Allah's excellent Cuke

Khair, Goodness, moral or physical; anything that is good, real or ideal, actual or potential. KhairAllah, the Goodness of Allah. Khiyaar, applied as an epithet to a sing. n., you say Jamal Khiyaar, meaning, An Excellent Camel.

-Lane’s Lexicon

I always knew that the first part of KhairAllah’s name would be given special treatment by Lane, seven columns of idioms, usages, and proverbs- such as, How Good is Milk for the Diseased, or, Mayest thou Meet with Good, or, By the Life of thy Good Father. And to the cognate word Khiyaar used in the construction of epithets, Lane gives the additional meaning, Cucumber, which made for the most Excellent eating when we finally reached the Nile.

What time is the flogging?

Moore [Guy Moore, British colonial District Commissioner in Kordofan] delighted in Sudanese culture…spoke Arabic fluently…would eat squatting on his haunches from the communal bowl…renowned for his generosity but equally harsh treatment of offenders…held public floggings…respected the simplicity of Sudanese life and considered that innovation and advance were a dangerous threat to it. Because of this he forbade the people from wearing European clothes and wristwatches.

-In Search of the Forty Days Road, Michael Asher

Desert, scattered camels grazing. Voice (off camera)- What time is it? Yusuf, on his camel and looking at his wristwatch- It’s a quarter to three. Voice- What?

-Voice of the Whip

I knew for a fact that Yusuf’s watch was broken. For him, it was only an adornment like a gold front tooth. For others who asked him to tell them the time, when the sun or the moon could have told them, it was a talisman, like the leather amulet pouches they wore around their necks filled with a shaikh’s religious writing, even if perhaps gibberish, and sewn closed.

The spectre of Guy Moore, called “Meester Moore” by Kordofani mothers trying to get their children to behave- saying for instance, Meester Moore will come for you if you don’t stay away from the fire, or, Meester Moore will take you away if you keep teasing the goats- was a kind of negative talisman. That Moore would have forbidden Yusuf to wear a wristwatch, even flogged him for it, shows how much progress has been made before three o’clock.

Khairallah's daughter wants to go to school

I had travelled with tribesmen of the Zaghawa and the notorious Bedayyat…across the country of the Bani Hussayn…I had travelled with nomads of the Mahamid…and visited families of the Baggara…I had stayed with nomads of the Awlad Zayid and Awlad Janub…My time was always limited. I always had to return to my classroom…

-A Desert Dies, Part One: The Kababish, Michael Asher

I read Michael Asher’s first book, In Search of the Forty Days Road, just after I’d returned from completing what I called the Darb, with KhairAllah, Masood, Daoud, and the others. Same road, same forty days. But those forty days seemed to have lasted only forty seconds once it was over. What seemed like unlimited days, sketching the sun’s arc over my head from its rise to its fall, were gone in a green flash as soon as it had set.

If the Darb is not your place, you must always be getting back to one kind of classroom or another. KhairAllah’s second set of children, 14 year old daughter Suna and her younger brothers Tijani and Al-Fatih, want to go to school. If he lets them, I guess that means he considers the Darb not his family’s place anymore either.

Buried queens and camels

…the kings had been buried, crowned and in full regalia, along with their murdered queens, servants, all of whom seem to have been strangled or clubbed, horses, camels, and dogs…

-Blue Guide Egypt, description of 4th-6th C. CE tombs at Ballana, 15km S of Abu Simbel, just off the Way of the Forty

We did not pass close to the Ballana tombs but if we had, and I had known, I am sure that the drovers would have had questions. Horses and dogs, kings and queens? Camel throats strangled, not slit, thus rendered inedible? I would have had no answers, but just a few miles north while skirting town after dark to avoid border guards we saw the Abu Simbel police station lights blazing bright. There, the Kababish had an answer for me…Yallah binaa, God be with us, Let us ride as if we were ghosts. If the Egyptians find us and we do not pay a bribe, they said, we will be buried.

It's a camel thing

Shaay Gamali, Camel tea, meaning, Tea late in being served, as if arriving by camel.

-Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic, Badawi and Hinds

We drank a lot of Shaay gamali, Camel tea, because our tea really did arrive by camel. There was no other way on the Darb. And we never confused it with Sheay gamali, a Camel thing, which is what the drovers answered me when I asked, Why do you hobble the camel’s left leg and not his right?, or, Why do you have to unload the camels if we are only stopping for five minutes?, or, Why must a thirsty camel be grazed before he is taken to water? It’s a Sheay gamali, they would say, You wouldn’t understand.

O my camel!

Gamal /n camel. Ma shuftish il-gamal wala il-gammaal, I saw neither the camel nor the cameleer, meaning, I didn’t see anything. Ma gaash fi-gamal, He didn’t come on a camel, meaning, He isn’t asking for everything [to pack a camel with it]. Ya gamali, O My camel!, meaning [when said by a widow], O My husband!

-Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic, Badawi and Hinds

I never asked KhairAllah if he used any of these expressions, but I doubt that an Egyptian peasant’s world and his own ever overlapped, either idiomatically or otherwise. Besides pronouncing the word with a hard g rather than a soft j as do the Sudanese, Egyptians had no proper understanding of camels. If his wife were to say, O My camel!, even from the grave he would have thought her crazy.

He was there and he just got back

Beyond its course in Egypt the Nile is known to extend as far as a four month journey…about the region beyond this, no one can say anything with certainty, for that land is uninhabited due to the scorching heat of the sun…but this much further I did learn by the most extensive investigation I could make, going as far as the city of Elephantine to see for myself...

-Herodotus, Book II

Scorching? A four month journey? Not likely. It only took KhairAllah and his men forty days, and it was often cold at night. Herodotus went as far upriver as Aswan, KhairAllah arrived just downstream from there, at Binban Bahri, and the two told very different stories about what they had seen. Herodotus spoke of Egyptians moving their bowels indoors, carrying burdens on their heads, and weaving the woof downward, while KhairAllah said the Kababish moved their bowels outdoors, carried burdens on camels, and, about those woofs, knew only that Nabah al-kalb wa mishit al-dabouka, The dog barked and the dabouka passed by.

Raml, rimaal, araamil

This desert is apparently the only land route leading into Egypt.

-Herodotus, Book III

That’s certainly what it looks like from the air when you fly into Cairo. Nothing but sand on all sides, even the Delta looks sandy, from all the poorly mixed concrete buildings. On the Darb al-’Arba’een we had a most practical introduction to this fact…forty days crossing nothing but raml, ramla, rimaal, armul, and araamil- as Lane gives their meaning…sand, a sandy place, sandy places (if many), sandy places (if few), and sandy placeses (the plural of a plural).

You say camelho, i say camello

Camelho (pt.), camell (ct.), y camello (cs., con la variante antigua gamello). Camelus dromedarius, del lt. camēlus< gr. kámēlos, de una lengua semítica difícil de precisar…Derivado de intrarromance. cs.: camella, camellej/ro, y camellería; ct.: cameller, camellí, camella y camellot; pt.: camelão, camelaria, cameleiro, camelete y camelino.

-Diccionario de Arabismos, Federico Corriente

Too bad we had no Castilian (cs.) or Portuguese (pt.) or Catalan (ct.) speakers along with us on the Darb. I bet the drovers would have loved to play the name-a-camel game with them. But why does Corriente find it so difficult to determine which semitic language gives us that word? As in Lane’s usage example for the Form I verb of the root J-M-L, Jamal al-Jamal, He put the he-camel apart from the she-camel that was fit to be covered. Hamid once said, ‘Ayzeen yaneeq, They want to f…, I presume in order to make many more words where that one came from.

Water and words

Warada wa hadda wa sadara wa hauwasha, He [the camel] came to the watering place and took a first drink and raised his head and took a second drink. Warrada, v., He drove [a camel] to water. Sharraba, v., He made [a camel] drink. Rawaa, v., He satisfied himself with drinking [water], He bore in his memory, knowing by heart, and transmitted orally, recited, or narrated a story or poem. Raawwi, activ. part., One who draws water, One who recites poetry.

-various entries, Lane’s Classical Lexicon and Hillelson’s Sudanese Vocabulary

Hillelson’s entry for Drink is almost as long as it is for Camel, if that is proof enough of the importance of Water on the trail. I remember the way KhairAllah would decline an offered drink in the midday heat, even when he must have been thirsty yet wanted to appear stoic in the eyes of others. Lissa shiribt, I already drank, he would say, even when he had not. I just learned that the root R-W-Y and its cognates have second meanings about sating oneself with water, in addition to sating others with words. I wish I’d known that back then, that you could do both at the same time.

Bilal was mabsout

Drunk, adj., Sakraan. Mabsout, slightly drunk. Mastoul, very drunk. Marraasi, n., a marisa [millet beer] drunkard.

-Sudanese Arabic: A Vocabulary, Sigmar Hillelson

Why save for poverty and wretchedness must we cross the desert of Atmour night after night?

-Bilal Bagheet, Khabeer, poetry recitation, Day 28 on the trail

Bilal was old and nearing his last ride up the Darb in 1988. KhairAllah had not seen him often since then but some twenty years later we tried to find either him, if he were by some miracle still alive, or his family when we went to the village where he was last known to live. No one in the souk knew anything about him, but because it was known for producing pure sesame oil, we bought some and I told KhairAllah to praise Bilal whenever his wife cooked with it.

Bilal had once gotten so drunk on marisa that he fell off his camel but at the time I did not laugh with the others and call him a marraasi, because I did not know that word then. I am glad that I did not because several days later he recited a very sad poem at the campfire about men’s hearts broken by girls and the poverty and wretchedness that afflicts all camel drovers. I only learned the words to his poem after reading the BBC translation almost a year later but I knew that it was sad when he recited it.

Looking now at Hillelson’s various words for Drunk, I see that he gives Mabsout to mean Slighty Drunk. In Egypt I learned that word to mean Happy. Lane gives it as, Free and Unconstrained in the Tongue…a better meaning for a poet reciting at the campfire, happy, drunk, neither or both.

Green in the saddle

On the morning of the 21st of December, the unwilling camels received their burdens and I mounted a dromedary for the first time. Thenceforth for many days the only green thing to be seen in all the wilderness was myself.

-A Journey to Central Africa, 1854, Bayard Taylor, readying himself to cross the Nubian Desert

We all know what it means to be green, a greenhorn, fresh in the saddle and raw underneath, a tenderfoot. That is how I felt in my first days on the trail, green and tender, Akhdar, from the root Kh-D-R. For its Form VIII verb- Akhtadara, He cut green herbage- Lane gives two unexpected secondary meanings, He deflowered a girl before she had reached puberty, and He put a nose-rein on an untrained camel and drove him. I wonder if that is what the drovers were thinking as they taught me to ride….that they were deflowering a greenhorn, or pulling a tenderfoot by the nose.

With my cinematograph

Formerly camels were hired if a man wanted to travel into Kordofan, and a leisurely and Biblical journey was made across the sands and wild barren country…But the railway has put an end to that. A cinematograph was exhibited in El Obeid and the Kordofan chiefs who attended gaped at the miracle. The cinema and the railroad marked the beginning of a new era…

-My Sudan Year, 1912, Ethel Stevens Drower

When KhairAllah and I took Voice of the Whip for a 300 mile screening tour on Kordofan’s back tracks, it felt less a government-sponsored goodwill mission than a buddy trip for old times’ sake. Thirty years after we’d first saddled up together it was good to be welcomed again in Kababish villages, whether because we were driving a dabouka of native camels or projecting a film about native sons. Not even little children gaped at KhairAllah’s, Bilal’s, and the other drovers’ moving images cast upon mud walls after dark. Smart phones had long ago replaced the cinematograph out there. But for one night at least outdoor cinema on the big screen had come to that wild and barren country.

The Clashing breasts

To the south we saw the two jebels called the Nahud [Breasts] from their shape. No Arab going westwards will drive his flocks between these hills on his way to the rainy season grazing for fear lest one of his party die. The legend is of giants- that the rocks were like those of the Clashing Rocks that Odysseus so narrowly escaped.

-Diary, March 5, 1931, C.A.E. Lea

I never asked KhairAllah if he shared that fear, that if he were to ride a camel between those two hills he might be crushed by them. We started from the town of Nahud, at the foot of its double jebel, and I didn’t have my dictionary out that first day. If I’d had, no doubt we’d have had something more to laugh about, other than when the two young he-camels got frisky and Hamid said to me, ‘Ayzeen yaneeq- the second verb in that compound phrase, They want to f…, which I didn’t know and asked him to explain its meaning. I wonder how many more words the drovers thought I’d need to be taught.

Euphony in kordofan

Kordofan will always be to me a euphonious word.

-Before the Wind Changed, Ina Beasley, memoir of a colonial administrator in Sudan

Lane collected words far more euphonious than that, especially those called by grammarians onomatopoeic reduplicative quadriliterals. In Kordofan I might have asked KhairAllah for a cup of Um al-Bulbul or to scare off Abu Jamjama, Mother of the Nightingale and Father of the Skull, for the millet beer that makes you sing like a bird and the vulture whose head is bald as a bulb. And you might even say, Iftah Ya Simsim, Open O Sesame, when asking him to tell a camel thief story…but as for words like Hamham and Waswas, Mumble and Whisper, or Zilzil and Ghalghal, Shake and Penetrate, or ‘Ash’ash and Shakshak, Settle and Prickle, or even Silsil and Sarsar, Chain and Creak, I doubt that KhairAllah read the same dictionary as I.

Khali baalak min zouzou

…the enjoyment was only broken when Ibrahim Ahmed, a young soldier who had been given charge of a rutting camel, bent down to prepare its evening feed. To my horror, I saw the camel dart its head down, seize Ibrahim by the neck, lift him up and shake him like a rat while grinding his neck to pieces. He was buried in the Northern Hills.

-The Wind of Morning: An Autobiography, Col. Sir Hugh Broustead, Commander of the Sudan Camel Corps

When I was in Cairo in 1979 a movie with the actress Suad Hosni was playing in reruns, Khali Baalak min Zouzou, Watch Out for Zouzou, a slapstick musical about a free spirited belly dancer named Zouzou whose profession complicates her romance with an up-tight college professor. One of my classmates quoted the movie title whenever she’d answer our professor’s questions, her way of mocking Egypt’s problem with independent smart women.

I must have picked up the habit of saying that too, instead of, for instance, Baalak!, Attention!, or, Bi’Iznak, With your permission, whenever I pushed past people on the sidewalk, which was often. And I took it with me to Dar al-Kababish five years later, and whenever KhairAllah or a drover would inadvertantly spook a couched camel and it would growl and try to rise to its still hobbled feet, I’d say it to him too. Who knows what they thought I meant by it, most of the time I’d swear they couldn’t tell if I was speaking English or Arabic anyway, and if I’d been there to warn Ibrahim Ahmed I doubt it would have saved him either.