On a stormy, rough winter night, the tribal elder keeps the tent dwellers awake with a story. It is longer than a camel's neck, for it is the tale of this Bedouin tribe, which has experienced upheavals in our century like no generation before. First, the Suez Canal divided the desert. Then came sultans and pashas, English colonial officers, and modern court officials. They drew borders and imposed laws that the nomads never wanted to accept. Salim Alafenisch humorously recounts the learned donkey, the camel with the nose ring, world history, and nomadic life in the Negev Desert.