Tea in the great dunes

So he lets them ride with his caravan. And one night, when the sun was going to go down, they come to the great dunes of sand, and they think, “Ah, now we are in the Sahara; we are going to make tea.”

-The Sheltering Sky

The Darb did not cross many dunes, only pans and sheets, but there was plenty of wind blown sand, enough to eddy around the obstructions of couched men and camels and to swirl into poured water, so tea making was a bit inconvenient unless you preferred more silica than sweet in your drink.

salāmāt from kutum

At dawn the day before they had skirted the town of Kutum without entering, then travelled nine hours without stopping. Fakhreddine wanted to leave Darfur and cross the Egyptian border as soon as possible.

-The Egyptian Assassin, Ezzedine Fishere

When KhairAllah spoke to the camera, saying, “I am known wherever I go…Kutum, Nyala, Mileet”, it was a bit like Larry Bird saying, “I am known wherever I go…French Lick, Pumpkin Center, Hindostan Falls.” If you are a three-time MVP and a twelve-time All Star, of course people recognize you in all the small towns back home. Same with KhairAllah, who had ridden the Darb too many times to remember and was the most trusted Khabīr of Sudan’s most wealthy camel merchant. Thus KhairAllah never skirted Kutum if he had the chance to enter and receive its many Salāms, Bismillahs, and Marhabans, no matter how eager he was to get to Egypt.

Travel light without fear

I fell ill of a fever and one of my friends advised me to stay until I recovered. I refused, saying, “If Allah decrees my death, then it shall be on the Road.” “If that is your resolve,” he replied, “then sell your ass and heavy baggage, and I shall lend you what you require. In this way you will travel light, for we must make haste on our journey for fear of meeting roving Arabs on the Way.”

-Travels, Ibn Battuta (1304-1369)

Hajj Bashir didn’t tell me to ditch my baggage to lighten the load, because I was carrying only one change of clothes. Instead, he advised me to hang tight and move fast because he wanted his Dabouka in Cairo within Forty Days. KhairAllah knew better, however, saying, “If the camels arrive fat and healthy, I have done my job well and the merchant will be pleased.” And so Hajj Bashir was when we arrived forty four days later.

Whip and Voice

The camels tripped and stumbled, tossing their loads like cockboats in a short sea. When we came to a ridge worse than usual, old Mas’ūd would seize my camel’s halter and encourage the animal with gesture and voice.

-Sir Richard Burton, Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah (1853)

The Mas’ūd I knew could not have seized a halter because he was barely 5’6” tall and my camel’s head rose well above eight feet. But he too encouraged them when they were dragging from exhaustion at the end of a sixteen hour day, shouting Hut! Ein! Oop! and sometimes striking his stick across the flank of the most laggard. A hippo hide whip would have helped but he was too poor to own one, and KhairAllah rarely did that kind of rough work.

Chance and opportunity

…asked if they could give any further information concerning the deserts of Libya, they answered that there were some daring youths amongst them and that they, having reached man’s estate, formed many other extravagant plans, and moreover chose five among them by lot to explore the desert to see if they could make any more discoveries than those who had penetrated the farthest.

-Herodotus, Book 2, Chapter 32

In KhairAllah’s unexpected absence, Bilal and RahmatAllah drew lots to determine which Khabīr would lead the Dabouka, and along with the camels, we three Khawajas. The Darb is no place for games of chance, and just as I was set to choose between the two crumpled bits of paper with a Khabīr’s name written on each, KhairAllah appeared in a cloud of dust, arriving at the camel mustering by cross country lorry at the last possible moment. Fursa Sayyida, Happy Chance, he said. I answered, Fursa Sayyida, Lucky Opportunity.

In the desert, virtue is never captive

On the road is a waste over which Arabs roam to and fro without fixed abode…All of a sudden the Ishmaelites made an assault on us…We were seized, dispersed, and led off- or rather carried off- atop camels. We hung more than sat on our way across the vast desert, in constant fear…Flesh half raw was our food, camel milk our drink.

-Saint Jerome (347-420), Life of Malchus the Captive Monk, died c.391

Jerome’s Life of Malchus might well be the earliest source for that Orientalist cliché of a beautiful woman kidnapped by Arabs and taken deep into the desert as their slave. Jerome interviewed Malchus in person for his life story, which also happened to involve a woman captured with him whom the slave master forced him to marry but with whom he remained chaste. “Tell the story to them that come after,” said Malchus, “that in the desert, virtue is never a captive.” Maybe so among the drovers I knew, but a different story for Billa Ali, conniving camel thief of the Wadi al-Milk.

A stubborn camel, what God has willed

And when they had set his body upon a camel, that camel would not rise up; and they then put the body on another camel, and this second camel would also not rise; and though they beat the camel with a severe beating, he would not move at all. Thus they knew that this was the will of God.

-The Ethiopian Synaxarion, Book of Saints, on the death and burial of Menas (285-309), Patron Saint of Desert Caravans

Saint Menas, Christian Martyr, had one last request of his Roman persecutors, that his body be loaded onto a camel and driven to Egypt, and wherever the camel chose to stop, that there he be buried. Request granted, and around his burial site grew a shrine where water was sold in clay flasks incised with an image of two camels prostrating themselves before him. I presume that KhairAllah knew nothing about this place, it being far off the Darb, up near Alexandria, and that he would think a water vessel made of clay an absurd thing to load on a camel, tanned goat skins being much preferred.

Bien Acompañado on the darb

To travel in the East with comfort or advantage, it is necessary to do so according to the rule and custom of the country…supposing that this can be effected, you will proceed on your rambles, accompanied by attendants who perform the various functions of your establishment in a fixed abode…and thus in the desert the associations of home pursue you and practically inform you of those feelings of locomotive independence…

-A Handbook for Travellers in Egypt, Sir John Gardner Wilkinson, 1854

I will never forget how Tómas Núñez complimented her when she entered the room on my arm and he turned to me and said, Estás muy bien Acompañado, and now I return the compliment to KhairAllah, whose comfort and advantage on the Darb made me feel right at home during those forty days of locomotion…I felt that he was my Sāhib, my Companion, besides being my Khabīr, my Trail Boss, and that I was very well Mashūb, Accompanied.

Eating Aseeda in small details

The idea struck the restaurateur like a bolt of lightning while eating in his car. What if he were to take his country’s national dish- a milky mountain of mutton and rice traditionally eaten by hand from a communal platter- and sell it in a paper cup with a plastic fork for diners on the go? Not everyone hailed his culinary innovation however. “Destruction begins with small details,” warned one newspaper columnist. “What is happening is not just about food but a way of mocking the people’s heritage.”

-New York Times, June 26, 2022

I wonder what the boy cook Ibrahim would have said if I’d suggested that he serve aseeda to the drovers in their tea glasses, there being no paper cups on the trail. Mish Mumkin, Not Possible, his likely response. How else could we, crowded round the communal bowl, each having an intimate view of the man directly across as he brought his fingers to his mouth, watch him chew slowly his own portion of the paste, his fatigued expression making it clear how he felt about every small bite, wishing it were mutton in milk and not plain millet.

Pissing rukhs

The Rukh. They say that this is an animal that looks like a camel…If an animal fleeing from him gets high in a tree where he cannot reach it, he stops in front and spreads his tail in the shape of a shovel. Then he pees in it and throws his urine at the animal.

-Book on the Nature of Animals of the Sea and Land, Sharaf al-Zaman al-Marwazi (1055-1135)

It is true that camels take golden showers in groups and by so doing rile themselves into rut. We Khawajas did our best to just stand back and watch when this occured because rutting camels are dangerous. Surely there was more to desert decorum than this, we thought, but when the drovers laughed uproariously at the pissing camels, so did we.

Awake for the tale, asleep for the theft

The Three Hundredth and Thirty First Night, and Dunyazad said to her sister, Allah upon thee! As thou are other than tired, finish for us thy tale. She replied, With love and good will! It hath reached me, Ô Auspicious King!, that the Cameleer came forward before the Sultan’s hands and said, Ô My Lord!, Verily these men have carried away the camel that belongeth to me…

-One Thousand and One Nights, trans. Richard Burton

And here begins Scheherazade’s night long tale of recovering the stolen camel. The excellent mimic KhairAllah told a similar story at the campfire about one of his drovers on night watch, a man with a severe stutter, who had fallen asleep and allowed a thief to unhobble and steal a camel, and the next morning KhairAllah realized the theft and told the drover to remain with the herd while he rode a day and a night tracking the thief, and upon catching him paid the usual finder’s fee in order to avoid violence, and when he returned to camp at dawn the following day with the recovered camel found the drover again fallen asleep and yet another camel stolen, ending the story in the voice of the sleepy headed drover, Anā Āsif, I am Sorry, Ô Kh-, Kh-, Kh-, KhairAllah!

This really is real life

Please send to real life

-Ray Johnson, Mail Artist

Send. Add and send. Return. Add and return. These were Johnson’s instructions to his correspondents and this is how my correspondence with KhairAllah has lately been. I send to his son Soliman’s account, sometimes in English and sometimes in Arabic. I ask Soliman to ask that his father dictate a response and that Soliman return. Soliman returns only in English even though his father knows only Arabic.

I once wrote in Arabic to KhairAllah via Soliman, I will see you in the near future if God has willed, putting the future and the past in the same sentence as is proper. Soliman returned a question in English, Are you coming to Sudan? I in turn sent in English, No. God has not yet willed. At present, in real life.

Camel with Moticos and Artist’s Eyes, Ray Johnson

Balancing our camels

The use of camels is a balancing act. If you have none, you will struggle to fill your hand…However, if you take many at once, you risk leaving…

-Player Instructions to the board game Jaipur

We had to balance our gear carefully. Forty 10’ rolls of 16mm film, blank audio cassettes, a camera body and lenses, a tape recorder and two microphones, a tripod and boom. KhairAllah alone acted as loadmaster in the first few days until the other drovers got the idea that gear marked Fragile meant fragile, like their tea glasses which broke within days of setting out if they hadn’t been properly stowed and lashed to the saddle. We usually stood by watching, even though if the balance was off we risked leaving it all behind in a heap, arriving in Cairo after forty days, empty handed.

Of camels, donkeys, mice and men

The elephant labored and gave birth to a mouse, I mean, I rode a camel to Egypt and sold a donkey to the Egyptians.

-Letter to KhairAllah

We talked often of elephants and mice on the Darb. Some of us smoked Abu Fīl cigarettes, Father of the Elephant, and KhairAllah was funny when he imitated the squeaking of a mouse on the run. We also said that Egyptian camel merchants were all donkeys. They rode them, they too were stubborn, and when I dismounted in their midst after forty days, they asked if I would sell my donkey pad before they asked my name.

Magi from the south

…relics will be moved, but images and statues survive…The useful camel and the dromedary pace the desert sands.

-The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel

None were moving, these holy images of the Epiphany left in Westminster Abbey by order of Thomas Cromwell when stripping England of its Catholic relics. But if they had been moving…what would he have made of KhairAllah riding his White, Mas’ūd his Buckskin, and Adam Hāmid his Blue, like the Magi except that they rode to al-Qāhira from the South and not to Bayt Laham from the East.

Layla's camel on the darb

Tell the madman Qais to nourish/Sadness with the joys he’s seen./Let Layla’s camel feed upon/His heart’s sweet buds while they’re still green.

-Umrao Jan Ada, Mirza Hadi Ruswa, from a Ghazal recited at a Mushaira

The drovers thought us Majnūn, Crazy, for wanting to ride the Darb because we loved their desert. Qais wanted Layla because he loved her sweet buds. But when our camels pushed into acacia canopies to feed, there were no buds. Only thorns, and the grass too was dry.