The Camel Has Fabulous Eyes

The first thing I want to do in Dubai is to make a courtesy call to the consulate dog, and then to a camel, I declared to the husband.

The consulate dog is now being taken care of by the Philippine Overseas Labor Office, he had said.  As for the camel, an out-of-town trip is needed because it’s not as if camels walk the streets of Dubai.

A camel I did see, and I imagined the silhouette of the Three Kings as they followed that star to Bethlehem.

Camels struck me first as nearest goats, but twenty to fifty times in size and bloated and elongated in some parts.  Touching one feels like touching a goat.  But then again they struck me as nearest giraffes, if one looks at them from a distance.  Then I thought of dragons.  As exotic as the camels are to someone who hails from the tropics, I thought it best, because I couldn’t make my mind up anyway, to just take them, as they are, ancient history and all.

‘Ship of the Desert’ was the term Arab poets used for camels.  They were an indispensable part of Arabian life, carrying human life and treasures on their backs on endless treks through pitiless deserts.

The Old Testament mentions that Abraham, the queen of Sheba, and Job had camels.  As camels figured in trades, so did they figure in wars and Arab conquests.

Gold, frankincense and myrrh, which we’ve come to know as the Three Kings’ gifts to the infant Jesus, were once brought on camels’ backs and traded through ancient camel caravans.

There are the common camels and the thoroughbred camels.  The latter comes from a long line of careful breeding.  As war camels of the old days, the thoroughbreds were used by two warrior-riders; one directs the camel while the other takes charge of piercing enemies with a lance or shooting with a bow and arrow.

Female camels produce only one calf after a pregnancy that lasts for a year.  Twin calves, while a rarity, sometimes occur.  Annual pregnancy is not for camels.  It takes two to three years for them to produce another calf.

Camel mothers are known to mourn the death of their young.  It is the young that are slaughtered for meat as older camels’ meat is said to be tougher than well-worn football shoes.

Bedouins, those nomadic Arab desert people closest to camels, are known to comfort a mourning camel mother by wrapping straw with her slaughtered calf’s skin and placing it in front of her so she can sniff it.  Another form of comfort is to introduce a calf of another camel.  The risk is that if this young camel dies, there would be two mourning mothers.  A camel mother’s grief is known to last for ten days.

There are more amber-colored camels than there are white and black camels.  These mild-mannered animals can go on for fifty days during winter without water, though Bedouins water their camels every three days, especially during summer.  A camel drinks from twenty to eighty liters of water in one session.

Camels gave me a hint of one difference between creative writers and theologians.  Theologians, I surmise, have years of scholarly work on the concept of God that may not allow a stretch of different versions of anthropomorphism.  Writers meanwhile may only need divine imagination.

A camel is handsome though not as handsome as Christopher Ramasola, went my SMS to lifestylebohol’s Sonieta L.  From her answer, I knew it didn’t surprise her any.  It was different with another friend, a planning consultant with indisputable theological mettle.  He asked how Dubai is and was taken aback by my answer.

How can a camel be handsome?  He sounded ready to burst.

Camels appear trusting and reliable, and their eyes, those glorious, fabulous eyes!  After all, didn’t their ancestors’ eyes see the same star of Bethlehem that the Three Kings did?  I said.

You mean it takes a camel to know another camel?  Familiarity with his verbal chess terrain dared me to checkmate.
Yes, and I’ll walk a mile like a camel to that.

(2006)