← previous day

Camel with mouth cover

Posted by Michael Skorulski (Cigel, Slovakia) on 30 April 2008 in Animal & Insect and Portfolio.

Camels do actually spit and bite. Hence, the cover over the mouth of this dromedary at a camel race in Saudi Arabia. Here's a story I wrote about the race:

Camel Chaos
By Michael Skorulski

A musket shot splits eardrums. Whips beat hide. Camels surge forward like a swirling dust devil. An exuberant dromedary bucks off its jockey. The tiny black boy pursues but is no match for the animal's fluid 25-mph gait. One zany beast trots off in the wrong direction. A riderless mount breaks away from a spectator, joins the 4-mile sprint, takes the lead.

Camel racing has been the traditional sport of Bedouin tribes since the 7th century AD. T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, witnessed a similar chaotic spectacle 90 years earlier when he resided in Yanbu on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast. Then the competition involved thousands of animals speeding across the open desert. Today the town's races, comprising 20 or 25 entrants, are held on a large circular track during the cooler months from October to April.

One mount ignores its rider's prodding and refuses to budge. The trainer dashes over and yanks on its reins. Taking advantage of its 3-meter range, the alarmed beast spits in its tormenter's face. The handler ignores the noxious spray and keeps tugging. A whack on the backside with a cane finally dislodges the stubborn dromedary.

"Yuk. Never seen a camel gob in a man's face before," I tell my daughter, Kika. "Must happen a lot because he's not even bothered about it."

"Yeh, well you just keep a good distance away. You've put on a lot of weight lately and you'd make a pretty easy target," Kika laughs.

"No need to get personal."

"Let's go," my daughter shouts. We jump into our dusty 4-wheel drive. Fifty cheering Bedu leap into theirs. We pursue the camels along a trail that circles the 2-km. track. In a kind of secondary competition, madmen masquerading as drivers see how close they can come to other automobiles without actually turning them into mangled metal.

"Look out, daddy." A beat-up Land Cruiser flies past and miraculously doesn't take off our side mirror. I feel a slight nudge in the bumper, look in the rear view. A grinning, turbaned head gives me the thumbs up and zips by. A rusting pickup hurtles along, its occupants dangling out the window, hooting. A camel squats in the back passively. I nearly take out the tail light of a decelerating jeep in front. Dust flies, heat pounds, metal menaces, my head throbs. I pull off and stop.

"Lose our nerve again, did we?,"Kika mocks.

"Naw, just checking to see if I'm still wearing clean undershorts."

"Right."

Away from the frenetic activity, the desert is silent. A lone animal approaches, almost without sound. Unlike the clip-clop of a horse's hooves, the camel's slipper-like feet make hardly any noise. We detect a gentle wind sighing in the brush. The little Sudanese rider grins warmly and shouts, "hi." We smile back and in Arabic ask his name. "Ahmed," he calls. He can't be more than 8 years old.

"Yela, yela, let's go," we shout, encouraging him on. But Ahmed's about as far from the front of the race as we are.

We reach the finish line in our jeep just as the leader crosses it to claim the $2,000 in prize money.
next day →