The Camel Crisis

Before I get into the story, lets address the camel in the room (read:photo). Can’t find it can you? Hello, I’m obviously talking about my handbag 💁🏻‍♀️

The thing is us colour conscious people have a vocabulary slightly different than you normal lot. What you call YELLOW we can call ‘Marigold’, ‘Sunflower’, ‘Melon’, ‘Pineapple’ ‘Ochre’ or ‘Mustard‘. ORANGE can be ‘Pumpkin’, ‘Sunset’ or ‘Tangerine’, GREEN ‘Pistachio’, ‘Lime’ or ‘Olive’. So the BROWN bag that you see is not ‘Cocoa’, ‘Mud’, ‘Coffee’, ‘Tan’ or ‘Chocolate’.

IT’S CAMEL 🐪

Now, once upon a time (in recent past), a Nayab and a Zahra went out shopping; particularly for handbags. They looked and admired many but couldn’t choose any. Suddenly in the midst of Taupes, ivories, straw, charcoal, crocodiles and seaweed, they found ..... THE CAMEL.

“I Want this one!” They both exclaimed.

Laughing at the similarity of their choice and the cuteness of the situation, they hugged and decided to Each buy one.

If you knew them together you’d think they were as different as night and day. But the sheer fact that they went together like cookies and cream meant they must have had something in common. Which as it turns out is their love for Mini-Coopers ....

And this particular HANDBAG👜

It wasn’t just the colour they adored but the pattern, the style, the metallic lip and all details down to the fuzzy little ball hanging with it.

Smiling they both went to the counter hand in hand.

“We’d like TWO of these please.” they told the salesgirl, giggling like schoolgirls.

“Oh. I’m sorry. It’s LIMITED EDITION, LAST PIECE” the salesgirl replied not realizing she had just dropped a BOMB 💣 .

The smiles turned into frowns. The giggles into grunts. Two hands shot forward to grab the camel from each end.

“I WANT THIS ONE”!!! They repeated, eyeing each other, all friendship forgotten.

There is a famous Egyptian proverb, “ if you love, love the moon, if you steal, steal a camel” - well we loved each other to the moon and back.... but we were not gonna let nobody steal THAT camel.

Even, each other!! 😑

There ensued a long debate. More bags were presented. The big, the small. The thin, the fat. The pattern less and pattern full. But none came close to ours. Twenty Five minutes of persisting, cajoling, bribing, enticing, begging each other later, we were still stuck when the the salesgirl had a Eureka moment.

“I think I have JUST the thing in the back. It’s new and not on shelf yet” she said.

We waited with bated breath and when she came out with THE EXACT SAME BAG, we both jumped in surprise.

It was the same bag alright..... with one slight difference....

It was SHINY ROSE-GOLD PINK.

Five minutes later two happy shoppers walked out the store. Zahra clutching tight her ROSE and me holding proud my CAMEL

Edit: There should be a famous Egyptian proverb. “ If you love, love the moon; if you steal, steal a camel but If you are stuck for choice, hand out some SHINY ROSY GOLD” 🌷💰😏