by Dina Bennett
It was cool inside those thick mud walls, quiet and dusky too, as there were no windows. A shelf filled with books of the Koran lined the back wall of the high-ceilinged room. On a raised seat sat the neighborhood sheik, a small-time patriarch nevertheless essential to the well-being of his community, a genuine multitasker, acting as counselor, mediator, advisor, and religious leader for his community. This small man with smooth, copper-colored skin and a scraggle of beard, bade us sit on one of the carpet-covered benches below him. From his platform he surveyed us frankly, as if taking our measure. Looking up at him made me feel like I was back in kindergarten, seeing in the eyes of my teacher that I had done something naughty though I was unsure what. My dignity reasserted itself when he gestured for coffee to be made for us. We were guests after all, not fractious children.
We sipped sociably, without conversation, while I mused how I was having coffee with a sheik, becoming part of his story, sitting on the same bench whose hard surface had hosted the buttocks of myriad supplicants. I was delirious with happiness to be smelling, touching, tasting a moment in this sheik’s life. Everything about him—his clothes, his living quarters, his life—seemed so old-world, as if time had literally passed him by. This calmness, I thought to myself, is what it means to live a life without modern distractions.
Then the sheik pointed to a bucket below him, from which his assistant retrieved some branches of glossy leaves. For an instant, I thought he was displaying his garden prunings. But the street had been devoid of anything growing, so it could only be one thing: qat (pronounced “chat”), the coca equivalent used as a stimulant and appetite suppressant throughout the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. I was now about to suffer the effects of my unquenchable curiosity. I plucked a handful of leaves, eager to show I knew what I was doing, though in reality I’d only ever nibbled a corner of a leaf prior to that moment. Even Bernard, who normally doesn’t indulge in things not found in the Larousse Gastronomique, took a few leaves for himself. I suspect it dawned on him, as it did me, that one does not refuse the full hospitality of a sheik, however modest his empire may be. The leaves were tough and, well, leafy, as if I were eating an office ficus plant. I waited to be suffused by a wave of euphoria, but all I felt was embarrassment at all the green bits now stuck in my teeth.
Coffee sipped and qat chewed, we rose to take our leave, unsure when the muezzin would next issue a call to prayer and not wishing to impose further. The sheik motioned us to be patient, and then mimed taking a photo. “This is odd,” I whispered to Bernard. “I hadn’t expected he’d let us take a picture of him.” I reached for my camera. He swatted at the air for me to put it down. And then he pointed from himself to us. “I’m not sure I get what’s up here,” Bernard whispered back. “But it looks like he wants to take our picture.”
“Okay,” I thought. “He’s the sheik. If rising up and taking the camera from a lady so he can photograph us isn’t what he’s used to, I can deal with that. I’ll bring it to him.” He shook his head as I advanced, one arm digging around in his thobe, the loose-fitting ankle-length white robe worn by many Muslim men. For a second, I thought he was scratching himself, which struck me as an un-sheik-like thing to do in front of a woman, what with Islam espousing modesty and all. Withdrawing his hand from a pocket hidden within the folds, he displayed a late-model iPhone as matter-of-factly as a baker would hold up a loaf of bread. Then he raised it and snapped our picture. “My brother in Arkansas will like this. We Skype each other weekly,” he said in perfect English, as he waved us out.
Camel Carts
KESROLI, INDIA, 2013
One afternoon, arriving early in the village of Kesroli southeast of Delhi, we hire a camel cart to take us to a nearby hamlet. Do not think Conestoga wagon when you imagine a camel cart. Think old back porch of Appalachian shack hoisted up on wheels, becoming a dusty open platform that’s ten feet long. It’s sized for the hugeness of a camel, as compared to a wheelbarrow-sized cart that would be pulled by that other ubiquitous beast of burden, the donkey. It’s also open-air, which suits us fine since we spend so many hours closed in the confines of our car. A wheeled amble down quiet side roads at a convivial pace would bring us closer yet to Tolkien’s sentiment that “not all those who wander are lost.” For us to be able to sit side-by-side, even to loll staring up at the clouds, is an unparalleled joy. That we will move at stately camel pace, and that said camel will be under the control of a camel wallah who won’t need my input to get where he’s going, is better still.
Our camel wallah unfolds a pile of thick quilted blankets—or perhaps they are thinly batted mattresses—which he flings with great fanfare across the cart. These are intended to form a good barrier between us and the dust churned up by the wheels. They are flowery and gay, and make me feel so as well. While he’s arranging bedding, we inspect our camel, whose ribs are prominent enough for me to count. Since we are in India, our camel is a dromedary, the one-humped camel version, as compared to the Bactrians we saw in China and Mongolia, which are two-humped. “This is not the robust camel of the Sahara, is it?” I whisper to Bernard. The local camels work hard for a living, carrying about five hundred pounds on their back. And even though they’re about the same height as LeBron James, Stephen Curry, or any other NBA star, they weigh barely more than a good stout horse. That this camel displays the svelte sides of a model isn’t cause for alarm, but does give me twinges of guilt that we will be making this underfed animal work, despite that I know that’s exactly what he, or at least his camel wallah, needs if he’s ever to get more to eat. In his favor, our dromedary clearly knows what’s expected of him, not even batting his third eyelid while quilts flap within a foot of his posterior. Had I been tall enough I would have checked his teeth. But his feet, which are as large as dinner plates, look capable of plodding along at our desired leisurely pace. He also sports some attractive shaved swirls on his haunches, though I feel a flicker of disappointment that he wears no jingle bell cuffs below his knees. Overall, he appears good-natured, unfazed by the large pin stuck through his nose to which the reins are attached.
Declaring ourselves satisfied and with a merry heave-ho, we toss cameras, caps, and sunglasses onto the blankets and hoist ourselves up. Ray Bradbury was correct when he intuited that “half the fun of travel is the aesthetic of lostness.” As far as I’m concerned, it’s also the aesthetic of lostness being someone else’s responsibility. When the wallah gives the reins a sharp flick and issues a practiced kissing “Mwahh!” for our camel to move out, I am elated.
It’s mid-afternoon, the sun still hot, the camel’s stately pace barely enough to stir up a shy breeze. In five minutes we have cleared Kesroli proper and turned left to skirt a reservoir, heading to a hamlet an hour or so away. Bernard and I dangle our legs over the side, not so much to be able to jump off at a moment’s notice, but to appear as though we’re old hands at this mode of transportation. I snap a few photos.
A clod of dirt thuds onto my quilt bedding. As I inspect the offending chunk to see if it’s dirt or manure, displaying it as if it were Martian, two more clods hit the platform in quick succession. Turning in the direction of the attack, we see seven women sitting on a berm above the road. Next to them is a stockpile of dirt clumps and small stones, which they heave at us with a smile as we pass. We each grab a fold of quilt to shield our heads from the fusillade of dried lake mud.
Having things turn sour so early in what was to be a relaxed outing through the countryside was never in our plans. Our only thought was how nice it would be to move even more slowly through villages, to better smell the fields, to feel the true warmth of the sun on our skin, to just have time to be where we were, instead of thinking about where we next needed to turn. For reasons that I can attribute only to Bernard and I having one of those wonderful moments of married synchronicity, neither of us is bothered. Without a word being said we seem to agree that we are not about to let this unceremonious pelting deter us from our happy outing. We are deter
mined to be, if not quite sitting ducks, then at the least slow-moving ducks. We instruct our wallah to keep his camel at a placid walk. He responds with a glare. I notice he hasn’t even flinched under the artillery assault, and wonder whether what to us was a demilitarized zone to him is a known mine field.
As we amble by, we can hear the women’s voices rising and falling as if shouting at us. Ever predisposed to feeling personally guilty about my intrusion into local life, I imagine their chat goes something like this: “Don’t you dare raise that camera at me! I’m sick of having my photo taken. What do you think we are? Zoo animals?” I have no idea if this is really their reason for welcoming us with dirt projectiles. Perhaps they’ve been cleaning out the reservoir and just needed some way to get rid of the extra dirt they had on hand. Or in hand.
Our camel driver, who might have translated for us, is concentrating on the swishing tail of the camel and avoiding my gaze. Proving the accuracy of their aim, a few more clods come flying our way, one striking me on the shoulder, another sending squirts of dirt into my eyes. Feeling unjustly tormented, we each breathe a sigh of relief when we are finally out of range. Flushed with surviving the reservoir gauntlet, we get chatty for a few seconds before being lulled into reverie as the cart slowly bumps and lurches onward.
Though our camel wallah is small and young, it makes not a jot of difference to his command of camel-ese. There is utmost respect between beast and driver. While camel seems to know that, as long as he does what’s asked, he’ll be left in peace, wallah knows that as long as he isn’t unreasonable in his requests, camel will obey. Achieving the same, easy level of unspoken understanding does not exist between camel wallah and us. We want nothing more than to prolong our soporific jouncing along the narrow village byways. Wallah has other, apparently more pressing, engagements and wants to keep his camel moving at a ground-eating trot. He sits perched on the front of the cart with his back to us, shoulders hunched, short thin legs swinging over the front. For a good five minutes at a time, he lets the reins hang lax in his hands, head bowed, for all the world asleep as the camel plods up the road. Then, in a fit of pique, he perks up, collects the reins, and, with an authoritative cluck slaps them smartly on the camel’s back. The camel, taken by surprise, and somewhat offended at the brusqueness of the exchange, leaps into a trot, jolting us out of our heretofore mentioned reveries, and causing us to cling to whatever scrap of quilt or exposed cross beam we can grab.
“Please, no!” I shout, hoping to convey that we don’t want to go that fast. The wallah twists around, fixing me with a baleful stare that insinuates, “What’s wrong with you? Who wouldn’t want to go faster if they could?” His lack of comprehension forces us to resort to more complex concepts. I toss out short phrases using Valley-girl tones, to make my demands seem more benign. I say, “Slow down?” and “Not so fast?” followed by “No trotting, please? Only walk?” Still failing to produce the desired result, my only remaining option, short of grabbing the reins, is the international hand gesture language. I turn both hands palms down, and slowly lower them. Frowning and exuding all kinds of dismay, the wallah reins in the camel and we all sink back once again into our respective daydreams.
Thus we progress, in the rhythm of an inverted classic quick step—slow, slow, FAST, slow, slow, FAST—past children working in the sugarcane fields, saried women balancing bundles of gnarled branches or plastic water jugs on their head, men meandering along the roadside in plaid cotton shirts and stained dhotis, arms interlocked in comradely twosomes and threesomes. The sun beats down, birds flit over planted fields of rich dark earth, heading to the deep shade of a midfield copse of trees, and occasionally a slow motorcycle buzzes by.
After an hour of bucolic bliss, we reach the end of the road, a hamlet half in ruins, home to a small Hindu temple and perhaps fifty families. Executing a magnificent broken U-turn, the wallah parks the camel in the small village square, an area perhaps thirty yards wide. On our left is a heap of stone rubble from buildings in peaceable decline, their separate construction components forming a serene, if jumbled, pile of rocks and mortar dust. In front of us is the temple, squatting above a flight of eight stone steps, basking in the shadow of a venerable and enormous banyan tree. The remaining sides of the square are bound by a couple of two-story structures, impressive compared to the rest of the village. One is sky blue, housing tiny shops on the ground floor and just as tiny apartments above. The other is mud-colored, home to a refreshment stand at its base and living quarters above. A woman leans over one balustrade, shakes a dishtowel with a smart snap, and hangs it on the blue railing to dry.
In most of the world’s small villages, the arrival of a stranger is news. Whether in the vast emptiness of rural western China, the remoteness of Andean Peru, or the density of countryside India, a stranger never goes unnoticed. For one thing, a new face is immediately obvious. Villages are small and everyone knows everyone. For another, there is little travel between villages, as people perforce spend all day every day taking care of their and their families’ immediate needs. If someone new is in town, it’s cause for curiosity. And then, of course, there’s our visible otherness. Who wouldn’t pause and question who we are and why we’re there?
Barely has camel come to a halt than a small boy in a dark blue, one-button shirt and shorts held up with twine, arrives at a run, rolling an old bicycle wheel in front of him with a stick. He is followed at full tilt by two more boys who seem torn between the desire to steal the wheel and stick from the first boy or to sidle up to us and see what we’re about. We win out over the wheel, which is a great boost to my ego. They gather round, laugh and jostle each other, try out a few words of English on us. But the boy with the stick only grunts. He’s mute.
A ramble through the hamlet is in order. Proud, wary, excited, the youngsters shepherd us through narrow lanes, dodging into doorways and courtyards to draw our attention to a baby or a cow, displaying us to the mistress of the house, and hanging behind bashfully as we talk in gestures with the grown-ups. I don’t mind being the trick pony for a change. Offering the novelty of “me” is a kind of barter for the photos I want to take of them. And it seems only fair that I not be the only one looking intensely around. Okay, the only one staring. The chatter I’d imagined earlier during the reservoir pelting may have been a truth, but it wasn’t the whole truth. Because here, women pull us forward to look at their babies, men shake our hands, elders pose, and everyone seems genuinely delighted, beyond politesse, to be photographed and then to see themselves center frame on the camera screen. The only hiccup in the general bonhomie is when, as if by magic, the wheel-spinning boy appears in the center of the viewfinder, miming for the camera, contorting his small, lean body into winsome positions, lifting his wheel and stick over his head to call attention to himself.
At first this is charming. “Oh look, he’s mugging for the camera. Cute kid.” But soon it becomes irritating when he pops up in every shot. The problem is entirely mine. I’m never completely at ease photographing people. What makes for a good travel photo is the colorful, picturesque shabbiness of rural villages. But shabby isn’t comfortable and shabby isn’t what people choose to have, should they actually have a choice. Shabby is the best they can do with the means at their disposal.
Although I do want to capture the scene, I feel that I’m intruding into the villagers’ daily chores or daily drudgery, or daily doing without. They may not feel that way, but to me there’s a sensation that I could be working just as hard to frame a shot of an animal in the Serengeti. Yet I’m not in the wilds of Africa. I’m in someone’s home, someone’s back street, someone’s courtyard. They haven’t dressed their toddler or left the undies off their little boy to appeal to my camera. They’re just going about their business. I take the photographs quickly, with mixed emotions at best, and a strong sense that I may be missing a stronger human connection by placing my camera between me and what’s happening around me.
Though I’m hyperaware that this
is someone’s everyday life I’m intruding in, I also find it irresistible to turn my camera to a turquoise blue wall framing a yellow door on the stoop of which sits a young woman holding a baby swaddled in a knit onesie, or a slate gray water buffalo munching an emerald green shaft of hay, or the spread of scarlet chili peppers drying on an orange clay tile roof. Add a woman in a violet and yellow sari embroidered with blue-green spirals, and I dissolve into a puddle of photographic desires.
And so, when I frame a great shot of that mother with her baby, only to find the mute boy’s head bobbing up in front as he jumps up and down, waving his stick over his head, it strikes an already raw nerve. And when I kneel down to get just the right angle of a placid cow with a red-billed bird on its nose, and the shot is suddenly composed of the cow with the boy’s head leering at the camera from the side, his wheel waggling in the air, I do not do the right thing. I do not chuckle and wag my finger at him, admonishing him in friendly fashion for wrecking yet another photo. What I do is yell “Get out!” and shoo him away. It’s horribly impolite, especially for a visitor in a poor village. I am reduced to an unappealing caricature of the impatient foreigner, an ugly American.
The villagers exchange knowing glances of forbearance. A few smile, looking at the ground. They know this boy and of course cherish him and his antics. Unlike me, they are far too polite to issue me any remonstrance, like, “Hey, leave the kid alone. Can’t you tell you’re the better entertainment—more distraction—than he’s had in ages?” Then—such is the misplaced egotism of the traveler—it finally occurs to me that I probably am not the first white lady to arrive on a camel cart wanting to photograph their everyday lives. They all are used to this. People coming in, feeling they’ve discovered something authentic, and photographing the hell out of it. And they all patiently let us snap away, turning somber gazes on us when requested, stopping their endless round of work to accommodate the camera.