An off-menu recipe for camel meat

A recipe for jazuriyya [camel meat]. Take choice cuts of jazur [slaughtered camel] and cut it into strips the way you do for dishes of fried meats. Cut liver and hump into finger size strips. Put them in a soapstone pot and add chopped cilantro and onion, black pepper, salt, oil, and two sugar cubes. Light the fire and stir until the meat cooks. Pour on some water…Drizzle it with a small amount of clarified butter and put aside the pot, God willing. If tail fat of a sheep is used in this recipe, substitute one fat tail instead of one camel hump. Serve it, God willing.

-Kitab al-Tabikh, The Book of Cookery: Preparing Salubrious Foods and Delectable Dishes…Told by Cooks Proficient and Wise, Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, 10th Century

A recipe for sharmoot [dried camel meat]. Not to be confused with sharmoota [a prostitute]. Butcher a camel as close to sundown as possible. Cut the meat into thin strips. Salt as heavily as your limited supply permits. Tie bridles to saddle horns and pull taut, evenly spaced. Hang camel meat over bridle ropes. Leave overnight. Pray that a hot wind blows and a full moon rises. At dawn, God willing, the meat will be thoroughly dried. If so, it will be a miracle and say Alhamdulillah. If not so, eat as much as possible for breakfast after saying Bismillah. In the coming heat, uncured meat will quickly go bad. Ignore the foul odor and continue to eat as long as you can tolerate its putrification. Do not vomit, Insha’Allah.

We followed this recipe to the letter when we had to slaughter a lame camel on the trail. The meat turned bad. Masha’Allah, What God willed.

Longing for Luqma

I have heard that a Bedouin went to Muawiya [1st Umayyad Dynasty Caliph, 7th Century] and when the table was spread, Muawiya invited him to join. The Arab was hungry and ate like a famished boy. He ate from here, he ate from there, he ate from between the hands of Muawiya, who resented this and said, You are far from polite [literally, You are far from home]. The Bedouin answered, A stranger is always far from home, and he resumed eating, snatching away what was before the others, cutting meat with his teeth, and eating it while Muawiya seethed. At last he lost patience and said, Woe unto you man! What is your name? The Bedouin said, Luqman, at which Muawiya said, I attest you are true to the name.

-Kitab al-Tabikh, Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, 10th Century

Luqman is a common name with the secondary meaning “One who eats too much”, from the cognate noun luqma, morsel, or more vulgarly, grub, which on the trail the drovers called aseeda- our boiled millet breakfast, lunch, and dinner eaten from a common pot. None of the drovers was named Luqman, or Abu Luqma, or Ibn Aseeda, or even ‘Am Shay, Uncle of Tea.

We tried to be polite at the dinner bowl, eating only what was in front of each, no boarding house reach, not swiping extra milaah, sauce, from the other side. The youngest drover was charged with the aseeda making, which did the others no favor. Kamiyya, not Kayfiyya…Quantity, not Quality is a young cook’s watchword. KhairAllah only laughed, never seethed, at mealtimes watching khawajas eat with our fingers, dropping two morsels back into the pot for every one we choked down our throat. We were all true to our names on the trail. Abu ‘Isba’, Father of the Finger he called me.

Sanaam, khuf, and zurr

I do not describe the camel's appearance to the Greeks, for they know it; but I will show them a thing they do not know concerning it: the hind legs of the camel have four thighbones and four knee-joints; its privy parts are turned towards the tail between the hind legs.

-Herodotus, Book III

At a celebration in honor of Lion, Monkey was asked to dance. His dancing was clever indeed. The praise showered on Monkey made Camel jealous. He was sure he could dance as well. But hulking Camel made himself ridiculous as he kicked his knotty legs. When his feet came within an inch of Lion's nose, the Animals set on Camel in a rage and drove him into the desert. Shortly after, refreshments consisting of Camel's ribs and hump were served to the company.

-Monkey and Camel, Aesop's Fables

Greeks eat spring lamb and never cook camel steaks, so they wouldn’t know. If Herodotus said each of their hind legs had four thighbones and knee joints, no Greek butcher would contradict the Father of History. Still, the Kababish know better. As Aesop also knew, camel legs are too knotty for grilling, but don‘t pass on the ribs or sanaam, hump. Or stewed zurr, chest callus, or roasted khuf, foot pad, or raw kibda, liver, but only if you’ve got fresh lemon and red pepper. We once butchered a lame three year old in the Wadi al-Milk and ate like mulouk, kings. If Herodotus had wandered by, we would have said, Itfaddal, Bon Appetit.

From the sand to the sown by air

The camels are the cause of the Bedouin’s savage life in the desert, since they feed on desert shrubs and give birth in desert sands. The desert is a place of hardship and starvation, but to them it has become familiar and accustomed. Generations of Bedouins grew up in the desert. Eventually they became confirmed in their character and natural qualities. No member of any other nation was disposed to share their conditions. No member of any other race felt attracted to them. But if one of them were to find ways and means of fleeing from these conditions, he would not give them up.

-Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)

In 1984 most drovers carried only mimeographed letters identifying their employment in the camel trade. They were no more official than the To-Whom-It-May-Concern letter that Hajj Bashir had written for me. But I also carried my US passport. If I had to flee the desert, I could. They could not even if they’d wanted.

In 1988 I rode with another group, mostly younger men. When an airplane passed over at 35,000 feet, we would tease each other and say, Why didn’t you fly? A few answered, I once did. It was true, some of them had previously worked in Iraq as day laborers and carried real passports. They had cleared customs in foreign airports and browsed Duty Free. They knew all about international air travel.

They had fled Ibn Khaldun’s savage conditions and returned to them, not because camels fed and bred only in Dar al-Kababish but because international trade had made a market for them elsewhere. Iraq’s oil-fueled demand for Sudanese workers had fallen while Egypt’s foreign aid-fueled demand for Sudanese meat had risen. In his time, Ibn Khaldun was not wrong about the bright line dividing the sand and the sown, between being Bedouin and metropolitan. Half a millennium later, however, could he have ever guessed that some of his bedu would have flown from desert to city and back again.

A camel, not a mother f***er

Camels refuse to have sexual intercourse with their dams, even when forced; for once a camel driver, who was in want of a male camel, veiled the dam and introduced her young to her. When the covering fell off in the act of copulation, he finished what he was about, and soon after bit the camel driver to death.

-Book of Animals, Aristotle

The camel is malevolent, extremely spiteful, and bitter. It has a long retentive memory and forgets nothing. It will look for an opportunity to be alone with someone who has beaten or maltreated it to take revenge on him, and when the chance comes it will not spare him. It is like a despicable man who does not spare the other when he gains the upper hand. It is said that among all the beasts of burden it is the one most like the Arab in character.

-Book of the Characteristics of Animals, anonymous 13th C. Arabic manuscript

I once heard Abdullah curse a camel he was trying to unhobble that was thrashing dangerously about him. Ummak!, Ummak!, Ummak! Your Mother! That even made it into the film, un-subtitled. But I never heard him or any other drover drop the Mother of all F bombs on one of their camels. That would have gone too far, because despite being fed up with ibl near the end of the trail, they realized they weren’t going anywhere alone.

They told me of having seen their friends bitten, kicked, pinned to the ground and suffocated to death by camels with their necks. Yet I would not call any of the Kababish despicable, vengeful, or bitter. They laughed more often than cursed when their herd acted badly. They thought camels more intelligent and more noble than bagar, cows, and they a more intelligent and noble tribe than the Baggara, cattle breeders. Camels certainly they never called mother f***ers, although when angry they might call out someone else’s mother.

The camel and the flea

He that hath no might ought not to glorify or praise himself of nothing. As rehearseth to us this present fable of the camel which bears a great charge or burden. It happened that a flea because of the camels here lept on the back of the camel and made him to be borne of her all the day. And when they had made a great way the flea lept from him to the ground by the foot of the camel and said, I have quit of thee and have come down from thy back so that I will no more grieve or travaille you by the bearing of me. And the camel said to the flea, I thank thee that it be I am not laden of thee and therefore of that which may neither help nor let me make great estimation of.

-Aesop’s Fables, first translated and printed by William Caxton, 1484

Aesop’s flea gave itself too much importance to think that the camel would thank it for dismounting and thus lightening its load. I never expected thanks from my camel when I couched it for the night. It often didn’t even seem to notice that I had gotten off. So no, I wouldn’t say that I glorified myself for doing nothing of my own might. In fact at the end of each day I was in worse shape for having ridden than the camel was for having been ridden. I would have liked to see that flea bearing a camel on its back all day.

It wasn't going to last

It goes on being Alexandria still. Just walk a bit/along the straight road that ends at the Hippodrome/and you’ll see palaces and monuments that will amaze you./Whatever war damage it’s suffered,/however much smaller it’s become,/it’s still a wonderful city./And then, what with excursions and books/and various kinds of study, time does go by./…So the days go by, and our time here/isn’t unpleasant because, naturally,/it’s not going to last forever…

-from Exiles, Constantine Cavafy

Cavafy’s Greeks in 9th Century Alexandria were not unlike us 20th Century Americans in Cairo, both young and living for the moment in a land of marvels, studying a vernacular language wildly distorted from the classical. They read the poet Nonnos of the Dionysiaca and the Gnostic obscurantist Zosimos, both from the town of Panopolis, modern Akhmim across the Nile from Sohag. Thus they both were Sa’eedis, hillbillies, the butt of the kind of jokes we told in our colloquial class and the word we searched for in our well-thumbed Wehrs where we found sa’eed spelled with the letter sa’d, not the letter siin. One means Happy, the other Upper Egypt. In Alexandria, Cavafy’s Greeks had what remained to them of the Hippodrome and the Serapeum, the Pharos and Pompey’s Pillar. In Cairo, we took our classes on AUC’s Greek Campus and went to the cafes Riche and Liberte where we drank Stella beer and zabib, Egyptian ouzo. For both of us it wasn’t meant to last, our time in Egypt. But it was fun while it did.

Ah, ah!, and oh

The interjections are called by the Arabs sounds or tones. Some of those most commonly in use are: ah, oh, ah!, alas!, woe!, ho!, up!, come!, stop!, hush!, silence!, lo!, bravo!, fie!, come here!, far away!, bring here!

-from The Interjections, Wright’s Grammar of the Arabic Language

Around the campfire, I never once interjected into KhairAllah’s camel story recitations with an Ah or a more emphatic Ah!, which in Wright’s Arabic would have sounded like Aa and Awwah. But the Arabic of the Semitic heartland is spoken a long way from Dar al-Kababish, and if KhairAllah had heard me interject with a Waahan! or Aahan!, he would have thought it just more khawaja babble. On the other hand, Stop!, Alas!, and Hush! he may have heard from any one of his drovers because when tired and cranky on the trail that is how we all felt. Woe is me!, Fie on you!, Far Away is Egypt!, said we. Shut Up and Ride!, said he, in the imperative.

blessed and barenaked

That fancies such as these should exist in the minds of a people so ignorant as those who are the subject of these pages cannot reasonably excite our surprise. But the Egyptians pay a superstitious reverence not to imaginary beings alone; they extend to certain individuals of their own species...An idiot or a fool is vulgarly regarded by them as a being whose mind is in heaven, while his grosser part mingles among ordinary mortals…Most of the reputed saints of Egypt are either lunatics or idiots or imposters. Some of them go about perfectly naked…

…the [moulid] of the seyyid Ahmad El-Bedawee, at Tanta…The tomb of this saint attracts almost as many visitors at the time of the great annual festivals from the metropolis and from various parts of Lower Egypt as Mekkah does pilgrims from the whole of the Muslim World.

-Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1833-1835), Edward Lane

…there are numerous public circumcision booths, and stalls for vending souvenirs and food, but no secular attractions unless tattooing be so regarded…I witnessed a queer sight at dawn of the last day, a sort of burlesque called locally zeffa al-Sharameet. It was a procession of gaily decorated carts bearing the prostitutes of the town with their admirers, with much music and song.

-The Moulids of Egypt, J.W. McPherson, 1941, on the moulid of Sayyid Ahmad al-Badawi in Tanta

I was sent to Tanta for the moulid of the Sayyid to audit the Ministry of Health’s family planning information booth for our evaluation project. I squeezed into a shared taxi from Cairo because I didn’t want to arrive in town attracting attention for riding in a US Embassy vehicle. Not long before there had been Islamist-inspired shootings over American contraceptives.

The Tanta moulid is a crazy place to spread government propaganda, even if the booth had been decorated with inflated neon condoms. But this was Egypt and the government was walking a knife edge. The booths on either side were selling cotton candy and gaudy ladies underclothes, and the Ministry had nothing better to offer passers-by. Whatever they were sellin’ in Tanta, the Tantawis weren’t buyin’.

So I shook hands all around and told them, Good job, Good job, and then took my own turns through Egypt’s biggest fun fair. But unlike the haj in Mecca, where you don’t find frilly panties sold within eyeshot of the Kaaba, at the Sayyid’s moulid you can stuff your belly with basbousa, break your neck on midway rides, save your soul touching his tomb, and then get back to Cairo by midnight, on the return trip writing my report in my head…”The Ministry’s booth was stocked with brochures, staffed with nurses and doctors, and well attended by married Tantawi couples of target age.“ No mention of the singing sharameet and naked holy men mingling their grosser parts among the merely mortal.

Riding a camel Down the rabbit hole

Trilteral root J-M-L— Verb, (1st Form), Jamala al-Jamala, He put the He-Camel apart from the She-Camel; (2nd Form), Jammala, He gave a Camel to be eaten; (4th Form), Ajmala (al-Qawm), The people’s Camels became many; (8th Form), Ajtamala, He ate of a Camel; (10th Form), Astajmala, He (a camel) became a Camel, i.e., one in his seventh year, or one in his ninth year, or one who has been mated. (Noun), Jamal and Jaml, the latter is so rare that it is said by some to be used only in poetry in cases of necessity, a He-Camel, but commonly applied to the Camel as a generic, and exceptionally to the She-Camel as in the saying, I drank the milk of my Jamal…It is said in a proverb, He does not conceal himself who leads a He-Camel…Camel of the Sea, a Pelican…Eye of the Camel, a Chestnut…Jamal also signifies a Woman’s Husband…Jamoul, a Piece of melted Fat…Jamaloun, a Building in the shape of a Camel’s hump…Jameel, a Fat Woman or a Woman who melts Fat…Jumaala, a Herd of Camels…Jammaal, an Owner of Camels…Jaamil, a Man possessing a Camel, also a Great Tribe…Mujaamil, One who is unable to answer a question put to him by another person and therefore neglects it and bears malice for some time…

-Lexicon of the Arabic Language, Edward Lane

Thank goodness Lane had made it past the letter Jeem when he died in 1876 with his 3,000 page lexicon still unfinished, leaving off at the letter Qaf. Jamal and Jameel, yes. Qaamous, dictionary, and Qutta, cat, no. How else to Quarantine as unproductively as possible?

Lightbulbs are the best contraceptive -President Nasser

Finally he was home. He bolted the door and picked his way carefully in the dark…And when he found his woman he did not nudge her. He took her hand and began to crack her knuckles one by one, and to rub against her feet caked with tons of dirt. He tickled her roughly…She heaved herself over…Abd al-Kerim muttered, cursing whoever drove him to do this, as he fumbled with his clothes preparing for what was about to be. Months later the woman came to him once again to announce the birth of a son. His seventh.

-The Cheapest Nights, Yusuf Idris

I read this story in my Arabic class at AUC and remember having to look up too many new words to get quickly to the punch line. Abd al-Kerim didn’t have even a piaster in his pocket, so he couldn’t spend the evening idling in the coffee house. Nothing to do but go home and yaneeq. And I remember reading about how people in the Eastern Bloc regarded sex…in bed with your own wife was the one place you wouldn’t be surveiled by the Stasi. Maybe Egyptians in the Muslim Brotherhood felt the same about Nasser’s mukhabaraat. The cheapest of nights and the most private of places.

When I was in Egypt in later years as a project evaluator, I helped the non-Arabic speakers on the team to parse the uplifting folk wisdom in the scripts for the ramadan TV series Wa Ma Zaala Yigri al-Nil, And the Nile Keeps Flowing, and in the thirty second spots featuring a clever peasant woman who teaches the poor to plan their families just like she breeds her gamousa. But they never got near Yusuf Idris’ nihilism of poverty. Abd al-Kerim’s wife could have just switched on the overhead light if she wanted to stop at her sixth. But I forgot…that story was written before the Aswan Dam was finished and delivered its juice to the villages.

The unnumbered cataract

Le 8 juillet nous etions a Dal, en tete d’une longue cataracte que les geographes ne comptent pas, bien qu’elle soit plus longue et qu’elle presente des points plus difficiles a franchir dans cette saison que celle dite troisieme cataracte…Le pays qui s’etendait devant nous se nomme Batan-el-Adjar (le ventre des pierres), nom parfaitement merite…On n’y trouve que quelques miserables hameaux dont les habitants cultivent d’etroits parcelles de terre enclavees dans les rochers que laissent les caprices du fleuve…Le pays est pittoresque mais d’un bien triste aspect; ce ne sont que sables et rochers nus…Un homme auquel je demandais si les sables comme ceux qui nous entouraient s’etendaient loin au couchant, me repondit: Jusq’au bout du monde! C’est-a-dire qu’il n’en connaissait pas la fin.

-Voyage en Ethiopie au Soudan orientale et dans la Nigritie (1847 a1854), Pierre Tremaux

I am happy this cataract didn’t get a number; that way, even Nile River completionists will likely pass it by. They’ve already built dams at the First, which flooded the Second, and the Fourth, and have plans one day for the Third. The Fifth and the Sixth, the one closest to Khartoum called the Sabaloka Gorge which makes for a pleasant day trip lounging on its shaded overlook, for the moment are in the clear.

I spent the night on both trips in homes, neither one miserable, on Dal’s left bank. In 1984 I had a pleasant chat by lantern light in English with a man who knew Beirut when a student and was shot by an invading American marine. In 1988 we stayed with a friend of KhairAllah, who admired my Kordofani donkey pad so I gave it to him. Why would an old man like Shaheen want to know how far the Dal sands extended to the west. To the very end of the world, or only as far as his newly upholstered donkey could carry him? He knew geography well enough not to go that far off river just to find out.

a chacun son gout

Our banquet consisted of a small piece of mutton, the water in which it was stewed, some bread, and a little butter and fat. No sooner was the dinner set upon the ground than a scramble took place. Every one crowded round the earthen bowl; the Cacheff [kashif] was the first to dip in his hand and immediately the rest followed his example. We four contrived to keep as close together as possible, that we might all eat out of the same side of the dish and by this means have some chance of a cleaner meal. The Cacheff seeing that we stood no chance against his people, who at last plunged their hands into the dish from all quarters, politely picked out the most fleshy parts which he distinguished from the bones with a squeeze of his fingers, placed them on the sleeve of his gown and continued to eat until the bowl was nearly emptied. When all had done eating he presented each of us with a piece of the fleshy parts he had reserved as a compliment, which we gladly devoured…

-Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids in Egypt and Nubia, Giovanni Belzoni, 1820

It’s called allofeeding and sometimes involves an adult penguin regurgitating directly into its chick’s food pouch. But when this happens around a bowl of goat mashwy in Dar al-Kababish, it is more like when a blue jay passes a live worm beak-to-beak to another, even though squeezing a chunk of mutton with one’s fingers is more like pre-masticating it. So that would be an act of regurgitation, not live sharing. And I’ve never seen it happen around a campfire, only in the hut of a particularly generous host.

Whenever we crouched down at the aseeda bowl it was everyone-for-himself, not tag-team. No meat in the milaah but plenty of fried onion quarters, the next best thing, to lunge for. I was invited once to Khartoum’s Meridien Hotel restaurant by the toy importer Ali al-Haj, and he led me around the buffet table pointing out each platter saying, Kul, kul, lahma laziz. Eat, eat, delicious meat. He didn’t fill a plate for himself and when I asked if he would be eating with me, he said, No, this table is just for you. Later I remembered that day at every meal when on the trail Steve and Ned tried to crowd me out of my side of the lukhma, the grub.

Better to boil aseeda than to cook herbages

Apres avoir detourne les fientes seches qui couvraient le sol, on apporta une natte qu’on etendit a terre. Quelques instants apres, on nous servit pour souper un plat qui, a la lumiere vacillante d’un feu, notre seul eclairage, semblait etre compose d’herbages haches cuits, et autour desquels on avait verse du lait. J’avais faim, mais ce mets me semblait detestable par son amertume et par un gout particulier que je ne pouvais definir.

-Voyage en Ethiopie au Soudan orientale et dans la Nigritie (1847 a 1854), Pierre Tremaux, 1862

They say everything looks better by firelight. Not true. Sometimes if you don’t recognize what you’re about to swallow, better not to pick at it in the first place. Add to that the Frenchman Tremaux’s unsurprising yet under the circumstances completely unreasonable insistence on being served haute cuisine at a Sudanese tribal pique-nique, he was left with a taste in his mouth that Escoffier himself couldn’t have defined, not to mention the degout of having to eat it on camel dung covered ground. Better to have ordered the aseeda and eaten standing up.

The kababish don't want akbaash

Another important nomadic tribe is the Kababish. These inhabit a region suitable for sheep and camel rearing in the semi desert north of Kordofan. They are a synthetic tribe formed from diverse elements by a common way of life which is reflected in their name (in Arabic, kabsh, a ram).

-A History of the Sudan, P.M. Holt and M.W. Daly

Odd that I only recently learned the Arabic word for ram (kabsh, pl. akbaash). I have long known the words for mutton (lahma dhaani), a sheep (ghanam), sheep as a collective plural (kharouf), and a castrated sheep (tiss)- vocabulary that you need when in the souk to buy dinner. I have helped to slaughter sheep and roast them many times while with the Kababish, but mutton-eating alone is not a common enough way of life around which a nomadic tribe can form and roam half the desert. For that you need ibl (camels), not akbaash, to be of the abbala- Sudan’s camel-riding, camel-breeding, camel-owning tribes. As are the Kababish.

At least she didn't have testicles

Massawa is built on an island, joined to the mainland by a dike. Its climate, fully as hot as Djibouti, is even more difficult for white men to endure. It lies in a region of perpetual calm; the Dahlak Islands shut off the breeze; and the water among the reefs often reaches a temperature of ninety eight degrees or more…For several days we lay at anchor in the little bay at Djumelay and let the news spread that a mograbi (one who lives west of the setting sun) had come to buy pearls.

-Pearls, Arms, and Hashish: Pages from the Life of a Red Sea Navigator, Henry de Monfreid

Our group’s motor launch had taken us from Massawa to one of the closer-in Dahlaks where the itinerary offered either a swim off the boat at anchor or a walk through a Saho goatherders’ village. Everybody but two wanted to go ashore so I arranged the landing party and asked the woman of the stay aboard couple, a skin-tanned-to-leather super skinny fifty-something New Yorker who had been acting like an insufferable cultural know-it-all the whole time, to wait for us to leave before getting into her suit, and then to slip into the water off the stern without drawing attention to herself. The crewmen were young guys and I knew Eritrea was not accustomed to Western beachwear norms, not like the French hotel pools in Djibouti or Sharm El-Sheikh’s budget natur kultur, and certainly not like the Euro-topless scene in the Seychelles. But she did it anyway.

Right on the bow where I and the boat crew were helping the others into the dingy she stripped off her shirt and shorts to show us all what she wore underneath- the skimpiest string bikini this side of Saint-Tropez. All Eritrean eyes onboard fell on her, including for what I knew were all the Saho goatherder eyes on shore. So I lost it. Breaking my usual motto that the paying customer is always right, I told her to put her damn clothes back on and wait for us to be gone. At that point I didn’t care what they might do to an unprotected female mograbi in our absence. At least we weren’t in Danakil country yet. At least she didn’t have testicles for them to take as trophies.