21 Things I Learnt Living with Bedouins for 100 Days
I spent a hundred days in a desert village near Dubai, while filming Bedouins of the Wind.
ONE GENERATION
I grew up in Dubai. But until recently, had never truly lived it’s rich hidden history.
For a hundred days in the desert village of Dhaid, 74km from Dubai, I wanted to be a stander-by. Alongside my Bedouin friend Abdulaziz Al Tunaiji as he went about balancing life between two opposite worlds. Glittering Dubai and untouched Dhaid.
A fly on the wall, watching, waiting, wondering…if I could capture moments that could never be planned, scripted or choreographed.
That film became Bedouins of the Wind.
Stills from the documentary Bedouins of the Wind © Danish Farhan 2024
Before the desert
I used to walk fast. Talk fast. Think fast.
In the desert, over time, none of those things made sense.
I learned that quiet is not the absence of sound — it is the presence of patience. And that time, like water, should be carried gently.
This isn’t a piece about culture. Or anthropology.
It’s about the tiny things I noticed while making a film through the eyes of one Bedouin. Abdulaziz and I have traveled together through deserts in Mongolia, glaciers in Alaska and countless other cities over a decade. He was now opening his hidden world at home to me.
As I filmed over four months, he invited me to witness. The little things. Seemingly unremarkable things. The kind that hide in plain sight until you sit with them long enough to feel changed.
Stills from the documentary Bedouins of the Wind © Danish Farhan 2024
Here is what I learnt
1. Fire is not just warmth
At night, after a long day of filming, we would sit around a fire at his majlis. It didn’t roar. It hummed. You could hear the tiny snaps of burning twigs like a whisper you weren’t meant to catch. The flames didn’t flare — they listened.
One night, Salem, one of his Bedouin friends said nothing for almost an hour.
Then, softly, “The fire teaches us how to speak.” I think he meant: quietly, and only when needed.
2. The coffee is never full
Bedouins serve gahwa in small, half-filled cups. Not because they’re stingy, but because refilling is part of the relationship. Every new pour is a new question — are you still with us? Do you want more of this moment?
The one who pours is as important as the cup he offers. You don’t gulp coffee here.
You share it, slowly. You let it breathe. Like trust.
3. The camels don’t rush
I’ve never met a creature that understood time the way a camel does.
They move as if they already know the ending. As if there’s no prize in arriving faster. Only in arriving whole.
And their owners? They carry the same rhythm. When a camel pauses to smell the wind, the man holding the rope does not tug — he waits. Because maybe the camel knows something he doesn’t.
In the desert, patience is not a virtue. It is a direction.
4. The race is up to the camel
When a camel bursts past the gate at the start of a race, that’s a different story. The camel is aware, prepared and knows the paces with which it must run.
Another Bedouin visitor, Saif, once said to me over breakfast at the majlis, “You must not push the camel. You must respect that it knows.”
I didn’t understand at first. This dichotomy of camels between careless strolls in the open sands, and focused sprints on a track.
It is best left as metaphor for Bedouin life.
5. A story isn’t told
When a Bedouin elder, like Bu Zayed, his father, tells you something, it doesn’t begin with “let me tell you a story.”
It begins with silence. With tea. With a sigh. Then a detail. A name you don’t know. A digression about the rain that year. Or the price of something unrelated.
By the time the meaning arrives, you’re not sure where the story began — but it lives in you now. Like a song you forgot you knew.
6. Children aren’t told to love camels
There are no bedtime stories about why camels are noble. No posters. No lessons.
Only children — barefoot and half-sandy — wandering between the legs of these gentle beasts. Feeding them. Naming them. Sitting beside them for no reason other than presence.
I saw Abdulaziz’s six-year-old nephew lean his head on a camel’s neck and fall asleep. No one told him to do that. No one praised him for it either.
Love, here in the desert, is not taught. It is witnessed.
7. They never say “be strong”
In most places, when someone suffers, the response is: stay strong. But in the Bedouin way, they say: “iṣbir.”
Be patient. Be still. Let it pass through you like a storm that cannot stay.
Strength can be hard. Loud. Fracturing.
But patience? Patience is soft. And it survives everything.
8. Fire has it’s sound
In Dhaid, I learned that silence is textured.
That even the fire speaks — if you are quiet enough to hear it. It pops, breathes, shifts. Like it’s remembering something.
Once, while filming late into the night inside a tent, I placed the mic closer to the flame — not to record it, but to be near it.
What I heard, felt ancient in a way I can’t fully articulate.
Stills from the documentary Bedouins of the Wind © Danish Farhan 2024
9. Every name means something
There are no random names in the desert.
Camels are named for how they move, for the shape of their eyes, for each year of its life. Shababi — his camel — means “my youth.” Not because it was young, but because it carried his pride. His dreams.
Even the firewood has names. The slow-burning one. The fast-crackling one. And each name is a prayer. A memory. A way to never forget the land.
Nothing is named by accident here. Not animals. Not people. Not even the dunes.
10. The majlis doesn’t belong to the man who built it
In the city, space is claimed. Owned. Guarded.
In the desert, space is offered.
A majlis — the sitting area of the Bedouin tent — is a place of shared stillness. It belongs to the traveler. The cousin. The man who came with nothing but news to share.
The WiFi passwords are often names of their champion camels. But rarely is the majlis about more than coffee, conversation and board games.
11. The moon is a clock
I never heard anyone say “it’s 7 o’clock” in Dhaid.
They say “before the moon comes up.” Or “after the wind changes.” Or “when the camels stop eating.”
Time here doesn’t tick. It sways.
And maybe that’s the most accurate way to measure it — by watching what matters, not what moves.
12. Wealth is what you can give away
Saif, one of his cousins, told me a story about Abdulaziz one day. How he gifted a camel to a friend visiting from another town, all because he asked about her fondly.
No hesitation. No ceremony. Just a nod and the words: “She’s yours.”
I asked him later if it was hard to give away something so valuable. He smiled: “She will run better in his care.”
Here, value is not in holding, but in releasing — with grace.
13. The rope is not control
Every camel is led by a rope — soft, woven, often handmade. This has been the case since Thesiger traveled through the Trucial Territories in the 1940’s.
But I never once saw it used to pull. Only to guide. Sometimes not even that.
The camel knows the man. The man knows the camel. The rope is just a whisper between them. A suggestion. A thread of trust made visible. A silent connection.
I started thinking about all the invisible ropes we carry with the people we love — the ones we don’t tug on, but hold lightly.
14. Ghee has memory
There’s a kind of ghee (clarified butter) you can’t buy in shops. It’s made by old Bedouin women who don’t measure with spoons — but with instinct and inherited silence.
I watched them feed it to the baby camels.
One day, I asked why this specific ghee.
Abdulaziz says, “Because the camel will remember its smell. It comes from the hands of someone who knows what matters.”
15. Even the sand teaches
Try walking barefoot in the late afternoon. It burns, then cools. It shifts under you. It refuses to hold your shape.
But if you sit with it — quietly, gently — it becomes still. It wraps around you like water.
The sand taught me not to force anything.
The more still I became, the more it made room for me.
16. When they laugh, they really laugh
Bedouin laughter is full-bodied. It doesn’t apologize. It leans back, reaches for the sky, and lands in your chest like a warm stone.
I once cracked a joke I wasn’t sure would land. The reply? A slap on my knee and someone falling sideways into the cushions, choking on gahwa.
In a place where so much is unwritten, laughter is one of the few things that says exactly what it means.
17. You can hear winds change
In the city, change is noisy. Announced. Packaged.
In the desert, change comes in a shift of the breeze. A dry wind becoming soft. A new scent carried in.
One morning, Omar, his camel herder said, “The camels will be restless tonight. The wind is turning.”
I hadn’t noticed. But Omar had. Because his eyes weren’t on his phone. They were on the world around us.
18. The oldest stories are never told by the oldest mouths
I once heard another nephew, a five-year-old, tell the origin of a camel’s name like he had lived it himself.
He hadn’t.
But his grandfather Bu Zayed had told him. And his grandfather before that. Not in history books. Not on screens. But over fire. Through repetition. In silence between sentences.
In the desert, children carry more than toys. They carry a kind of inheritance.
19. Some things aren’t translated
There are words that don’t quite cross the threshold of language.
Al-namoos. Sanaʿ. Hilm. Hufooz.
You can explain them, sure. But not really. Not in the way a Bedouin’s tone lowers when he says them. Or how the camels can go still when they’re spoken.
Some words are like incense. You don’t understand them. You inhale them. You feel them.
20. Bedouin pride is quiet
No one boasts here. Not aloud.
But listen closely — it’s in how they prepare the tent before you arrive. How the coffee is served hotter for the guest than the family. How the camel’s coat is brushed without being asked.
Pride here isn’t in having more. It’s in caring more.
21. The desert doesn’t need you
You realize this slowly. At least I did.
The desert has no interest in your plans. Your deadlines. Your angles.
It will keep being what it is — wind, heat, silence, starlight.
But if you stay long enough, if you listen without needing to change it, the desert will hold you. Quietly. Firmly. Without condition.
And in that holding, something in you softens. And marks another memory.
Change is invisible
I went to Dhaid to make a film. I thought I was capturing a world that was fading. But the truth is — that hidden world is still here. Living. Breathing. Evolving.
Walking quietly beside camels.
Whispering over fires.
Laughing without apology.
What changed wasn’t the desert.
It was me.
ABOUT THE FILM
Bedouins of the Wind is a 48-minute indie documentary film by Danish Farhan, shot on location in the village of Dhaid in the UAE, an intimate portrait of the mysterious world of Bedouin culture, through camel racing, falconry and the unseen life rooted in the desert. The protagonist Abdulaziz Al Tunaiji trains his camels for the nation’s most anticipated race, while two generations ponder whether they will be the last of the Bedouins.
More teasers and scenes on bedouinfilm.com
