An I for an eye
It is said that it is harder for a rich, young man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Thankfully, I’m not rich, young or male, so this is one problem I don’t have to give my attention to.
Nevertheless, back in chapel, in south Wales in the 1970s and 80s I learned about the parable of the rich, young man and I imagined the camel squeezing itself, headfirst, through the tiniest of needles, that my mother kept in a pin cushion, in her corner of the room. There were treasures in that corner, alongside her glasses, left-handed scissors that no one was allowed to use, chocolates, cigarettes, and tin boxes that housed other surprises such as cut-out articles from the newspapers and postcards from France. There were new envelopes in that corner, waiting to be used, but rarely a camel.
In Mongolia, they play camel polo on the main square with the two humped Bactrian camels, but not during mating times when the males can be violent and bite and spit and sit on other male camels. Those camels too, were unlikely to fit through the eye of a needle.
No one ever asked the camel if it wanted to complete the ridiculous and absurd task?
No one ever told it, what it would win, if it completed the task?
The camel might respond, “no thank you. Honestly, I’m grand as I am”. Or it might speak Mongolian or Welsh. It’s hard to know, for sure, where the camel’s back story begins or ends, and in any case how it says it doesn’t want to do something, is less interesting than the sentiment, to begin with.
Do camels like the autumn?
They might enjoy a change in air temperature, and the fading light, or perhaps it might make them melancholy. Perhaps they welcome the start of the darker nights, as it gives them a chance to catch up with correspondence.
All silliness aside: some teachers said that the “Eye of the Needle” was slang for a tiny gate in the wall of the city, where traders would enter and exit before going back to the desert. The camel driver, now must try time and time again to manoeuvrer the hissing, spitting frustrated camel into a smaller space.
Gone was the freedom of the sandy dunes and mirages.
Replaced instead with a settlement of noisy people, pushing and moving and trading and being annoying. Of course, the camel preferred the outside space with the wide-open expanse of sky, sand and nothing to set the time by. No shadow, shade, remorse or regret, no horizon, or river or mountain.
Gentle camels of the steppe, let us be.
Watching my mother knit, crochet and sew is a wonderful memory that I can re-watch any time. She could talk, drink coffee, watch TV and even nod off for a nap while knitting baby clothes and blankets, jumpers and doll’s clothes. There was a rhythm to her quiet hobby, and it was all for her. Someone ended up with the finished product, and then she started a new one, all over again. It wasn’t for content or the spotlight; it was simply a hobby that she had.
Now we can’t sneeze without recording it and blasting it out to the stratosphere to wait for validation and admiration. On occasion, someone doesn’t like our sneeze or thinks our sneeze is offensive, or out of lane. Then we curl up like a hedgehog and wait for the threatening enemy to move away and find something else to worry about.
Camels don’t know that hedgehogs exist, and hedgehogs can’t even dream of camels.
It turns out that ancient Greek scholars dispel the idea that the “Eye of a Needle” was slang for a tiny gate, after all. And so, we return to the fact that it was a metaphor all along.
A part of the story, a device, or a tool.
Shorter than me 