Seeing this scene now after almost forty years, I ask myself, where was I when these pictures were taken? I often felt obligated to leave the frame when Daoud was shooting, even if at tea time, in which case I would not have been happy. Like Masood, I didn’t want to think, I only wanted to drink.
©David Melody
©David Melody
Sometimes we made camp so late with no moon that I didn’t have a sense of our immediate surroundings until in the dawn light I saw that we were in an entirely new landscape. Waking up among such elephant rocks made me think we had travelled far from where we had been when the sun set in a flat desert.
From l. to r., Adam Hamid, Muhammad Ali Hassan, Masood Abdullah abu Dood, KhairAllah Khair al-Sayyid ©David Melody
©David Melody
Each camel carried two brands, the breeders mark and the export number. I asked the drovers about each breeders mark, the Wasm, for they all had unique names, such as crow’s foot or cheek star or half circle, and placements on the camel, such as the left flank or rear right leg. And they asked me about my tattoo, my Washm, and if in America we all were also marked.
©David Melody
A mechanic checks a car’s brakes by putting it on a lift. A farrier shoes a horse by picking up one willing hoof at a time. But camels can’t be lifted and they are unwilling. To patch an ulcerated foot pad you have to hobble the front legs and truss their rear legs tight, tie their mouth closed and the head back to the tail, then push them over on their side. Masood is just getting down to work.
©David Melody
There was a she-camel in our dabouka who midway on the Darb delivered her young stillborn. It was a pitiful sight to see her standing there before the drovers whipped her back into the herd and we set off again. I asked KhairAllah if the Kababish ate such meat and he looked at me with incredulity. I told him that Saudi Arabian nomads thought it a delicacy and he looked at me with disgust.
©David Melody
As I recall, this camel belonging to another herd had gone badly lame and they decided to slaughter it and distribute the meat among the four daboukas which had converged the day before. Each Khabeer sent one of his own drovers to help the butchering. KhairAllah sent Adam Hamid in the sleeveless sweater, eager to use his knife on a big job.
©David Melody
Adam Hamid steadies the carcass with his left hand while with his right he readies a knife to carve up the tenderloin. Nazir from Muhammad al-Humri’s dabouka in the gray sweater uses a two hand grip. He must have been working on a tough cut. I remember that Adam was very pleased with his share of the spoils, fresh, before they spoiled. We ate well that night.
©David Melody
They cut the leanest parts thin and draped them over ropes between saddles, hoping that the night breeze and moonlight might make them jerky- from Quechua, ch’arki, dried and deboned camelid (alpaca or llama)- by dawn. We had no salt and it did not work so the meat turned putrid in a day. Wehr has the noun Sharmouta to mean Rag, Shred, Tatter, Whore, and Slut. The drovers called it Sharmout and laughed when I added a final A to the word.
©David Melody
Nazir and Adam Hamid made fast work of the tasty bits just before leaving the remains to Abu Jumjum’a, Father of the Skull, the vulture that followed our dabouka on the last miles of the Darb, knowing the camels were on their last legs and some might not reach Binban. The Quranic phylactery tied at Adam’s right elbow he wore as protection from that same fate.
©David Melody
This was the butcher in the Dongola souk. It was lucky that our herd stayed outside town that day. If it had not, there would have been stew in every kitchen that night. Camel meat is tough and must be slow cooked.
©David Melody
The bakery, our midnight meal, bread straight from the ovens, bakers from Kadugli, wide smiles, soft low voices, they brighten when I tell them we’re coming up from Nahud, on the way back to their Nuba Hills…from my Trail Diary, Day 23, 1984.
I remember that Daoud and I returned to the bakery the next day in full sunlight. The night spell had broken. The bread was all made. Now was the tedious job, milling flour on noisy machines. The bakers were tired and wanted only to sleep.
©David Melody
After selling back the camel he had stolen from us the day before and accepting our invitation to a midnight feast of roast goat, the next morning Billa walked away carrying his life’s possessions- saddle with high cantle and fringed leather skirt, ditty bag, hippo hide whip, blanket, wooden club, and Enfield rifle with a black pompom at the muzzle. Maybe he didn’t have far to walk, maybe he did. It all depended on when the next dabouka would pass and he could steal another camel.
©David Melody
What I most remember about Muhammad after his ruby ring and deep laugh was his blue woolen overcoat and white scarf. The others wore slapped together cottons and polyesters which never kept them warm. Muhammad looked ready to stroll down Fifth Avenue in the snow trailed by his whip and dabouka.
©David Melody
Some middays were more chill than others. It helped to have a shade tree and a new pillow, and junior drovers to gather up the camels after they had grazed far and wide. That gave Idris and KhairAllah time for their Jalsah, Seated Gathering, at which they would agree that the Darb al-Arba’een was a marathon, not a sprint.
©David Melody
Adam Hamid was not one of the others, the Kababish. He was of the Hamar tribe, a mostly cattle raising people. But like them, he wore a scabbard above his left elbow for a fast draw with his right hand. So don’t let his comic salute fool you. All the faster to pull his dagger.
©David Melody
Blessed are the Meek for they shall inherit the Earth. This could have been written for Muhammad, whom I called Al-Miskeen, the Humble One. At the end of the drive his clothes had become like rags, which once caught fire when he was not looking. He was always cold and sat too close.
In later years even KhairAllah forgot him. When I asked if he had ever again seen the three drovers of that trip- Masood, Adam, and Muhammad- he drew a blank at the mention of the last. So poor in spirit was Muhammad that his name faded from the memory of a trail boss who remembered every camel in every herd.
©David Melody