The wonders of egypt

…they owned vineyards, wineries, papyrus marshes, perfume businesses, and camels…where one kneaded dough with one’s feet and wrote from right to left, where Herodotus asserted that “women urinate standing up and men sitting down.”

-Cleopatra, Stacy Schiff, describing women’s right to property in Ptolemaic Egypt

Who is to say which one of us, KhairAllah or me, was more astounded by what we found in Egypt. Electric lamps after so much moonlight, stewed fava beans after so much boiled millet, beer and wine after so much well water. And we hadn’t yet even peeked into the Ladies.

Couched beside al-thurayā

With twenty small stars, as if they—and he in the sky if he could speak—/Were camels that he led riding widespread, riding camels about to scatter,/Both connected and dispersed…

-Abu al-Harīth Ghaylān, aka Dhū al-Rumma, He of the Worn Out Rope (696-735 CE), describing the asterism Al-Thurayā, known in the West as the Pleiades

Only six of the more than one thousand stars in the so-called Seven Sisters are visible to the naked eye, but the Arabs, being accustomed to seeing camels graze in the distance, saw twenty, and as Mas’ūd, when early one morning I asked if he had seen my camel, answered, I saw him couched far in the west just as Al-Thurayā was setting.

The ages of camel

Madmūn, A Foal that has Become Sure of Itself, that Can Run Alongside the Herd.

-Brands Used by the Chief Camel-Owning Tribes of Kordofan, H. MacMichael, 1913

MacMichael’s list of words for Camels of specific age- Hiqq, a Three year old, Gedha’a, a Four year old, Theni, a Five year old, Rabā’a, a Six year old (Rabā’a in fact means Four, for a Six year old’s number of teeth), and Sadīs, a Seven year old (Sadīs, Six, for a Seven year old’s teeth)- ends with Kalas, a Camel of Indeterminate Old Age, a word that sounds like Khalās, meaning, Enough Already!, which KhairAllah would say when he ended that day’s march.

An orthography of brands

All the time he regarded me with a comical incredulous air which was embarrassing to confront, and smiled over my donkey-driving, as I might have smiled over his orthography.

-Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, Robert Louis Stevenson

KhairAllah smiled at my camel-driving but I never doubted his reading of Wusūm, Camel Brands. He knew at a glance every camel’s tribal breeder and owner. I tried to learn this language from Harold MacMichael’s Brands Used by the Chief Camel-Owning Tribes of Kordofan, in which he described their ABCs, from ‘Ariq (A Vein) and ‘Asaba (A Sinew), through Ba’ag (A Rip in the Belly), Ga’aba (The Buttocks), and Sôt (A Whip), to Ushaybīr (A Small Wrench) and Witid (A Peg). In this I was the illiterate and he the fluent reader.

Muhammad and his huwār

Root H-W-R. Huwār, A Young Camel Just Born. Hāra, He Untwisted His Turban [meaning, He Came Completely Undone]. Hawārī, A Woman of the Town, So-Called by Arabs of the Desert for the Whiteness and Fairness of her Skin.

-Lane’s Lexicon

We had one Huwār in our Dabouka. It belonged to the drover Muhammad who hoped to make a profit when he sold it in Binban. KhairAllah did the selling on his behalf because he was a very reserved man of the desert. We called him Muhammad the Miskīn, the Humble, and he was especially so when he came to town.

Cutting a darb in the void

Abu Zayd mounted his running camel/And went from them a wanderer/And he cut a road through the void/The empty plains and the mountains…

-from the Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare [from the Sīrat Bani Hilāl], trans. Lady Anne Blunt, versified by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 1892

The 11th C bedouin hero Abu Zayd al-Hilāli, his epic tale once sung before sedentary audiences, no doubt entered the minds of Binban’s camel merchants when KhairAllah drove his Dabouka into town. Would that they had seen- and not only heard, as in a poem- his exploits in the desert, facing down thieves, losing the trail after fierce winds had scoured it clean, pushing hard the herd without resting his men, risking their rebellion. When later we screened the film in Binban, they saw all this with their own eyes, and believed.

More often Bukra (In Shā'a Allah)

Bakra, A Young She-camel in First Vigour. Bikr, A Virgin, A Pearl Unpierced, A Bow that One First Shoots, A Cloud Abounding with Water, A Fire not Lit from Another Fire.

-Lane’s Lexicon

The basic meaning of the Form VIII of this root’s verb, Ibtakara, He Took Possession of the First Part of It, gives Lane another opportunity to show off his metaphors…He Arrived at the Mosque to Hear the First Words of the Friday Sermon, He Ate the First Fruit to Ripen, He Baked Bread with Fresh Dough…And Hence, He Took the Girl’s Virginity. I never heard KhairAllah say Abkara, the verb’s Form IV, He Watered his Camels in the First Part of the Day, but I did often hear, in answer to my question, When?, him say, Bukra, Tomorrow (In Shā’a Allah).

Rukāb riding camels

The Black Death moved from region to region carried by fleas which then infected animals such as marmots, rats, and camels, who themselves became carriers.

-The Mongol Storm, Nicholas Morton

Camels carried other things as well, Rukāb, Riders, we were called- Ticks, Lice, and Men- and in some cases a camel carried a rider ridden by another rider, a drover riding a camel and a flea riding the drover.

Time out of place

The wheels of the Queen’s plane touched down punctually at twelve noon. Senior Sudanese officials at the Khartoum airport looked at their watches and applauded loudly…In Western Sudan, tribal leaders assembled hundreds of camels and their riders in a large pageant of joyful disorder. The Queen loved it all.

- Watch Your Step, Khawaja: A British Teacher in Sudan, 1956-1966, Peter Everington

There is a scene early in the film with the camera pointed at Yousef on his camel when a question is shouted at him, What time is it? He consults his wrist watch at length and answers, A Quarter to…Four. Never would I have imagined such precise time-keeping on the Darb. But later, Idris sang a driving song with this lyric addressed to his camel, O My Rocket, Your eye is like a Seiko, and we all loved it.

May allah make you eat millet

Ra’a, To Graze, Pasture, or Depasture the Herbage. Ra’āk Allah, May God Guard (lit. Pasture ) You.

-Lane’s Lexicon

The first conversation I ever had with Hajj Bashir was about his favorite actor John Wayne, Rā’i al-Baqar, Pasturer of Cattle, a Cowboy. To Pasture, that seemed a verb I would need to know on the Darb, but I did not hear it spoken once. KhairAllah usually used the Form II Causative verb ‘akkal, To Give, or Make, to Eat, and I also heard it as a Form I verb from our cook Muhammad. Kul!, Eat!, he would say in the imperative mood whenever he saw my appetite flag at the asīda bowl. Lucky I never heard him say, May Allah make you eat millet paste.

Rise up and mount

Theon to Philumene, my Mother, Greeting. Before all else I pray for your health. Receive four metretae [1 metreta = 39 liters] of fine aphrodisiac oil and having done so let me know. I do this not on our own account but rather on that of the camel men…

-Letter 1293, circa 117-138 CE, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. X

Two millennia later one still wonders about Theon’s aphrodisiacs and his camel men. Hajj Bashir supplied his drovers with several kilos of sugar for their tea, which if taken in excess W.K. Kellogg of Corn Flakes fame insisted “powerfully excited the genital organs”. As KhairAllah called out every morning before dawn, Itla’ Wa Irkab, Rise Up and Mount!, before we ate our millet porridge.

Something about t

Shai’, Something, (with neg.) Nothing. Shāy, Tea. Shiwā’ [pronounced Shiyā’ in Sudan], Grilled Meat.

-Wehr

It was easy to cross-pronounce these words, but on the trail, after the pot had boiled, it mattered little. Holding out my empty glass, eyes full of longing and my body begging for sugar, Ibrahim the Cook could have told me anything once it had brewed. Something. Nothing. Shāy. Kubb! Pour! Shiyā’ Tomorrow, In Shā’a Allah.

The baggage of strangers

The most baggage carried by strangers is their difference.

-Yasmina, citing a Sufi sage, quoted in Scheherazade Goes West, Fatema Mernissi

The camels carried our extra baggage, but our difference in customs unlike our weight in pounds was felt at mealtime rather than in the saddle. Rabih and Abdullah saw that every time we crouched at the asīda bowl, for a moment we hesitated, uncertain, before reaching to eat. Which hand must we use, our left or our right? And how to stop ourselves from toppling over?

One lump or two?

Tea in the Sahara…With cups full of sand…

-Sting

That’s right. Unless you cover your glass with the flat of your hand between sips, what you’ll be drinking is a cuppa sand.

Get your things ready

To Theanous, I wish you to know that the caravan comes to Didymoi on the twenty seventh. So I write to you to get your things ready. [Signed] Theophilos

-Ostracon 404, from the Red Sea Desert fort Didymoi on the Berenike-to-Koptos Road, French Archaeological Institute, Cairo, 2011

I received a letter from Hajj Bashir in Sudan, its message much like that on this Ist C CE pottery shard, giving me two weeks notice to get myself to El Obeid in January 1984 if I wanted to join his Dabouka to Cairo. Lucky for me, KhairAllah was its Khabīr and I arrived on time.

A failed Romance

The transition from camel to car is underway; it cannot be checked. The passing of a romantic tradition is certainly sad. But we can console ourselves with the thought that it has all happened before…when the hideous camel was introduced…destroying the romance of donkey journeys.

-Libyan Sands: Travels in a Dead World, 1935, Ralph Bagnold

The Kababish never were told their Jamal days were ending. Camels were still driven up the Darb fifty years after Bagnold, the original Saharan Motor Punk, first bashed the dunes in Model-T Fords, and I’d never met a Kabbāshi who knew First Gear from Irkab! Mount Up! But that was back in the 1980s. Now there is a blacktop road to Cairo, high gear all the way.