Letters to the Editor
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"I kept the very pretty woman"
Ha ha. Do you still "have" her?
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What's the lady:camel exchange rate anyway?
I was once walking around Cairo with a male Pakistani friend; we stopped to buy a fruit juice from a street vendor, who promptly asked, with a huge sly grin, how many camels my friend wanted in exchange for me. My friend, not missing a beat, said, "Oh, at least two hundred!" and the vendor made a big show of sadly turning out his empty pockets.
Wrt the topic of the post -- in classical Arabic poetry, beautiful women are often compared to camels and donkeys (to be "donkey-eyed" is an enviable trait); handsome men are compared to stallions. We have a similar analogy in our culture, you may have noticed.
Compare that to the truly weird complimentary analogies employed in, say the Song of Songs -- the lady's breasts are compared to fawns, etc etc. Very weird to western eyes.
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In the context of Arabian civilization
these comments are neither weird nor offensive. Camels have a very deep history in the Arabian peninsula, dating back even before Islam. Camels provided inhabitants of Arabia with food (meat), milk, shelter (tents made from camel leather) and transportation more than 1,000 years before Europe's Renaissance.
Camels were literally the foundation for the civilization, and their beauty and value have been expounded in cultural expressions such as poetry. It is not at all unusual to see a beautiful woman (or man) described using animal metaphors such as camels and deer.
In addition, there is a linguistic connection between camels and beauty in the Arabic language. The word for a male camel, jamal, is only one long vowel away from the word for beauty, jamaal. The word for female camel, naaqa, is only one long vowel away from the word for grace and elegance, anaaqa. This is not an accident in the beautifully rich and complex Arabic language. Students of the language joke that every word means one thing, its exact opposite, and something to do with a camel.
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If only we compared people with camels in America
then maybe we wouldn't lock so many of them in cages.
The animals rights movement would complain, at least.
Wouldn't that be something -- to see the animal rights movement get all angry about those one to two California prisoners per week who die from medical neglect in captivity?
If those had been camels, the deaths wouldn't have gone on so long before a federal judge stepped in to take control.
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Seems reasonable.
We pay a lot of money to vacation in far off exotic places that get written up in NatGeo where they do odd things like this. If you're offended stay home.
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Silenced, give it a rest.
Wouldn't that be something -- to see the animal rights movement get all angry about those one to two California prisoners per week who die from medical neglect in captivity?
Give me a break, Silenced. I and many other animal rights activists are also deeply passionate and active about human rights; in fact, the two concerns have the same underlying bases in compassion and justice.
You are to animal rights as Brightstar65 is to feminism.
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@Tina
Ha ha. Do you still "have" her?
Nope. Back then she was only a fellow kibbutz volunteer from different countries, like myself, and our relationship was strictly platonic. We were all visiting Jerusalem, and she and I just happened to be separated from the rest when that man offered me the camels for her. She thought it was funny, but did curse me out in her native Dutch for even considering the offer.
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I often think...
offering to exchange camels or cows for the wife or girlfriend is a joke the locals play on tourists.
But then somebody said it actually happened to a friend of his, in Morocco. She had to escape and it was not funny (granted the man who sold her for cows was a Moroccan boyfriend). So who knows.
However I do wonder how many cows he got for her....
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For Discussion Sake-- as if women would want to expose this topic to open discussion
Comparing a camel to a vibrator is sort of sad. Only someone with an awfully pinched view of the living world would fail to see the problem.
It is sad isn't it, for any woman to think it is OK to equate an inanimate object to a man-- shades of realdolls.
At least a camel is a living being. and they are very useful in hot climates.
They're doing something right to compare a camel to a woman. It is something by which to judge the ongoing value of a woman and to keep her from becoming a complete burden on the man. Unlike with most American women, who seem to stray, leave, rob or nag the man to death, rather than producing any actual VALUE in the relationship.
Which brings up a good point. What DO most women THESE DAYS bring to a relationship, other than the sex-- which can be easily gotten elsewhere? Also, what do women bear that is negative to the relationship? A comparison like this would be valuable. I hope Salon takes this topic on soon for discussion sake.
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is there a higher value on virgin camels?
That's what got me as weird. I can see a higher value on camels that have not been pregnant/given birth yet, but a VIRGIN?
Then again, a sexually-active camel that hasn't given birth might go down in value because it's sterile.
(Considering I use my real name to sign these letters, I can't wait till the next time my friends Google me and THIS comes up.)
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Brightstar just nailed it for me...
NOW I know why some of the guys on this thread are so keen on legalizing prostitution.
Us bitches are only for sex, and the thinking man will realize he don't need no damn relationship just to get that.
But then Brightstar tells us he has a girlfriend and we are supposed to believe him.....
Hey BS65, I hear those kinds of girlfriends come with a lifetime repair guarantee for when their silicone vaginas wear out. Where do you keep this girlfriend when friends come over, in the box she came in under the bed?
If you ever end up in the mideast, there are always camels....
(Camels everywhere request that Tina please not evoke such horrific suggestions)