“Mahloul she’s...she’s....”
I told Hamad to give it to me straight.
“She’s not a racer,” he said.
Mahloul, my starlet, my beauty, was, in fact, none-of-the-above in the eyes of those who know race camels. She was born at the end of the season and small for her age group.
I had to look for another camel.
I scanned the race track for other prospects. I wanted a camel to cheer for until the end of the season, a nobody who’d shock everybody with a win at Al Wathbah’s season finals in Abu Dhabi.
Early in the season, everybody was a nobody.
In the weeks before the big winter races, camels raced incognito. If they lost, the world and their owner’s pride was none the wiser. If they won, they earned the honour of wearing their owner’s colours. The colour of a race camel’s blanket and bridle identify its owner.
There were men like Omar sharif, who kept his camel anonymous with a plain green blanket over its hump.
“Omar Sharif, like the actor,” he introduce himself.
His camel, unlike his namesake, was unknown and he planned to keep it that way. It was not just his pride that is at risk but the camel’s resale value. We followed her around the track as Omar sharif rummaged around his back seat.
“Have you eaten?” He pulled out a ziplock bag. “Sandwiches. My wife makes them for me.”
There are two types of men in Ras Al Khaimah. There are the men who are quick to ask women if they’re married. And there are men who are quick and proud to say, “I have one wife. Because I love my wife.”
Omar Sharif was in the last category. “I haven’t said a bad word to my wife for 14 years,” he said.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Sorry, but no.”
His camel finished near the end of the pack. Omar Sharif was unfazed. He had others. He toured us round his ezba, listing which camel was a gift from which sheikh, which ones were retired, which ones were studs. Then he opened a covered pen and showed us his prize, a dusky yellow camel who looked, to my untrained eye, to be about two years old. One of her parents was from a prominent RAK royal.
“So many offers for her. Half million,” said Omar Sharif. She was his secret weapon. He did not even bother to enter her in the early season races.
At the track, it’s not just camels who remain anonymous. Some families do not reveal the name of female relatives or the number of sisters or daughters in their families.
While Omar Sharif raced in secret, Matar flaunted the colours on his camels from the season’s first race.
Matar is the self-proclaimed “yellow man” and former manager of Al Wasl football club who had bought into the camel world with wealth made from the football. When we met, Matar and his camels were trimmed in banana yellow. His leather sandals, jeweled ring, sunglasses, his Lexus 4x4 and even, he told us, his house at Dubai’s Marmoun track were all the hue of his football club.
“Everywhere I go, they call me the yellow man,” he said.
Matar was in Ras Al Khaimah for a friend and, he later confessed, because his camels were not ready for Marmoun. They would build their experience at the RAK Suan track before racing them in Dubai.
“That one’s mine, the yellow one,” he said pointing at a camel whose blanket matched his accessories. “His name is Inzar.”
“Inzar? I don’t know this word,” I said.
“Like when you get a yellow card in football and the ref holds up his hand.”
Warning.
His pride was Wasali, a six-year old named for his club.
A few weeks later, Inzar was out of the race (“khalas, cancelled,” said Matar) but Wasali raced on, competing at Marmoun and training for Abu Dhabi season finals.
Hamed called me a few weeks after he broke the news about Mahloul. “Don’t worry,” he said.
“I have three others. This year we will do well.”
Victory, after all, does not rest on one camel alone.
