BIRQASH, Egypt - It is 113 degrees in the shade on the edge of the Western Desert, and the animals of the Birqash camel market are not especially inspired by a heap of dry alfalfa.
In the blazing heat, camels become sluggish and lose their appetites. They sit placidly, eating little and drinking less than is wise.
Camel trader Abdel Razia Bekhet, 52, wearing a blue robe and a turban, lounges in the shade, feeding alfalfa by hand to one of his 11 cud-chewing beasts of burden. Afterward, he will set a plastic tub full of water in front of the animal and urge it to wet its lips.
"If I didn't do this, he wouldn't eat all summer," Bekhet says. "And he wouldn't drink enough."
All summer?
"Not much, anyway. They can go for weeks without food. They don't like to eat when it's hot - not unless we feed them."
The Birqash camel market - Egypt's largest with 3,000 animals - is part of a trading tradition that dates back thousands of years in Arabia and North Africa. In an age when elite Egyptians are accustomed to jet travel and even rural peasants know how it feels to zip along a highway in a bus, Birqash shows that there is still a booming business in this ancient means of transportation.
Traders say camels will never become obsolete, that there are still places where there is no other way to travel.
About 20 miles northwest of Cairo, the market operates every day and is open to tourists, though few make the dusty trip from the city in a cab.
The market is busiest from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on Mondays and Fridays. Visitors with a camera are charged $1.07 admission; carrying a video camera costs another $2.14. Outsiders are free to wander amid the braying camels, with their temperamental behavior and long-lashed eyes.
The market itself isn't much to look at: a dusty enclosure surrounded by holding pens and cinder block buildings on which hay is piled two stories high. But it teems with camels, still scrawny from the journey to Cairo.
Sudanese brokers export the camels to Upper Egypt, where the Birqash traders buy them. From there, the traders ship the animals to Cairo by train. A camel will sell for $760 to $870, as farmers acquire them to haul sweet potatoes and butchers buy them for the meat.
The dromedary, or single-humped Arabian camel, is known as "the ship of the desert" - an amazing creature that can go for days without a drink, regulate its body temperature and kneel on its padded belly and knees on sand as hot as a frying pan.
Ill-mannered, the camel likes to spit and tends to bellow when it undertakes even minor exertions, such as standing up. Frankincense traders first domesticated the gawky creatures to plod from the southern Arabian peninsula to distant parts of the Middle East and North Africa. In time, the camel became the desert dwellers' main source of transportation, milk, meat and hides.
"These days, most of our buyers want the camels for their meat," says Ayman Ali Halem, 20, from Qena in Upper Egypt. "Camel sells for about 17 pounds per kilo," about $3.70 for a little more than two pounds.
The best camel meat comes from young male camels, traders say. It is regarded as a delicacy in the Arabian diet, and is gaining popularity in arid lands where it is difficult to raise sheep, cattle and goats. The taste is similar to tough beef.
There may be advantages to a camel-based diet. Camel's milk is lower in fat and lactose than cow's milk, and it contains more potassium, iron and vitamin C. In Saudi Arabia, female camels are raised for their milk.
Although camel cuisine is absent in most Western culinary schools, the Internet serves up some guidance. One site (http://camping.about.com/library/recipes/ucrec006.htm) offers a recipe for "genuine Australian camel stew." The ingredients include three medium-sized camels, 200 bushels of carrots, 3,000 sprigs of parsley and two small rabbits.
Instructions begin: "Cut camels into bite-sized pieces, cube vegetables. Place meat and vegetables into Dutch oven and cover with 1,000 gallons of brown gravy. Simmer slowly for a couple of days. Garnish with parsley. Should serve 3,800 people."
Such recipes will tempt those cooking for small armies or marauding tribes, but it might be best to think twice about stewing a camel bought from the Birqash traders.
"Sometimes when they feel the camel is going to die, they kill it before it dies because we are not allowed to eat the meat of animals that die of natural causes," says trader Abdel Rahman Ahmed Al-Sayyed, 36.
Occasionally, a more offbeat buyer shows up. Traders say a French journalist dropped by Birqash a year ago and bought a camel to ride across the Sahara. "He had his own food and water," Bekhet says.
Al-Sayyed, who comes from the village of Ezbet Kheza in Upper Egypt, started dealing in dromedaries for the same reason his father did: It was something the family had done for generations.
People concerned about animal rights can expect to be upset by what they may see here. In Egypt, as in much of the Third World, animal rights haven't yet caught on. Birqash camels bear platter-sized scars from brandings by their owners. Children demonstrate their toughness for a visitor by whacking camels across the head. Al-Sayyed once taught a camel to sip Pepsi and puff on a cigarette held to its lips.
"When I had the camel that was smoking and drinking," he says, "I had many journalists that were coming to do stories."
He is now training another young camel to smoke. Al-Sayyed grips the animal by the jaw and holds a cigarette to its lips. The camel roars. "He's starting to enjoy it," he says.
Most camels, however, benefit from care by traders who worry about their investments. This in turn can inspire a certain fondness on the part of the camel.
"Sometimes a camel will start following me all over," Bekhet says, "and I don't know how to get rid of him."