Camel Caravan Quotes & Sayings

(And did I mention how in summer the streets of Smyrna were lined with baskets of rose petals? And how everyone in the city could speak French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, English, and Dutch? And did I tell you about the famous figs, brought in by camel caravan and dumped onto the ground, huge piles of pulpy fruit lying in the dirt, with dirty women steeping them in salt water and children squatting to defecate behind the clusters? Did I mention how the reek of the fig women mixed with pleasanter smells of almond trees, mimosa, laurel, and peach, and how everybody wore masks on Mardi Gras and had elaborate dinners on the decks of frigates? I want to mention these things because they all happened in that city that was no place exactly, that was part of no country because it was all countries, and because now if you go there you'll see modern high-rises, amnesiac boulevards, teeming sweatshops, a NATO headquarters, and a sign that says Izmir ... ) — Jeffrey Eugenides

Or else you can say, like the camel driver who took me there: "I arrived here in my first youth, one morning, many people were hurrying along the streets toward the market, the women had fine teeth and looked you straight in the eye, three soldiers on a platform played the trumpet, and all around wheels turned and colored banners fluttered in the wind. Before then I had known only the desert and the caravan routes. In the years that followed, my eyes returned to contemplate the desert expanses and the caravan routes; but now I know this path is only one of the many that opened before me on that morning in Dorothea. — Italo Calvino

A camel that always moves with the camel caravan cannot discover the beauties of the unknown oases! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Lovers O lovers, lovers it is time to set out from the world. I hear a drum in my soul's ear coming from the depths of the stars. Our camel driver is at work; the caravan is being readied. He asks that we forgive him for the disturbance he has caused us, He asks why we travellers are asleep. Everywhere the murmur of departure; the stars, like candles thrust at us from behind blue veils, and as if to make the invisible plain, a wondrous people have come forth. — Rumi

It reflects like an optical instrument and responds to changes in the weather so sensitively that it seems like a part of the sky rather than of the land. And along with all that, Baikal is distinctly Asiatic: if a camel caravan could somehow transport Baikal across Siberia to Europe, and curious buyers unwrapped it in a marketplace, none would mistake it for a lake from around there. — Ian Frazier

The soul should take care of the body, just as the pilgrim on his way to Makkah takes care of his camel; but if the pilgrim spends his whole time in feeding and adorning his camel, the caravan will leave him behind, and he will perish in the desert. — Al-Ghazali

Loretta folded her arms. She felt like a heroine in a movie, confronted by a jealous husband in a kitchen while outside the camera is aching to draw back and show a wonderland of adventures waiting for her - long, frantic rides on trains, landscapes of wounded soldiers, a lovely white desert across which a camel caravan draped voluptuously in veils moves slowly with a kind of mincing melancholy, the steamy jungles of India opening before British officers in white, young officers, the mysteries of English drawing-rooms cracking before the quick, humorless smirk of a wise young woman from America ... — Joyce Carol Oates

To get into Afghanistan, I bribed my way into a camel caravan of smugglers. — Gary Jennings

There are camels which have the quality which in humans is called the revolutionary spirit, and the caravan leader fears to keep one of these in his ranks, because its instinct is always toward revolt against authority. One such camel will sometimes break up the discipline of a whole train, for, owing to the mass mentality of the herd, even peaceful beasts are suddenly infected with the spirit of revolt and in a few minutes the whole caravan is in utter disorder. — Mildred Cable

The snow light flared on brightness. Blue: intense as a midsummer sky, obtained from grinding precious lapis lazuli carried by camel caravan all the way from the mountains of Afghanistan. — Geraldine Brooks

Do not regret the passing if the camel and the caravan. The Sahara has changed, but it remains a desert without compromise, the world in its extreme. There is no place as dry and hot and hostile. — William Langewiesche

He knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wineskins and bags of candies fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself as the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees' jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, half-revealed. — Italo Calvino