[ilds] dying camel

[Charles Sligh]

Cf. /Justine/, Part I

>         A camel has collapsed from exhaustion in the street outside
>         the house.  It is too heavy to transport to the
>         slaughterhouse, so a couple of men came with axes and cut it
>         up there and then in the open street, alive.  They hack
>         through the white flesh - the poor creature looking ever more
>         pained, more aristocratic, more puzzled as its legs are hacked
>         off.  Finally there is the head still alive, the eyes open,
>         looking around.  Not a scream of protest, not a struggle.  The
>         animal submits like a palm-tree.  But for days afterwards the
>         mud street is soaked in its blood and our bare feet are
>         printed by the moisture. (Faber 1962: 56)

Also, cf. Pursewarden's report from /Mountolive/:

>         Good, though I, I shall have a look at that; but treading
>         unwarily I came upon a grotesque scene which I would gladly
>         have avoided if I had been able.  The camels of Narouz were
>         being cut up for the feast.  Poor things, they knelt there
>         peacefully with their forelegs folded under them like cats
>         while a horde of men attacked them with axes in the
>         moonlight.  My blood ran cold, yet I could not tear myself
>         away from this extraordinary spectacle.  The animals made no
>         move to avoid the blows, uttered no cries as they were
>         dismembered.  The axes bit into them, as if their great bodies
>         were made of cork, sinking deep under every thrust.  Whole
>         members were being hacked off as painlessly, it seemed, as
>         when a tree is pruned.  The children were dancing about in the
>         moonlight picking up the fragments and running off with them
>         into the lighted town, great gobbets of bloody meat.  The
>         camels stared hard at the moon and said nothing.  Off came the
>         legs, out came the entrails; lastly the heads would topple
>         under the axe like statuary and lie there in the sand with
>         open eyes.  The men doing the axing were shouting and
>         bantering as they worked.  A huge soft carpet of black blood
>         spread into the dunes around the group and the barefoot boys
>         carried the print of it back with them into the township.  I
>         felt frightfully ill of a sudden and retired back to the
>         lighted quarter for a drink; and sitting on a bench watched
>         the passing show for a while to recover my nerve. (Faber 1962:
>         487 - 488)




-- 
********************************************
Charles L. Sligh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
charles-sligh at utc.edu
********************************************


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