwayyis Good, Good, in his goofy American accent.

 Wind was up, ducks flew in pairs, a last sip from the Nile, and almost fell asleep at the waters edge, everyone seemed tired, personally exhausted after a very short slow day, odd.    Camped within sight of a small town, the lights blinked on about 5 or 6, when the generator started.  Moon is up orange and full, egg-like, squeezed sideways as its laid, the horizon is one big hen house.

 BBC news about France's largest traffic jam in history, threatening to topple the government, Commie transport minister gets tough with the truckers, and a cyclone on the Natal coast, missed the review of Francis de la Torre's "Saint Joan"

 More patching at lunch, over zalat and broken rock, plenty of cairns and camel skeletons, one still fresh with skin bloated and leather tanning, twisted neck biting at the last itch on the hump.

 Day 28

 Lost and Found. Iast night with M. in the lead, before the moon rose we wandered off the track, wind blew cold and camels strung out.    Wasn't hard to lose the way in the black, many rises and falls and the way beirg many parallel beaten paths interlacing and winding between heavy gravels.

 But by stopping time Khair knew we were lost, camped and this morning set off due west in search of the path.    Many jokes and banter M. and Khair in lead on foot.  Climbing hills and pointing with whips all around the compass.

Khair was rubbing it in, M. needs our map, I say the map is useless, Khair says the Sahara has big problems, we finally backtrack and follow a sand wash north seeing the gravel beds of differing weights contouring and entering.  Black slate and white quartzites, finally another broad sand bed canes in from the east. We were west of the track all along, now M. rubs Khair for taking us too far west.

 M. gives us the all clear, follow me sign, says we're near the river and Sukoat, and sure enough we're not 1/2 mile from the date palms.

 Nasir. The elegant bad guy, grey sleeveless sweater, shirt, grey overcoat, turban with tail wagging down his back, and his pant legs in tatters.

Adam. Red/yellow striped sleeveless sweater, red long sweater, red leather mocs, and shawl wrapped bandolier style across his chest.

Masood. Blue ski cap wrapped by a turban, black vest ragged over lorg dirty tunic, often wears galabiyya on top. Being so small, like a child in a night­ gown, an 8th dwarf.

Muhammad.  Tunic flapping, nothing under nothing over, his chest lightly covered.   2 days ago when he caught Dave and me alone, asked for Sudanese money when we arrive Cairo, didn't get his full meaning, "children weak, of service, Try". Talked to Dave first and realized he couldn't get through, came over to me, eyes not blinking, to the heart of the matter.  I, "I will try".

 Camel patching howls, Adam's heavy hand, wind up hard today, little sand in the air though, Praise Be, reclining camels create drafts and sand devils across the camp, when they stir the wind flies up the sand.

 Passing many old camp sites, camel nests, fire rings, 3 blackened stones, fresh urine stains on dark sand this morn, mud pies by the dozen.

 Idris. Shortest of the other group, impish.  High voice, travels mostly on foot, their factotum, their Muhammad?

 M. the Khabir.  Without turban and greatcoat, chest proud, a tough old buzzard George C. Scott-like, he and Khair like to duel and spar with w::,rd and gesture, voices rise, laughter falls, Khair's giggle.

 As usual the most uncomfortable stopping place to be found, within sight of the river and tree cover from the wind.

 Glad that the mint has been fully accepted and put to use, mint tea makes it an equal pleasure, theirs and ours, when they smile and shout, "Kubbayya! Shai!" And the dates almost gone, my bowels say not a second too soon, yesterday left Mt. Subaaha quite a bit browner and then greener.

 My camel is a strong stubborn brute for a eunuch, no way to turn his head or pull him up when he decides to graze, and he stumbles often which is rough on my seat. My groin pays the price for each misstep.  But the leather donkey pad allows me to wrap the cloth pad around the horn and across his shoulder blade, so I sit cross-legged more comfortably, one position going a long way.

 Khair sharpens knife for raw hide stripping, sprinkles gravel with the blade on the wooden club, and then rubs back and forth butcher fashion. Toe holding the start of the thread, cuts evenly along the side, stretching taut all the while. 3 foot perfect laces, easy to stitch the patch, raw hide soaked before cut, shaving the lace down afterwards. Sitting on the large piece, his diwan, the firaash shoes shouldn't tread.    Masood is deadly serious about violating his bed sheet.

Day 29

 Predawn. Awakened through the night with Muhammad stirring 'aseeda. The muffled scraping of food in a dish, dough, flour, underwater sounds of food from far away.  A childhood recollection, always over the fire, squatting, stir rod in a tight-fisted grip, pot steaming, still doesn't know the spices but makes great quantities.

Yesterday saw Sulb after we remounted from lunch, in the distance, nestled in the date palms surrounded by village of Aquula, ran up to it through the mud compounds, pretty ochre-highlighted wall buttresses with mastaba trim and key hole arches, painted double doors and portals in harlequin, circus welcome, psychedelic spinning colors. Split palm roof beams laid across poles, leaving

Looking for Mr. Dahab, aragi bootlegger, at risk of 40 lashes under the Sharia, better to drink beer in Egypt, 9 more days counts M. the Younger.

Mahas- North of Dongola

Sukoat- Begins at Jebel Dowsha

 Rutaana (gibberish) spoken here according to the Kababish. Ianguage of the Nubians our camp guest M. Osman reccgnized sane of Ala' Al-Din Hamza's song, said it was Kanusi dialect from Selima up past 'Abri.

 Up from behind cane 3 herds, "the Professor" trail boss puts eyeglasses away in tunic and drinks tea at sunset.    I imagine him to be an ex-banker or lawyer fed up with city life and became a came lman.   A feloucca sails to the other shore with fire wood, and old woman carrying tomatoes, 2 maids with wood stacked overhead, a boy, and his proud father the sailor, I photograph all.Stopped early, washed socks on the sand bar, dates galore left aver from Hamid. Ahmad Diyyab, the slow speaking police chief, donkey for a squad car, a chronic aragi-holic according to Khair.  In the primary school, 'a"I/Kl Allah wants out of the Rif, a scholarship in the US, what can a liberal arts graduate do there?

I've the same trouble much closer to home.

Day 30

 Midday break leaving the Nile.    Ahmad Diyyab always tries a shakedown. Cost LS 30 last year.   Problems with the drivers' documents, not all had papers, sat Muhammad down in front of the flag and desk, "Where do you live exactly (bi-thabt)?", "Kordofan, Markiz Sodiri, Um Badr" "North or South?", "North", "Ah, what's your pay?", "300 guineas"

 Khair squats me down with our backs turned and hands ewer a wad, later said he'd been afraid of the tafteesh, inspection, and I returned it this morning.

 Lonely spot to camp, plenty of light and a late leisurely start, feeding the bahayim (Wehr trans. "hoofed animals") on palm fronds, feather dusters, roman candles, date bursts.

The other groups arrive Over the dunes, 2 groups from Omdurman and 2 from Um Ruwaaba, Khamees is the name of the bespectacled trail boss, with a story,

38 days out from the starting point, trouble with thieves, gunfire in the night, they got away with 3 camels.

 Can't pinpoint Dahab Fadil, our would be aragi connection. We walk all morning along the banks trying to stay out of the wind and blowing sand, but soon tire and knock down a few chewy dates from the palm, refuse tea from the first guy we see and then don't get another invitation.   Meet the herd tired and thirsty just as they turn away fran the Nile.  I wonder if they are surprised to find us waiting for them so far ahead.

 Khair says we follow the river 3 more days, in the desert for two, and then Abu Simbel on the 6th.  Looking forward to Dal Cataract. Missed 'Amara evidently, Abri on the other bank looks inviting.   our camp now across from Sai island, missed the chance to sail across last night to see the Ottoman fortress in circular ruins.

6 inches of air to circulate, high windows for light, wind and privacy. Working the winter wheat, Mel's colors, farms' friends picking bugs, the field hand stops work at the maghrib, sharp sickles may cut a finger, or trample new shoots. Camel drivers need but a star- al Jeddi- to work their way through the night.

Finally Khair stirs from his sleep, mutters the tawheed, Ia illaha illa Allah, wa Muhammad rasuul Allah and dons his orange taqiyya.

 Sulb, a ruined and reconstructed sight, 6 standinq rebuild columns, lotus stems, 1 proto-Corinthian with curling leaves, what remains of the portal riverside, and white caps in a strong wind, wide channel, and children (Mutawakkil, Muhammad, and Mu'aawiyya) know the answers to my questions, camels pass and we rush off to follow as they pass through the main street of Sukoat, and climb over a windy, blown sand-obscured mountain.

 Pass date stands sand-impounded, dunes like oysters, same color, wet and perfectly smooth surfaces, a Miami Beach ashtray.

 The camels move up the rise, visions of the Khyber Pass in a full blow, a truck is heard coming and passes, one simple question from the driver, "Mashiyyeen Masr? Goinq to Egypt?", and through the pass down the rock stony way littered by camel carcasses.

 A donkey rider approaches, long legs clicking, a spider on a string, "I am the police. Passport?" We walk all the way into Hamid village lights glowing, Khair arguing about the camel permts and over limits, heated talk, confiscated papers, flashlight consultations, finally camp and await the morning hearing.

Abd ar-Rahman and Ibrahim arrive with tray of kisra, 'ats, and meat shurba. We eat together, drink tea, Ad.am asks if they swim, "Doesn't the water eat you?" They ask about the camel drive.  Ibrahim has owned his new camel for 25 days.

Khair says its 9 days on to Binban and 2 more up to Esna.

Wind up all night.

Late morn rest stop under the palms. we camped at Qubba Saleem near Seddinga. Saw police on the leeward side of a mud compound, on a wide mastaba serving as city hall, primary school, ladies' back fence, a municipal stage where village dramas are acted out with audience participation.

 Seated in the majlis, Abd ar-Rahman's  grandfather died, Khair and M. each gave LS 2 to his waqf.

 And we rode along towards Hamid.  Another friendly encounter with the police, a donkey riding rais al-nuqta, president of the post, friend of Masood and Khair, greetings all round and smiles.

 Each village has its own color trim for compounds, passes from deep ochre to light ochre to orange to yellow.

 The teapot as old Ironsides.  Yet another jerryrig to plug the hole and secure the spout. Can't Sink the Bismark. How many adwaar (poured rounds) has it served?

O Black Ingot of the Night, Morning Prayer, Midday Soul-Stirrer.

Yesterday's lunch in the field, beside wheat green and young, a covered tray, a salute, an invitation to break kisra bread, spinach puree, date syrup like carob, and fried potatoes.    Fill the water glass from the irrigation ditch, and tea from a thermos, and dates for dessert, and goodbye and shukrans.

 The night before, eating Abd ar-Rahnan's 'ats (lentils), I was digging at the colored pattern in the dish with my kisra, hoping to pick up a tasty bite, by the firelight later I saw the dish had long been empty.

Riding Herd with the Kababish, Part I- 1984 Trail Diary of a Camel Trip on the Darb al Arba'in, the Way of the Forty, from Sudan to Egypt

Note- transcribed from my notebook, as written in pencil in February 1984 on my first trail on the Darb al-Arba’in, the Way of the Forty Days, with a herd of camels from Sudan to Egypt, at the invitation of Bashir Abu Jaib, a Sudanese trader I had first met in Cairo in 1979

 Key Persons- KhairAllah (aka Khair), the trail boss; Masood, Adam, and Muhammad (aka M, Md., etc.), KhairAllah’s drovers with varying years of experience and maturity; Muhammad the Khabir (aka M, Md. etc), a trail boss accompanying us with his own herd; Nasir, Saeed, and KhairAllah (aka Skullface), Muhammad’s drovers; Billa Ali, a camel thief; Sadiq abd al Wahab and Ahmad Hassan, Bashir Abu Jaib’s agents in al-Nahud, Sudan and Binban, Egypt, the drives start and end points.

 Day 3 on the Trail

Predawn. 100 camels kneeling and rechewing yesterday's grass and leaves. No wind now, so they lie helter skelter.   Last night in the wind they were aligned like small craft swinging at their moorings, noses leeward.

First coffee of the trip last night, 2 cups.  Such a relief from the over­ sweet tea. Yesterday, a full day driving camels, eating their dust and sand, smelling farts, passing Hamari villages, Shiraat and Bulaad where we slept.

Fresh clear water here, trucked in and stored in the village cistern.

At Shiraat met by men boying and clowning for the camera, we left one instant photo and I did a sommersault on my first attempt to mount.  The landscape changes from thick savannah grasses, red loose sands, thin overgraze, millet and melon fields.    White melons a treat at yesterday's midday break.  I nearly died when it came, our rest.  I had driven much too hard for a khawaaja, getting them out of thorn trees, low leafy bush, and clumps of dried grass.  Breaking up mating dances, urine drinking parties (flaming gimacing?), stud bravado, hump biting, and neck wrestling.     Arms sore from rump wacking with my stick, always too short for a full smack.

KhairAllah brushes his teeth with an aromatic twig, he rides right point, maddagha, choosing the route and campsites, in charge of camel counts, married, Kabbashi.

Adam rides left point, makhrouga, on the tallest camel, has a nice tooled leather camel shoulder skirt to cover its withers, makes our tea· and 'aseeda fires, 29 years old, bachelor Hamari.

Muhammad, the wild man, Kabbashi, married, sons Hassan Ali and Hamid, skull cap and dirty araagi (riding tunic), picks up the strays, hardest working always at a trot, scavenges cans from the desert, Irish tobacco tin, "Wallahi?"

Lying 4 feet now from a nibbling camel, knee bent and tied with an 'agala (hobble)

To quiet a camel- rolled tongue cluck, hollow sounded

To rise a camel- KhKhKh KhKhKh KhKhKhKh KhKhKh KhKhKh KhKh

To trot a camel- like a horse, flat tongue cluck off roof of mouth

The day We pushed off.  Sheep slaughter BarBQue, took hindquarters with us, Muhammad Ali was there, Sadiq the agent of abu Jaib, and John the Christian driver from Wau. John is the outsider, dressed in Western clothes, listened to Motown and Sarah Vaughn and Mahalia Jackson with interest, sitting apart on the pickup hood.   Nahud is on the Sudan's Mason Dixon Line, just a border town.

North and South, Arab and Black.

Hussein had 4 servants, all Southerners.   Gom, old and aragi-drunk, wizened. "Donkey", young and smiley.   Nagwa, Somali refugee girl, precocious.

Desert and Grass.

Sadiq did last minute figuring with KhairAllah, he has such a sly ignorant grin, nice to us only to gain favor with Bashir?

Visit to Police HQ, painting on wall of green uniformed cop shaking hands with white gallabiyya-dressed local, 2 district football teams.

Add that to El Obeid's team rivalry, Mireekh and Fulaata (Nigerians) who won 2-1 in the night game Sayyid Bashir took us to.

My bones still creaking this morn. And my anus raw, a dose of vaseline last night helped somewhat, I'll have to ride easy today, hands and nose sunburned.

Tea brought to me in bed by Khair, he wants me to take it easy too!

Promises to drink aragi with me in a few days, still in Dar al-Hamar, round thatched huts and goat herds, humpless camels last night in Bulaad our stoppirg place.

Dar al-Kababish up ahead in 3 days. Midday camp due east of Jebel Gharib.

our landmark all day yesterday, nothing up ahead to go by, breakfast with 2 locals in Bulaad, filled up skins at their well, paid up a few LS. The water is trucked up from Nahud, lady banker in black thaub takes the cash.

The camels stampede this morn upon setting off.  All at a silly trot.  Some paired off in amorous chase, Khair says Aneeq Kabeer, Big Sex.

Looks like we finished our mutton at breakfast, Khair now making up lemonade from today's water, our skins are new and they blacken it quickly, and ripen its taste, but the color! Lemonade the color of Coffee?

Muhammad out in the field keeping the camels in close, without hobbles they wander.

He really picks the hoof and lamb's head clean, pried off the horny part and sucked the cavity, peeled the skin off the head and diced up the sweets- tongue, brain, eye balls-we all dove in hands first.

Dust in the air, wind up high today, that plus a good shade tree, I need a long break today, anus still on the raw side.

Smoky flavor to that goatskin lemonade, I've come to ignore the color of what ever I eat or drink, viz. white watermelon, tawny coffee. Nope, there's meat after all, Adam is chopping up something on the yellow side, at least the onions are red, and they add the extra taste too.

Baobab trees are wells, climb a branch and drop a bucket down the hollow trunk.

 Khair says we went 30 km yesterday, might make 40 today, even better distance in the desert.  Jebel Gharib has thieves, have to watch out.

 Muhammad and Adam have camel driving Songs they sing to themselves, Bashir's fresh roast jebena on to boil, hope its better than store bought.

 Day 4

Predawn, quarter moon and Venus rising in the east.  Dave out with the tripod, met another drive yesterday afternoon, 7 men including Khair's cousin with the silver teeth, 160 camels belonging to Sadiq's maternal uncle. They left Nahud the day after us, slept first night in Shiraat, moving faster but they say we'll travel together, as they closed in on us from the rear their dust kicked up, riding rear guard as I do really dirties the face.

Camels turning golden as the sun creeps up, chewing all night, some sleep with necks stretched out front on the ground, butts windward, a drive-in movie with popcorn all round, dung dropping pitter-patter, after a sip of urine they put their heads straight in the air with necks sharply bent and show teeth (flaming grimace).

Baobab wells, we finally saw in use, many have old limbs propped up, that hollow way high and the dish-like depression 50 foot radius at its base.    When rain falls it collects there, people raise it in buckets to the hollow, and store it there, saw 2 girls pulling out a bucket as we went by a village.

Aragi still promised up ahead, Adam Hamid Adam Hamid Adam-3 trips, Muhammad Ali Hassan-3 trips, Masood abu Dood Abdullah-36 trips?

 Noonbreak.  Wind and dust up strong all round, blowing from due north, heading right into it, camels don't seem to mind, moving steady pace, grass and green thorn trees thinned out, baobabs disappearing, nothing much to eat.

Adam just disappeared behind a tree to crap, now cutting up onions to mix our milaah, no tribal taboos against cutting with left hands I presume, Khair and Muhammad were behind us all morning, M. finally caught up during our impromptu 15 minute tea break.    He wouldn't miss a spot of tea if his life depended on it. Shay abu Nuwaas, Tea of the 8th C poet Abu Nuwaas. We're filling skins in the first village we passed through driving the camels with just Adam and Masood, they were at a trot nonstop picking up strays, I was hurtin' in the saddle this morn so wasn't much help, feel better now.

The other group's right behind us, we coordinate our stops, sentries posted between herds to keep from mixing. 

Sesame oil kept in a 5 liter Mobil oil plastic jug, aseeda on to boil, whips and camel gear hanging from the tree limbs, shadows somewhat dim for all the dust in the air, blue sky only overhead, haven't seen this much wind since the big blow at the Souk Sha'bi in Omdurman. 

Haven't passed as many villages today as yesterday, what we do are small and semi-abandoned, always a few toddlers out to wave us by, from a distance they are so black and small and low to the ground almost look like insects on their unsteady feet.    looks like we're on our way out of Dar al-Hamar and into Dar al-Kababish. The tracks we were following are gone, the wind is at a steady compass point, just keep our noses straight into the blow.

Can feel the heat of the fire from 15 feet, and I'm upwind, my hands are pretty burned, I guess I've been giving them and my sore ass the old vaseline treatments to no avail.

The fine dust between my teeth, even after a drink and keeping my mouth closed is gritty 5 minutes later, must come down through my nose.

Day 5

Noonbreak. Finally caught up with the other drive, they took the lead this morn when we broke camp, wind still howling from the north but we seem to be headed into it off a few points west, very chilly this morn, blew all night, Dave caught cold and didn't get a wink, wrapped up in the sleeping bag and extra sweaters, I tried walking a bit, felt good to stretch the legs but the wind drives hard.

Had a midmorning tea break and remounted, the sun was finally warming, Khair came back to camp last night with a bag of sesame seeds for tea, a mild antidote to the sugar.

M. the Khabir was drunk at our fire last night, a long discussion over how many camels we had, finally added up to 109 through some back door calculus, also a discussion over males and females, 8 or 9 mares finally agreed to.

Names of camels, after their color:

kharsha- black

hamara or humeira- red

shajara or shujeira- yellow

beida- white

dabsa- blackish

M. out running down camels again always on the move with a “heh, hut, oink”. Rode through the high prairies today, lion country, came across stunted melon patch and a cow skull, man in a baobab tree drawing water with a skin, lowering it to girls with tightly braided hair, donkey awaiting his burden, introduced ourselves as professional photographers and got his okay to shoot, asked his address so we could send him one and drew a blank.

Tumbled out of the saddle again at noon time, rolled right down his neck, heard him growl underneath my belly, kept rolling, almost busted my glasses, bent 'em.

Shau-toothbrush tree.

Abdullah from Fawja of the Hawawir tribe says Sodiri town is 3 days ahead. Now Khair says Abdullah was a thief casing our herd.  Said in May that 11 camels were stolen near Dongola by men from the Hawawir. Said I should not have invited him to lunch, but since I had gotten the itfaddil - the “if you please”- out before knowing this, he sat down.

 He took off on a very small fast camel, good for thieving, after riding with us a half mile.    He had been surprised when I asked him to tell me about him­self because I was a mu'allim (scholar), now I know why.

All afternoon grass thinned out, wind didn't die.  Stopped very early for the night, camels looking in vain for a bite.    Muhammad rode off to Maraheet for fresh water. Saw a water truck go by in that direction just as we stopped the herd.    Hope it made it to the well before M. Didn't feel like drinking stagnant H20.      The skins make it smoky enough. 

2 days from Sodiri we're told. At this pace we'll make Dongola in 40. Past sheep and cattle herds this afternoon, and Masood had to chase 5 kids out of our way on foot so we wouldn't trample them, camels will walk over anything. If their belly itches they walk right into the thorniest thorn tree they can find. I don't feel so bad that I've rubbed the bloody spot with my shoe right on top of his neck.   Probably doesn't even feel it.

Camped again in the barest windiest part of the plain we could find. Under the smallest tree. The point is I guess to make our campsite as unappetizing as possible.

One white camel was very lame today, even worse now at pasture, a Kabbashi.

Day 6

Noonbreak east of Jebel Mandara, heading for Jebel Shudeira.     Not much progress this morn with midmorn tea and grazing breaks. M. went back into Maraheet to get more water, what he brought back last night was clear and sweet when we poured it from the skin. And plenty of aseeda for dinner, good and hungry.

Day after tomorrow we're to pass Um Kheirwa' and bread is promised, no bakery in  Maraheet after a lot of talk.  Khair went off this morn to buy a haashi camel for LS 400, the owner wanted LS 600 so he came back empty-handed.

Camel names by age:

haashi- 2 yrs

ga'uud- 3 yrs

hawaar- 1 yr

The other group is keeping pace with us, now lunching too, but we lead today.

Jebel Mandara turns out to be a small system of hills, we camp just to the west of the largest.    Nasir from the other herd fell sick, "skin on fire", Khair asked us for pills, very early camp tonight, sun still high and hot, Dave and I reconnoiter.

 Baobabs have disappeared, few thorn trees left, landscape filled by short green multi-branched bushes growing all on the vertical, sparse dried grass.

Passed a man and woman on donkey back, the mountain due north is abu Qadeed, Dar al Kababish territory begins at Jebel Shudeira. Still pointed due into wind, easy to steer with the wind, letting it blow at same volume into both ears.

More birds today, a large whiteish grey with black wingtips, a medium royal blue with long tail, black wingtips and bellyband. Petrified camel, dead dog.

Khair after another haashi. Hamid al-Nile, herd's owner, won't sell.  Tomorrow we come to Jebel Kugum, very big wells there, so they say.

Abu Jurman, dung beetle

Day 7 

Midday break, early again, just past abu Qadeed, a granitic upthrust with verticle cleavages, and Silsila Hafara chain, strung out to the east headed north, tomorrow water is promised at Um Kheirwa'.

Walked this morn, slight rolling ups and downs, the mts on the horizon in and out of sight.   Waited last night for the crescent moon, Milky way over the Southern Cross all the way to the Dog Star.   Recognized Deneb and thought I found Jupiter up there.   5 minute midmorning tea break!

Learned names of Masood's kids, Zeinab, KhadimatAllah, and a boy Tighy.

He wants to come work in my house, I said he'd have to wear a pink dress, no thanks.    In Dave's house? He'd have to wear a blue dress.

Muhammad, an angel? His once white skull cap now as dark as his black face, dirty tunic robes tattered and flapping in the breeze, his whip a celestial harp? or lightning bolt.

Camels are their children, leading them to school. I  can't discipline them, they're bothered when I kick or whip, Khair insisted I take a smaller stick to their butts.

Day 8

2nd tea break of the morning, east of Jebel Kugum. The enormous beach begins, with white melon patches we do our best to bypass, but not all are visible to the naked eye, much like the invisible bird sings all morning before the beach began, emanating from lifeless trees.

Last night Khair asked to no one in particular while we all semi-slept, "al laila taweela, kam yom al laila?" The night is long, how many days long is the night?

Still riding to the west of a chain of rock mts, abu Idaad, and Jebel Um Kheirwa' is visible in the northeast.

 We talked about dreams this morning.  Masood said he used to dream about his prayers, Muh said he'd never dreamt.

 They have ridden together three times, all from Um Badr except Adam, he's from Bakheet, near Nahud.

 The tremendous sands have begun, treeless but with donkey movements across the horizon and irregular agriculture.     Tomorrow Um Kheirwa', the camels must have full bellies in order to drink a quantity sufficient for the desert crossing, Khair says we must work the buckets at the wells, he's gone up ahead with M. the Khabir to make arrangements there.

Muhammad circles the horizon, rounding camels that may stray upon a melon patch. I had a sound sleep last night, dreamt of horseracing in Ethiopia.     As we ate our melons, the camels nosed in, hungry or thirsty, they've become bolder as their stomachs begin to ache, last night one came into camp and drank from our aseeda mixing bowl.

Toum Hassan came in on his donkey, with a sleepy dog and shotgun, to speak of Allah and ask for sugar and tea, Adam gave him one LS from his own pocket and hoped for him to leave quickly.  With the money he rode off southwest to his hut in the trees.

In the night the camels growl, roll, regurgitate, burp, chew, fart, urinate, pop feces, all overhead or not more that 10 feet away, in my direction.

Taking hobbles off in the morning, they're stiff-legged, some like to play, chase and frolic, to loosen up, especially when the wind blows on the desert.

Yesterday, a veterinary diagnosis, brought in 2 consulting Kababish who happened by, found the limp stemming from a sore muscle high in the shoulder, right side, forced a growl when fingered, slapped water on it to moisten the hair, and we moved out.

Day 9

Evening. Outside of Um Kheirwa', after a day at the water wells for camels and pineapple for us, tea the way we like it, and ful with bread.    Last night ran into trouble with Md and Masood, we had ridden hard till late in the evening, still not arriving. Khair had gone ahead to bring water, but he hadn't met us on the trail when we made camp in darkness.

Late golden west darkening on our left made pretty silhouettes of the 109.

Dave and I let our camels loose while the others hobbled, Dave's got away, then I commented about our many tea breaks and the delays, asking Adam, Where's Khair? And said we were tired, that's why we let our camels go. He got angry, told us to take a car if we were tired, and gave his usual rapid-fire replies.  Heard him talking about us when we went to bed, M. rode into town for water and they woke us when the food and tea were finally ready.

Still angry in the morning, Masood said he'd found Dave's camel way off in the middle of the night, so we rode into Um Kheirwa' early for watering, waited on the hillside overlooking town and heard barking, eerie, later found not dogs but camels and donkeys howling at the water.   Saw a lake in the middle of town later found to be the well flats, 'Idd, with mud pits and water raised single-handed in small leather buckets. water troughs were shallow mud dishes, one small trough raised on a mud pedestal as a salt box.  That's why they pick up bleached bones in their teeth, for the salts. Idris abd ar-Rahman was our watering agent, organized the troughs and our camels' circulation between the pits.  Women were filling skins and loading donkeys, still no sign of Khair.     Finally moved our group aside to wait and we hit town, with pineapple and talk of photo portraiture over fly-bitten ful.

Khair finally arrived at the store to buy sugar, tea, and a new araagi for M. Returned to the group, he was put out about our delay, I said because of the hot sun yesterday, "look at my sunburned skin", Masood pulled up his sleeves to corroborate.  Khair knew better, he said because of our tea breaks.

And we moved out of town while Khair and M. visited "relatives", the patience of everyone being frayed due to Khair's repeated absences and ensuing lack of direction and authority.

Still aiming for 40 days, wish we could sneak back to town for more pineapple, too bad the melons weren't ripe.  Must check out the tribal brands on various parts of the camel, what do they all mean?

 Day 11

  Early tea break. Rode late last night, 2 hours past dark following the north star, al-Jeddi.   I walked, lucky sand was firm.  Camels bunched together, descending dunes at fast trots, none lost, finally camped exhausted, and the following group arrived out of the dark, camels too tired to wander but all hobbled anyway.

 At our long midday break yesterday, lemonade, goat stew and gravy.   M. the Khabir was over, talking camel prices with Khair.    And Nasir too, the handsome one, easily pictured in the movies or in a business suit.    And the Smiling Skull, must get his name.

 Khair makes 2-3 trips per year, last year made trips back to back with 2 days rest in between.    His father breeds camels in Um Badr, with good grass they get 20 newborns in a season.   Camels need help with first deliveries.   Khair's brand is along the front shoulder.

Wadi al-Milk promised tomorrow. Khair seems to recognize the names of landmarks from the map, like Jebel Asfar, Karabat As-Sereer, Wadi abu La'ot.      Rain crows now in thin thicket, camels feasting nearby on low woody bushes, many twisted limbs, hydra-headed and leafless as bleached driftwood, sculptural.

Feb 1-    Um Kheirwa'

Feb 2- long night ride

Feb 3- camp beside Jebel Safrat al Baraqiyya Feb 4- today

 Day 12

Midday break. Bint Um Bahr, Daughter of the Mother of the Sea, due east.

Rode all morn past Baqariyya al-Taweel, Masood filled up one skin with decently clear water. At camp this morn, baby camel was born in the other herd sometime overnight. Died 2 months premature, now lying in damp spot of sand with red afterbirth gooey like slow jelly nearby, with soft white kinky hair and legs folded.   Haraam, sinful, to eat; jild, skin, too thin to use.   Its mother returned from the drive at a gallop for last sniffs and tears, whipped off by M. the Younger.

Medusa hair trees are gafala, like upturned apple bonsais, the Kababish's baobab.Yesterday surprised to find Wadi al-Milk to our left.  Seems to have snuck up on us just before Zureit, Masood filled up a skin there with dirty water.  Last night saw the new crescent moon in the west 2 hours before setting.

 Wadi al-Milk from a distance, a green flow with thorn trees and frequent wells, like river ports. We stop in for water.  Strings of mountains to the west, sentinels, easy landmarks, we're finally on the map, 15' 30" and counting.

 Passed camel tracks this morn, 3 days old, 100 camels from Um Badr by the drivers' reckoning. And aseeda has been tastier lately, more pepper making an after-burn on cracked lips.

 When camels are driven hard and we stop, cloudbursts!  109 bladders turned loose. Heavy flows, and when caught downwind, an acrid ammonia odor passes by.  Wind and rain on a still and cloudless day.

 But more winds, north wind, north star, we nose into the breeze, but now Wadi al-Milk is our better mark, lucky its been warmer.

 Very pleasant sunset last night, camels passing and repassing before the orange glow, finally called into camp for hobbling as shadows, colors gone.  Moon fallen, dinner, coffee, sleep.

Day 13

Midday break.  Where are we?  Seem to have left the map,  M. was pointing out Jebel abu Fas, which I thought we'd passed long ago, another jebel by the same name up ahead.  Long night march last night.

Passed newlywed honeymooners tents, 3 white canvas flies beside the main tracks, Adam pointed them out from a distance, 'arees, groom.  Running joke about going over to eat shiyya, barbecue, with the couple.

The crescent moon appeared higher in the dusk sky, watched it fall, its bottom honey dipped.   The beach is barer, cleaner, some rocky patches and white slabs with a greasy feel to them.

KhairAllah followed our tracks of last night in search of a stray, rode with Skull Face, but its easy to drive camels along he sand

Another delivery last night in the other camp, but very premature, a 3 month fetus, cut open the sack and the juices spilled, huge empty socket eyes.    I understand their diet. Just when I tell of Saudi fetus eating practices, human like, all fetuses came from the same source-proteins- and diverge during gestation, limbs tucked under flesh pink and smooth, out-sized head, lying in a wet stain on the sand.

Riding without a girth today, feels tippy, the saddle slipped forward just as we stopped, a flying bailout.  Learned the rein and crop trick, makes a handy whip-the sound-the voice-gets results.

Day 14

Well break at 'Idd Ahmad. 2 wells, watering camels after our morn march on the edge of the wadi, after a waterless breakfast.  last night another scrap broke out over water which led to their deeper problems with our questions and note taking. Water is the source of tension for all involved, even though we're never more than 2 days from a well.

 We each have our priorities, Muhammad his ablutions, Adam his sugared tea, Dave and I would prefer our water straight. said, water ran out, sugar ran out.    I said, so what, I don’t like sugar anyway, which really got his goat.

Even the camels are fighting aver water.  Over my shoulder there are growls and nips. The wells are :p::,or, one guy on the inside is dredging the bottom and lining the sides with branches, ladling the muddy water out by hand.

Our boys are cutting the camels out, into watering parties.

On our night marches we always make a sunset prayer stop, the boys are praying more often now, even Khair, sweeping the sand with their hands for their prayer places, making ablutions with the sand.

 The wells are in a dry shallow pan, the surface mud cracked into pieces, last year's water runoff. I try to explain our purpose to Masood, he's touchy about our questioning, especially the names of landmarks he doesn't know. Last night got animated when I geared easy questions his way, told him he's the expert, and people want to know about his work.  He doesn't seem to mind when he knows what we're writing, and why we want to know.

 Fighting off hungry ticks as I write this, a few fat ones lazing around. Yesterday trying to keep my mouth moist and bottom comfortable, as futile as throwing sand at a camel.

 One of the folds in my camel's neck has split open, too much pressure from my shoe? Doesn't bleed much.

 Skull Face is also a KhairAllah, that makes 3 out of 11, and 3 Muhammads too. 2 ladies in black thaubs walk across the pan, 5 donkeys sulk beside dry wells.

 The wadi has some large shade trees, seem inviting after 3 blank days on the sand, naturally we do not stop underneath. The wind has shifted 90° this morn, now cool and from the west.

 My back is killing me, top vertebra throbs the minute I mount, don't feel a thing when I walk luckily.  Passed a few camel carcasses, half buried, and much white dried dung, Adam got a laugh saying all the dung belonged to abu Jaib.

 our morning walks are enjoyable, full of cheer and conversation, afternoons are a burn-out, a test of survival, and evenings are cooling, bringing back talk and interest. The bright middays are as constricting, as total, as psychologically long and trying as sleepless nights in an unyielding bed, with a long wait for the dawn, or the sunset, then one good hour of light, with the dangling crescent moon picking up from the sinking cooling sun, and illuminating the empty flat surfaces of the desert.

Sahara Deserta, Terra Finna, Fata Morgana, Corpus Infinnus

siraab-mirage

zurra- chest callous on a camel

 Post-slaughter bliss post meridian.   Khair and Khair returned empty-handed this afternoon, tired after a full night ride back to the newlyweds' tent, couldn't find the camel.

 We meanwhile were drinking deep from dirty water and eyeing the man with the silver earring pierced through the top.  With a fancy cartridge/money belt buckled twice from behind, silky sidri (vest), leather saddle apron and platform style saddle, basuur, draped in a red and black patterned blanket(diamonds and spades?)

 Earlier, while coming into the wells, he had accosted me.  I couldn't understand his speech, something about thieves being everywhere, IS 100, and a stolen camel. I made it clear we were riding with Muhamnad's bunch, under the authority and hospitality of abu Jaib, safety in numbers and behind a big  name, and he walked on.

Later reappeared on a camel, and soon got into long winded discussions with everyone, water drawers, drovers, whoever would listen, even though no one seemed really to want to.

Khair then showed up. Gave him a 5 minute soul shake, touching right shoulders, then shaking and reshaking and reshaking, mumbling bismillahs, hamdillahs, Allah yibaarik feeks, and Salimaats.

He called me over to scribe a letter.  His name: Billa Ali Hamid.  The news: Khair lost a camel, color blue, azraq, went towards al Baqariyya, belongs to abu Jaib, Mark 18, if  found please deliver to Billa Ali.    He folded the note, stuffed his money belt, and rode off.

 We ate big, drank more dirty water and rode off slow paced, a grazing march in the wadi, Khair fell behind and caught up packing a castrated sheep, tess, and he slaughtered with help from his cousin Khair and Nasir.

 The wind and sand were up early, making the sunset dull, the guts hang from the bush we camped under, the stomach emptied and skinned.

 And Billa Ali hangs around too, asking me to write another letter.  I didn't know what the hell I wrote, taking unintelligible dictation, something about the camel he rides having a certain brand, and give it to someone somewhere.

 Always nice for Khair to return.  The herd doesn't really stay together any better but the cheer is up, and the boys seem to relax more, and just do their jobs. No decisions to make, no thinking for themselves to do, and it gets Masood off the hook of being 2nd in command acting in charge.

Day 15

 Sandblown midday break past abu Fas al-Kabeer and the agricultural hamlet Buqaan. From the blood from the neck of the castrated sheep spilled in a pool in the sand, Khair wetted his knife and printed the sign of the hand of Fatima on the neck of the camel.   Billa Ali did the same.  Even a man who lived by deceit and trickery would invoke the help of the divine for protection on the trail.

 Muhammad slid off the horn of his saddle and down the neck of his camel and swung to the ground like an ape from a limb to chase after a stray.

 Basuur, carved angled wooden camel saddle in the shape of a dish, to cup sore buttocks of a long distance rider.

Wind is up strong from the northwest finally warming with the filtered sun, following Muhammad's lead.

 Billa Ali Hamid, the truth finally comes out, is a well-known thief. Go LS 100 bounty out of Khair to track down the lost blue in al-Baqariyya. Khair said if found he'll slaughter it and sell the meat. Still can't fit the story together, Khair seemed amused by the whole thing.

Lively campfire last night, quick gesticulations and sketching in the sand to make his points.     After dinner he disappeared to the other camp, -woke up this morn wrapped in his blanket next to me, set his carbine up on the tripod to show off, the bolt action and trigger wrapped in a rag.  Loaded with his gear I photographed and he went off for the lost camel.    With a handshake at breakfast he's already scanning the horizon for his next scam and meal of fresh meat.

 The castrated sheep, LS 55, 25 kg, we had stomach stew, raw red onions to bite, lucky the fire was low so we couldn't see what we ate.

 In Buqaan, an old man in tattered black longcoat patched with white thread asked for sugar and our form of government in America, said one ripe watermelon was somewhere up ahead that we could take.   His parting words, Why don't you take a car?

Miracle- Adam got the fire started in a full gale.

 Day 16

Lunch break in a black rock-strewn plain just east of Jebel al-Ain in all its longitudinal mass, mostly black with yellow sand-drifted faces.

 The wind up and cold, less sand blowing than yesterday because of the gravel. passed over stony ground, wind smoothed stones of pocket-keeping quality,

and granite outcrops with boulders. One stony mount half drifted in, westerly as the sun set, seemed an illustration of some waterless planet.

Rocky stretches of the imagination, sun glowed out quickly and quietly, crescent moon now first quarter casting a walkable shadow. We walked 2 more hours in the dark, slept in the open on good sand and ate more meat stew.

Day   17

 Mid-day break under a spreading 3-trunked many-branched good shade tree. Skins hung.  Camels feeding on the far side.  Ticks crawling.  A long morning across the enormous yellow beach.   Masood rode east for water to Jebel al Ahraq.

Don't know where nagashush is leading us. The map's Awadun Hills, Jebel abu Dum to the boys, appeared to the east. A  long distant escarpment. Gravel pans disrupt the pure sand, black trouble under the camels' feet.

 Yesterday afternoon and into evening under the moon;1low long broad sand stretch wind blew all night, but dawned warmer, no need for the cashmere after all stripped down to brown sweater and blue shirt for the rest of the day.

 Last night at the fire, Saeed and Muhammad the Younger came by and we recorded their poetic spontaneous recitations. They liked the limelight, Muhammad must know more, and we played Muhammad Wardi from Al Jezira.

 The fire ants are on our side, there goes one with a tick in his mouth.  The meat gets better each night as we near the leg of lamb.  First night stomach stew, second night first joint, third night second joint, fourth finally to the tenderloin.

 Adam spotted two gazelles in the distance.  They blink white and black as they turn into the sun, but run swiftly.

Day 18

 Early lunch break. Late last night rode until 9 PM, dead beat, full half moon shadow plenty. Over mixed ground, yellow sands, black rock fields, lizard skin ground (yellow sand with embedded tiny black pebbles).   Firm footing, long morning walk found petrified forests, fallen trunks, bits and pieces wind smoothed, ostrich nests, smashed egg shells, gazelles feeding, in the west appear white, in the east into the sun black silhouettes.

 Still following Jebel al Ain. Water from Hiraq is black cold sweet.  Skimpy breakfast.  Meat we missed last night by turning in early.   1 1/2 glasses tea.

 Muhammad's group split up. Don't know why, catch glimpses of them ahead. Different cruising speeds?    Stitching leather patches onto camel pads. Sewing through the pad with leather strips, hobble both front legs, rope up the rear to immobilize, the growling tells the hurt.

Day 19  Morning

 Long march last night over varied terrain, narrow passes, rolling over dunes and sand ridges, steep inclines and descents, tall bush trees in the darkness, rocky pans, and flat out sand floor moving past car tracks, cairns, huge sand dunes on the black rock floor.

More on to boil now for lunch.  Adam spotted a gazelle skull from a distance with 20 rings on the horn, 20 years old, and ostrich egg bits in old nests.

 Cold and sore riding this morn, finally chanced upon a comfort, wrap up in my saddle pad, under a sweater, fat man's bliss on a cold day.

 Map reading, just past one third of the way, according to Khair 6 more days to the Nile, much talk of R and R in Dongola, I wonder if they mean it.

Shopping list for the souk there:

1.  tapes of Hanaan al BuluBulu

2.  donkey saddle pad in leather

3.  wheat flour, Adam promises pan bread on the trail

4.  fresh fruits

5.  date paste and dried dates, agwa and balah!

Rode until breaking point.  Afternoon past sawed-off cones of Ma'ariz,

saw tawny vulture marghim. Pointed out well at Ash shabiik.  Today morning promised a stop at Kafariyya wells and I count three days to Al Bahr.

 Midday break at Ma'toul. The count seems correct after further questioning Khair, "the day after the day after tomorrow".   Ma'toul, where the wadi bulges, trees thrive green shooting, under a good shade tree, skins dangling, water on the clear side, gathering firewood for the final push to Khileawa across barren country.

We passed Kafariyya last night in our hurry to arrive bright and early today.

So we plan a stop at B'ir Adam late in the afternoon to fill skins.

 Long easy walk this morning, passed by a speeding Mercedes truck jammed with standees, going to Debba.   After it was well past Khair asked if we wanted to ride, cruel joke?  But finally getting up for the final push to the river. Mentally in view already, palms dates oranges kebab.

 Last night's strategies for staying in the saddle until our 11 PM dismount, cooking up ways to be especially good to Elena, all revolving around food preparation, fresh vegetables, Zabar's delicatesse, roasts ringed with carrots onions   stuffed with garlic cloves, rubbed with black pepper.

 Snacking on French bread, time to case the neighborhood for a good bakery, croissant breakfasts, grab a baguette on the way home each evening, red table wine, stained white linen table cloth, afterwards lounge on the living room sofa, can't wait to try out my new psychic recipes.

 Passed many tracks this morn, main route, amazed to find them after so much turning around last night every direction from west of north star to east of Castor and Pollux.

 Khair says from here we keep north star on our left cheek and we arrive Khileawa, knows the route by night by small signs and the sound of the ground under foot. Ostriches left the north in the last few years, no rain no grass, went south of Dilling, eggs and meat good eating, shooting from blinds, 50 eggs buried in one place.

Leaving the Cities of Salih in a Chevy Caprice

“I asked, “and where are the Cities of Salih?” It was answered, “In none of the precipices about, but in yonder jebel”, whose sharp crags and spires shot up now above the greenness of a few desert acacia trees, great here as forest timber. “And, Khalil, thou shalt see wonders today of houses hewn in the rock,” some added, “and the hewn houses standing, wellah [or Wallahi, meaning By God!], heels uppermost, by miracle!” Other plainer men said, “This we saw not, but Khalil now thy way is ended, look, we have brought thee to Medain, where we say put not thyself in the danger of the Bedu…”

-from Chapter 3, Travels in Arabia Deserta by Charles Doughty (1843-1926), called by his fellow travellers Khalil, typically a Christian given name

Madā’in Salih, or the Cities of Salih, is a cluster of Nabatean tomb facades carved from standing sandstone outcrops near the desert town of Al-’Ula north of Medina. According to the Quran, Salih was a pre-Islamic prophet who warned his fellow Thamudi tribesmen to abandon their idol worship or risk destruction. They asked him to prove his divine witness by sending to them a pregnant camel, and when he did so they killed it rather than keep and care for it. Salih and a few fellow monotheists escaped the area before the tribe was killed amid earthquakes and lightning strikes.

Charles Doughty was the first European to see the tombs, named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2008, sixty years after the European discovery of Petra’s equally impressive Nabatean tombs in Jordan. He arrived by camel in 1876 in the annual hajj pilgrimage caravan from Damascus in the care of some loyal guides who kindly overlooked the fact that he was a Christian.

There are controversial Saudi government plans afoot to promote this delicate ecological and man-made site for domestic and foreign tourists to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil, but recent reporting indicates they are, not unexpectedly, already falling apart. The one hotel town of Al-’Ula may thus be spared an onslaught of selfie-seeking day-tripping litter bugs.

I visited Madā’in Salih some years ago in a caravan of Land Rover enthusiasts, all Brits. We checked out the tombs and they dropped me at the bus station for a ride back to Jeddah via Medina. The bus had broken down so I flagged a share taxi, a big mid-70s Chevy Caprice, its interior tricked out with windshield pompoms and leather pads, a Quran on the back shelf and a perfume bottle glued to the dash, owned by a toothless bedu who invited me to the front seat, leaving room to squeeze another passenger between us.

I asked about the drop point in Medina, he said not to worry, he’d leave me at the bus station with hourly departures for Jeddah. What about prohibitions on non-Muslims entering the city? No problem, he said, that only held for the Prophets’s Mosque- directly across from the station it turned out- and besides I could hide inside the station until I left.

The taxi filled up with three rough hewn Saudis- the typical Al-’Ulaian is a far cry from the man purse-clutching, mirror-shaded, wanna-be princeling, turban-folded-just-so preening lobby lizards in Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton- in the rear seat and the front’s middleman, so here I was, “in the danger of the Bedu” as they had warned Doughty.

No surprise here- our cigarette smoke choked conversation quickly turned to girls, those of the night bought in Jeddah by the hour and all those patrilineal cousins you marry straight out of middle school. I did not follow the conversation too well, but let us just say that my Egyptian Arabic vocabulary for sexual practice, learned twenty years earlier and then much forgotten, left me high and dry on the beach while the other 5 were howling with laughter.

When asked how such things went down in America, I answered in the same “on the one hand, and on the other…” manner I’d learned in all my mixed gender bull sessions in college dorms. In retrospect, in a foreign language and at 80 mph headed to Islam’s second holiest city, that was even funnier

The overhead highway signs on Medina’s outer ring road warned, “All non-Muslims, This Way”, pointing the opposite of where we were headed, and I was dropped at the bus station just as the mid-afternoon call to prayer began. Streams, rivers, and then flood tides of men passed me as I ducked into the station, but in Saudi Arabia I had forgotten the rules- all commercial spaces shut their doors and kick out their patrons for prayer time. So there I stood, my NY Yankee ball cap pulled down as far as I could tug it, but not low enough to miss seeing everyone staring at me as they passed, them wondering, Who dat?, and me wondering, Would maybe the last of those Bedu dangers from the Cities of Salih finally get me killed.

When Little Franzl Found Opa's Nazi Army Cap Hidden in the Attic

“Opa,” said Franzl with a hitch in his voice, “why do you still have this? Why is it still in this house? Why didn’t you get rid of it, burn it or throw it away back in the old days? All that is now over. Aren’t you ashamed to still have it? What will people say if they found out?”

“O little Franzl,” said his Opapa, “There were so many of those caps back then. So many of us wore them. We weren’t thinking of the future in those days. Some of us weren’t even thinking at all.”

“But Opa, it embarrasses me. Germany was wrong, we all know that now.”

“Franzl, it is not so easy to say such things. In our village everyone once put on that cap, we were proud to wear it. And besides, today I would say it is just a cap, a cap to keep the sun out of your eyes. Of course I am not proud to see that eagle on the front. And no one today knows that I once wore it with pride.”

“Not true Opa! Have you not seen the internet, photos taken at the rally here with the Fuhrer when everyone was flocking to his side to be seen with him, to be close, they all seem happy, and the closer to him the happier they look. Someone has put a circle around each person in the pictures, with their names written right there. It is like a wall of shame, and each face has been identified, and now the grandchildren of those people will face that shame too.”

“Don’t be silly, everyone knows that pictures taken back then mean nothing today. It has been forgotten, and those who do not forget have forgiven us.”

“Opa, that cap cannot be forgiven, nor forgotten, and those who wore it then should be ashamed today, even more ashamed if it is still in their attic, and anyone who sees those photos should not have to feel such shame, especially their grandchildren. We do not want that, and we do not want others to know that our groβvaters once put those caps on their heads, and how happy they looked to have worn it, and to have stood so close to him, with such joy in their eyes.”

Speaking Egyptian Before the 3rd Hour

And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia,  Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.

- Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2, v.8-15

Listen again… “hearken to my words, For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.”

I remember that summer day in 1979, seated in a hole in the wall fuul and ta’miyya joint in Cairo’s Bab al Louk, as if it were yesterday. It must have been the 3rd hour of the day, lets say noon since my Arabic class had started at 9 and just ended, and I was hungry and very, very thirsty. Sharing the table with schoolmates, I didn’t wait for a bottled soda and, doing what under normal circumstances was highly inadvisable, long before the days of filtering or RO, I reached for the water pitcher and drank it down in a single gulp, a zarad. We were supposed to keep to Arabic as much as possible outside of class, so I said, Ana ‘atshaan jidan, I am very thirsty.

And they answered in unison, You are very wet, Inta mablool jidan. The water had entered my throat and exited immediately through every pore. My shirt was soaked. And I learned a new word, mablool, from the verb balla, to be wet, with the secondary meaning of to recover from an illness, such as from a case of severe hypohydration, on a hot Cairene summer’s day at the 3rd hour.

Egyptian Arabic's Quadriliteral Roots that Begin with the Letter "Shiin"

A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic by El-Said Badawi and Martin Hinds, who spent many years debriefing farmers, housewives, and urban street crawlers in order to capture all the colloquial words straight from the horse’s mouth, can give infinite amounts of pleasure even to a long lapsed student of Arabic who remembers fondly their early years trying out a new word in the wild-and-crazy alleyways just outside the stiff classrooms at the American University in Cairo.

And it can be best to start with the letter “shiin” and go three more letters out from there. In Arabic expressions of algebra, “shiin” - the first letter of the indefinite noun “shay’un”, “a thing”- denotes the solvable unknown variable, our “x”. Quadriliteral roots are foreign to most words of Semitic origin, so Egyptian Arabic’s quadriliterals are usually either borrowed from outside the language or are onamatopoetic, made most often by a doubling of a biliteral root- as in the Egyptian hoopoe bird, the hudhud.

A few examples.

“shiin-qaf-lam-ba”, or shaqlib, a verb meaning to flip over, and the word-in a-sentence example given is hubb-u shaqlib ‘aql-i, his love flipped my mind.

“shiin-kaf-shiin-kaf”, or shakshik, a verb meaning to feel prickly, and “shiin-lam-shiin-lam”, or shalshil, probably derived from Coptic, meaning to pull a kerchief to and fro across the front and back of the neck as a woman’s gesture of mourning.

“shiin-lam-kha-ta”, or shilikhta, a large ugly woman, probably derived from Yiddish.

“shiin-mim-ha-ta”, or shamahti, or bully, which can also take the Turkish-derived suffix -ji (pronounced -gi in Cairene Arabic), indicating a professional, as in shamahtagi a synonym for baltagi, derived directly from Turkish, a word that became well known in the West for the street fighters involved in the downfalls of Presidents Mubarak and Mursi.

and finally…

“shiin-ya-ta-nun”, as in shaytan, the devil, as in the sentence allah yigaazi shtaan-ak!, meaning “that was very naughty of you!”, and in the adjectival form shitaani, meaning in the horticultural sense “wild”, “uncultivated”, or “"volunteer”- something like the Egyptian colloquial words that continue to bubble up in my head after all those years of sleeping next to the classical Arabic dictionary, and one of the first classical words I learned as part of an Islamic injunction- man la shaikhu lahu, shaikhuhu al-shaytan, he who has no shaikh, his shaikh is the devil.

The Ceylonese Foot

This photo circa 1880s of an aristocratic Kandyan lady’s bejeweled foot brings to mind the many rock-inscribed images of the Buddha’s footprint, or pada, throughout Sri Lanka- of which there are said to be 1,000- the most famous being the Sri Pada atop the 2,243 meter high Adam’s Peak. which is also often attributed to Adam himself, fresh from being cast out of the Garden, and the apostle Thomas who converted South India to Christianity. One tradition has the Buddha taking seven steps as a new born, with each step remembered with its own footprint, to symbolize his domination over the universe. Buddhapadas can be found in many odd places, some standing erect on stone stelae near stupas, some flat on the ground as if freshly made.

Buddha’s footprint on Adam’s Peak

¡ Aba! - Falsos Arabismos Ahead!

Spanish etymologist Federico Corrientes’ Diccionario de Arabismos y Voces Afines en Iberorromance has interesting things to say about how Arabic words have crept into the Spanish dictionary, from the interjection Aba !, Careful !, (tracing its origin to the Arabic triliteral root ba’ada, meaning “to become distant from”), to the noun zurumí, a variety of grape, (tracing its origin to the 12th C Arab-Sicilian geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi’s list of Andalusian fruits including the jurumi.)

But his dictionary’s most interesting pages list false arabisms, those Spanish words that other scholars- some who contributed the authoritative Dictionary of the Royal Academy of Spain- have incorrectly assumed to be of Arabic origin. Among these are the verb amusgar, “to throw back the ears in an aggressive manner, as when a donkey prepares to kick”, not from Arabic muṣḡá, a passive participle meaning “heeded” or “heard”, but rather from the Latin mussare meaning “to hem or to haw”; the noun res, “cattle”, not from the Arabic ra’s, meaning “head”, rather from Latin res, or “property”; and chisme, “rumor” or “murmur”, not from the Arabic jizm meaning “part”, rather from the Latin cimex, or “bedbug”.

Such minor attempts to “cleanse” the Spanish language will not do much to blot out the fact that so many words- some estimate up to 8% of the daily lexicon- that slip off the tongues of Spanish speakers come from Arabic. And it is even more troublesome to those Spaniards who want to turn their backs on the 900+ year Arab period (including the 100 years following the Reconquista when Arabic was still a lingua franca) that most of these words are from Andalusian Arabic- archaic, out of use, and impossible to retranslate into any understandable form of classical Arabic or Maghrebi dialect. It would be as if American English was stuck with such Shakespearean anachronisms as “gauds”, “belike”, and “beteem”- to take a random sample from Act I Scene i from A Midsummer Night’s Dream- and they meant absolutely nothing when a Yank tries them out on a Brit.

Seligman in Search of the Wild Man

“The Veddas have been regarded as one of the most primitive of existing races and it has long been felt desirable that their social life and religious ideas should be investigated as thoroughly as possible.”

“The Veddas have long been regarded as a curiosity in Ceylon and excite almost as much interest as the ruined cities, hence Europeans go to the nearest Rest House on the main road and have the Veddas brought to them. Naturally the Veddas felt uncomfortable and shy at first, but when they found that they had only to look gruff and grunt replies in order to receive presents they were quite clever enough to keep up the pose. In this they were aided by the always agreeable villagers ever ready to give the white man exactly what he wanted. The white man appeared to be extremely anxious to see a true Vedda, a wild man of the woods, clad only in a scanty loin cloth carrying the bow and arrows on which he depended for his subsistence, simple and untrained, indeed, little removed from the very animals he hunted. What more easy than to produce him?”

“Summing up the physical characteristics to which we have briefly referred, we may define the Veddas as a short, wavy-haired, dolichocephalic [long skulled] race. Expressing the results of measurements we may say that chaemaeprosopes [broad faced] and leptoprosopes [narrow faced] occur in about equal numbers, and that the Veddas are mesorrhine [average breadth of nose] or present a low grade of platyrrhiny [flat nose-ness].”

-from The Veddas by Charles Seligman, 1911

Charles Gabriel Seligman (1873-1940) was a physiognomy-oriented medical anthropologist and professor at the London School of Economics, a committed taxonomist of human body shapes who measured African and Asian people with calipers, recording such quantifiable variables as their skull’s cephalic index, nasal index, length-height index, and facial index, and making such qualified assessments as their tumidity of lips, prognathity of jaw, breadth of nose, color of skin, and flatness of face.

He visited Sri Lanka in 1906 to study the Vedda people, who he considered the true aboriginals of the island, and took many photographs of his subjects seated forward and in profile.

When in Sri Lanka recently and visiting the Archaeology Museum in the old Buddhist and Hindu city of Polonnaruwa, I asked the Librarian if she had any early 20th Century photographs of the site. She showed me the book Architectural Remains, Anuradhapura Ceylon: Comprising the Dagabas [stupas] and Certain Other Ancient Ruined Structures, 1894 by James G. Smither, with photos of some of the world’s largest Buddhist stupas, but then whispered, Do you want to see some of Seligman’s pictures? I did not know then that Seligman, most famous for his research in Sudan and book Races of Africa, had also traveled and photographed in Sri Lanka. What I read of his book The Veddas when I returned home was an eye opener.

Cartography In the Rear view mirror

“Pura basura, los que hacen mapas no saben que la Amazonía es como mujer caliente, no se está  quieta. Aquí todo se mueve, los ríos, los animals, los árboles. Vaya tierra loca la que nos ha tocado, Fushía.”

                     -from La Casa Verde by Mario Vargas Llosa

What good is a map for a person on the unmapped move? National Geographic provided little help on a forty day camel drive across the northern Sudanese desert headed to Egypt along the Wadi al-Milk towards its meeting with the Nile south of Dongola. What good did its marked locations of El Wuz, Es Sayfiya and Soteir do for me when I only wanted to know where I was in relation to Bint Um Bahr (Daughter of Mother of the Sea), ‘Idd Ahmad (Ahmad’s Hand-Dug Well), and Jabal Abu Fas (Father of the Axe Mountain)- these names given to me by the trail boss Khairallah. (For more, see my January 10 entry). As much as I wanted to know where I was going, I needed to know where I had been. And KhairAllah would not tell me. Instead he laughed and said, find out when you get home.

The matter of misguided mappiing came into focus again at this year’s Kochi Biennale when standing before the silk-embroidered street scenes, made from threads pulled from fine dupattas, by Bapi Das, a Calcutta artist and former auto rickshaw driver whose pieces recreate what he has seen through his windscreen, most often grids of roads and back alleys he traversed by night.

His work Missing Route was particularly touching of my thoughts about home and abroad. In this case, its what he sees in the rear view mirror- his arm and half torso- and in his mounted mobile phone screen with GPS pulled up. This is what lies behind and before him- but not where he is.

His piece Lost in Transition still in its embroidery hoop does give this information. A man stands under a traffic light at 27th Street, his empty rickshaw beside the urban grid of red arterial roads, yellow residential streets, and green parks But this almost seems a puzzle page, asking for the shortest way to drive his yellow and green rickshaw through the yellows streets to the green space of home.

First Steps, First Words

“Ibn Battutu: one of the world’s most renowned travellers and authors of travel books. Between 1325 and 1353, his journeys brought him from his native Tangiers to Egypt, Syria, Mecca, Iraq, the Red Sea, and Yemen, Oman, Istanbul, Transoxiana, Afghanistan, the Indus, the Maldives, Ceylon, Bengal, Sumatra and the Chinese port of Zaytun, Sardinia, Granada, and across the Sahara to the country of the Niger.”

-from Islamic Desk Reference

“My departure from Tangier, my birthplace, took place on Thursday the second of the month of God, Rajab the Unique, in the year seven hundred twenty five (hijri calendar) with the object of making the Pilgrimage to the Holy House and of visiting the tomb of the Prophet, God’s richest blessing and peace by on him. I set out alone, having neither fellow traveller in whose companionship I might find cheer nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long cherished in my bosom…so I braced my resolution to quit all my dear ones, male and female, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests.”

-from Chapter One, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, translated by H.A.R. Gibb

“Set out from Camp River at Dubois at 4 O'Clock PM and proceded up the Missouris under sail to the first island in the Missouri and Camped on the upper point opposit a Creek on the South Side below a ledge of limestone rock called Colewater…A cloudy rainey day. wind from the N.E. men in high Spirits.”

-Journals of Lewis and Clark, May 14 1804, the day the expedition set out from its winter camp on the east bank of the Mississippi near St.Louis to ascend the Missouri River

“Colewater” (forgive William Clark’s atrocious spelling) ledge marks where Coldwater Creek enters the Missouri River. The creek, in whose headwaters I often played when young, was later contaminated by uranium stored there and leaked into its waters during WW2 by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works under contract to the DOD for the Manhattan Project.

“A fair morning, passed the Coal Hill (call by the natives Carbonear [Charbonnier])…Arrived opposit St Charles…it contains 100 indefferent houses and abot 450 Inhabetents principally frinch, those people appear pore and extreemly kind, the Countrey around I am told is butifull.”

-from the Journals, May 15 1804

Charbonnier Road running down the bluff to the Missouri River today in the town of Florissant is pronounced-Charbonear- as the journal almost had it.

“a Sergeant and four men of the Party will convene and form themselves into a Court martial to hear and determine the evidences aduced against William Warner for being absent last night without leave, contrary to orders..for behaveing in an unbecomieing manner at the Ball last night…for Speaking in a language last night after his return tending to bring into disrespect of the order of the Commanding officer.”

-from the Journals, May 17, 1804

On May 17, the day after the expedition reached St.Charles, a town visible from my family house especially when the parking lot’s sodium lamps at the landlocked Riverboat casinos light up the night sky, William Werner (his name often misspelled as Warner in the journals) was court martialed for staying out late at the cotillion ball that the “frinch” laid on for the expedition the night before. Werner was sentenced to 25 lashes “on his naked back”, a punishment which was suspended. He later was appointed an expedition cook and little heard from him again in the journals. On March 17 1805 it was reported that he has “lost his Tommahawk”. A Montana creek was named for him but later renamed Duck Creek. In his book about the fate of the expedition’s members in later years, historian Larry Morris writes that Werner “may have lived the most stable life of any member of the corps” back home in Virginia.

Trump Administration as Laugh-In

It’s time to bring back the Laugh-In, hosted by dimwit Don Sr. as Dick Martin and straight man Don Jr. as Dan Rowan. Ivanka can play goofy Goldie, Sarah Sanders Ruth Buzzi’s man-repellent Gladys Ormphby, and Trump without a toupee Arte Johnson’s dirty old man Tyrone F. Horneigh always giving her a pinch. The plastic Fantastic Miss Fox blondes plus Hope Hicks as their token brunette will wildly frug away the night in the go-go girl cages, Omarosa will Sock-it-to-me, Jared will reprise Henry Gibson’s idiot savant poet’s words of ponderously empty wisdom, Ivana might have a cameo as the aging-badly loud mouth Carole Channing, and Melania as Wolfgang will pop from the weeds with the same squint eye wearing not a Nazi helmet but rather a Red Army jacket with an “I Heart Putin” lapel button, saying “Vayrrrrry In-terr-est-ink”.

Second Son Eric and First Son’s current squeeze Kimberly Guilfoyle will have to write their own scripts, but given how obsessed Trump Sr. was with his sister-in-law Blaine’s society page successes in the 1980s, it should be obvious where that one goes. The set is already decorated in Laugh-In’s pop-art toned scheme: hair-dye orange, money green, spray-on bronze, Goldfinger gold, and Sarah Sander’s dresses scream-out-loud candy colors. Windows on the joke wall could have any one who ever worked the White House’s press machine- Spicer, Bannon, Kellyanne, the Mooch…. the list goes on. At the show’s sign-off, just as Dick always forgot Dan’s name, Don Sr. will say, Say goodnight Dad, and Don Jr. will say, Say goodnight Don. And the Fickle Finger of Fate goes to…All Americans.

What A Nostalgist Owes to Camel Dung

“A camel was crossing a swiftly flowing river. He shat and immediately saw his dung floating in front of him, carried by the rapidity of the current. “What is that there?” he asked himself. “That which was behind me I now see pass in front of me.”

-from Aesop’s Fables, translated by Robert and Olivia Temple

“Qifa nabki min dhikra habibin wa manzili…”- “Halt, both of you. Let us weep for the memory of a beloved and an abode…”

-from the mu’allaqa , or hanging poem, of the pre-Islamic poet Imru’ al-Qays

Camel dung may be an odd starting point in the search for truth both philosophical and emotional. But in the seven pre-Islamic poems called the mu’allaqat, according to the poet Gabriel Levin, one finds among “obligatory motifs” the so-called atlal, or traces [of the Beloved’s] abandoned campsite, physical cues such as blackened hearthstones, broken pottery, charred firewood, shreds of camel wool and piles of dung, which in turn lead to a sudden nostalgia for a long lost love.

Camel dung is perhaps the most powerful of the cues, for when mounded together where the camels couched for the night have laid it on thick, it fertilizes the ground for next year’s rains from which grows abundant grass amid the desert waste- a living reminder of something that had died in the past and refuses to remain dead.

A.J.Arberry’s translation of the seven odes includes such images as dung pellets as “peppercorns”, the couched nest made by a resting camel called a “trench” (as in a trench latrine), and the following image from the ode of Antara, “an untrodden meadow that a good rain has guaranteed shall bear rich herbage, but sparsely dunged…”

Camel dung does not burn as readily as cow or buffalo patties and is not as durable as the equally recognizable bits of petrified wood that lie grouped together where an ancient tree had fallen, dried, and become stone after the Sahara’s paleo-monsoon rains ended. But dung piles come across in the middle of the sandy nowhere, indicating where a herd had been couched for the night, does conjure in a traveler’s heart the same memories of well earned rest, overly sugared tea, and desert conviviality. Perhaps not with a woman as beautiful as Imru’ al-Qays’ beloved Unaiza, to whom I did not say, as did he, “Ride on, and slacken the beast’s reins, and oh! don’t drive me away from your refreshing fruit.”