The Kurbāj

Cairo, three days getting to know her again. What has not changed since last time? [5 years earlier] Ahmad the Bawwāb, Doorkeeper, false teeth still broken, his wife still outspoken, he puts to me his request from Sudan, a hippo hide Kurbāj, Quirt, to carry in front of the building and show who is boss.

-Diary, January 12, 1984, Days before leaving for Sudan to set off on the Darb

How many have you slain at Dinshaway, Do not mention the Kurbāj of his days.

-Qasida by nationalist poet Ahmad Shawqi, about the 1906 Dinshaway Incident in which Egyptian villagers were collectively punished, some flogged with a kurbāj, some executed, for allegedly interfering with a British officer's dove shooting party

Ahmad was not alone in Egypt being half fascinated, half frightened of the Kurbāj. It was an emblem of mastery, the lethal equivalent of a flywhisk. But to a Sudanese cameleer like KhairAllah, it was just another tool in his toolbox.

I smell a Rat

That’s why I like feeding the rat. It’s sort of like an annual checkup on yourself. The rat is you, really. It’s the other you, and it’s being fed by the you that you think you are.

-Feeding the Rat, A. Alvarez

Like a rat, roaming close to its hole.

-Arabic Proverb

I didn’t know the Arabic word for hyrax, of which there are many in the Red Sea Hills, so I called them Big Mice and told KhairAllah they were the closest cousins of Elephants, which on the evolutionary tree they are. Wallahi. Lane gives the translation of both Mouse and Rat as Fār, and more curiously defines Fāra as A Flatus which Collects in a Camel and Issues when Stroked. Wallahi.

The tenderest meat, the loudest cry, the strongest back

The king of Persia had a Bedouin brought before him to amuse him with his rustic ignorance. “What animal’s cry carries the farthest?” “The camel.” “What carries the heaviest burden?” “The camel.” “What has the tenderest meat?” “The camel.” “What!” exclaimed the king…

-Book of Animals, Jahiz (776-868), Baghdad

The rustic Bedouin goes on to confound the king with logical explanations for his three answers. KhairAllah would have had three equally logical answers. A hungry baby bawling in a tukul, a Nissan truck he might nickname Abu Fīl, Father of the Elephant, and a lamb fed on Jizu grass, which grows in the northern desert after good winter rains.

The dreadful torture of bearing thirst in dar al-Kabābīsh

They call themselves sultans of the desert, and strangers are indeed at their mercy, for they can themselves bear thirst well for a day or longer, but travellers are dreadfully tortured by this proceeding.

-Travels in Kordofan, from the chapter The Kubbabeesh, Ignatius Pallme, 1844

I admit, I was tortured once or twice by the proceeding of bearing my thirst for a day. But by evening, KhairAllah would say, If the Khawaja wants Mayya, Water, let him drink Limūn, Lemonade, and he made me a bowl of it, using our precious sugar and water that had turned black and goaty from the newly tanned skin.

One Desert road

Their accurate acquaintance with the roads in every direction across the desert is truly wonderful.

-Travels in Kordofan, from the chapter The Kubbabeesh, Ignatius Pallme, 1844

When I travelled with KhairAllah it was only on one road, to Cairo, on the Road of the Forty, keeping al-Jiddi, the North Star, on our Wishsh Shamal, Left Cheek, the northerly wind full in our face. Yes, he could spin the compass wherever he wanted and instead go west to Um Badr, Mother of a Full Moon, east to Um Ruwāba, Mother of Sour Milk, or south to Um Ramād, Mother of Ashes. But we went north to Egypt, Um al-Dunya, Mother of the World.

Allah's Gardener needs a dictionary

Count Anteoni, dressed as an Arab, played by Basil Rathbone- I’ve adopted the Sahara, or perhaps I should say the Sahara has adopted me. Domini Enfilden, played by Marlene Dietrich- Someday I must make a pilgrimage into the desert as you do. Anteoni- Let me advise you Madame. Wait, wait until the call is so strong that it can’t be ignored.

-The Garden of Allah (1936)

Most of the Arabic spoken in this film is gibberish.

-Internet Movie Database

When you hear the call of the desert, make sure it’s not Ratāna, Gibberish as Wehr translates, which is what KhairAllah called the Nubian language spoken in the lands he passed through on his way to Egypt. I ask myself what he calls English after meeting me.

Allah's gardener needs a sun hat

Domini Enfilden, a seeker of the exotic in the North African desert, played by Marlene Dietrich- Perhaps the sun has something to do with it. Batouch, her dragoman- Oh, this sun is nothing. Wait until you get beyond these mountains to the gates of the Sahara. There the sun blazes. Domini- Let it blaze….

-The Garden of Allah (1936)

She wanted freedom, a wide horizon, the great winds, the great sun, the terrible spaces, the glowing, shimmering radiance, the hot, entrancing moons and bloomy, purple nights of Africa. She wanted the nomads’ fires and acid voices…She wanted- more than she could express, more than she knew.

-The Garden of Allah, Robert Hichens, 1904, describing Domini

I have a word of advice for Domini…Be careful of what you want in the desert. And whatever you want, whatever you come for, be certain of one thing, that you know the Arabic word for water. After three years sitting in a classroom and another year wandering the streets of Cairo, I still didn’t get the Sudanese pronunciation right. It’s Muyya, not Mayya, and not Mā’. I might have died of thirst out there if it had not been for KhairAllah and his goatskin.

From Wadi al-milk to the high arctic

If something exists in Pyramiden, then it is probably the northernmost example in the world.

-Jamie Lafferty, New York Times, May 17, 2021, on his visit to the Russian town of Pyramiden in Svalbard, 78.66°N

A spot on this globe photographed in an abandoned Russian school in Svalbard caught my eye. Just where the Nile River’s blue squiggle bending again downriver north is entered from the west by the dotted line of the Wadi al-Milk, where KhairAllah and I rode in from the desert and Dar al-Kabābīsh. Once, after telling him about the broadcast of Voice of the Whip on BBC television, I said, It is true Wallahi!, By God!, You are Mashhūr, Famous, in Lundun and Barīs and Moskū. Little did I then know it was even more true than that. KhairAllah was famous above the Arctic Circle.

©Jamie Lafferty

The casbah is a nut

The Police Inspector of Algiers- You’ve just arrived from Paris, Commissioner. You’re not familiar with the Casbah. The Commissioner- Casbah? What’s that? Some kind of nut? Police Inspector- A very hard nut to crack. You see, Pépé le Moko lives in the Casbah.

-Algiers (1938), Hollywood remake of Pépé le Moko (1937)

A hard nut to crack? On the contrary, an ear very soft, the one you only want to squeeze. Wehr gives the translation of Earlobe as Shahma al-Adhan, literally Fat of the Ear. Lane gives the secondary meaning of Shahma as A Game Played by Arab Children in the Desert. One child playing with another. Listen to the Casbah, whisper into Pépé’s ear.

Citrullus lanatus Cordophanus

We discovered that a Sudanese form of melon, known as the Kordofan melon, is the closest relative of the domesticated watermelon and a possible progenitor.

-Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Susan Renner et. al., June 8, 2021

Big news in genetic sequencing. It all started in Western Sudan, Cordophanus to Linnaeans. America’s favorite varieties, Golden Midget, Little Darling, Yellow Doll, Sugar Baby, Mini Love- we now know they all can call Kordofan home. KhairAllah and Bilal wouldn’t be surprised to hear this, for Dar al-Kabābīsh is not far from a place they call Umm Batīkh, Mother of the Watermelon.

Power, luxury and the exotic

The camel was associated with the lands of the Bible, but also with power, luxury, and the exotic.

-Camel fresco, possibly 1129-1134, San Baudelio de Berlanga, Spain, Metropolitan Museum, The Cloisters

You are driving thousands in front of you, in the form of camels.

-KhairAllah Khair al-Sayyid, speaking of the financial trust given him by Sudan’s largest camel exporter, Hajj Bashir abu Jaib

KhairAllah was no stranger to power, the mere flick of his whip could turn the herd, but luxury and the exotic? No. He slept on the ground and ate millet paste for forty days on his each trip to Egypt, nothing luxurious about that. And when he arrived in Africa’s largest city, Cairenes may have thought him exotic with his hippo hide whip and Kabbāshi dialect, but as his friend and companion Yusuf Hamid said, The work of a trail boss is just a job, and a miserable job at that.

Postcard home n°29

Dear جنفيف, This camel has a big nose and little ears so he can smell his food from all the way across the desert sands but he can’t hear what the Sphinx is telling him- and these are his words- Be good to كنت who is your little brother!

Postcard home n°28

Dear ج, That lady in front does not know how to ride a camel but the lady behind does! And how do you like those cute baby pyramids?

Postcard home n°27

Dear ج, Thank you for your sleeping bag, I use it every night out here in the desert. The doctors will soon come to put the elephants to sleep and their radio necklaces on. That will be fun!

Postcard home n°26

Dear ج, What did you do in school today? Did you draw and color and eat a salami sandwich? I think the man in this picture is holding a cat and a snake in his arms. And the man in the white hat has a funny pointy beard. Do you want me to grow one when I come home?

Postcard home n°25

Dear ج, They say this mosque is the Taj Mahal of Africa, very large with ostrich eggs on top of the spires like gargoyles. The market is full of children singing songs about camels.