Sinister: an arab strap?

[Audrey Roofeh]

Did I hear someone wonder aloud of the nature of an arab strap....?


According to Michael Harris, guitar player and Economics PHD candidate 
extraordinare:  

It's actually an "Arab's Trap", used for the capture and
subsequent domestication of camels in the Mid-East and Northern Africa.

It's a large wooden device, sort of cylindrical, with a single opening 
that tapers inwards.  These traps are laid around the Bedouin tents for
when the camels come out at night, with large chunks of cheese at the
centre of the trap.  The hungry camel will push its way into the funnel
opening in order to get at the cheese, but will not be able to get back
out of the trap because on the inside, the entrance/exit is way too
narrow.

"You can check out any time you like but you can never leave" was actually
a line from an old Arab camel-droving song, appropriated by a stodgy old
West Coast US soft-rock group in the 1970s.

(Furthermore, on the same stodgy soft rock album is a song called "New Kid
In Town" which adapts the old Saharan oasis-shanty "The Boy With The
Arab's Trap", about a young nomad who gets separated from his tribe and it
is only through his clever use of the trap that he gains acceptance
amongst a new tribe.  In the original song, he goes on to become leader of
his tribe, and eventually becomes ruler of the desert by slaughtering all
the folks in his old tribe who had lost him in the first place.  I don't
think this part is included in the Eagles' updated version. More's the
pity.)

More little-known camel trivia.  The Arabs were the first to invent
ice-cream, but were unable to gain fame and wealth from this because of
the difficulties of transporting it through the hot deserts.

Not that they didn't try. Camels were heavily involved in the early
transportation attempts, hence their famous but usually misunderstood
label "ships of the dessert".



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