Shmulik the Camelherd

by Thom Whalen

Just after his fifteenth birthday, Benjamin went to see his rabbi, and said, “Rabbi Kravitz, I need help.”

“What can I do for you, Benjamin?” the rabbi asked.

“I wake up every night and can’t get back to sleep.”

The rabbi nodded his head thoughtfully and asked, “Have you told your parents? Maybe they should take you to see a doctor.”

“I told my mother and she told my father and they took me to a doctor. They made me go because they said that I need to get more sleep because I’m real smart, but I won’t get good grades if I’m too tired.”

“And what did the doctor say?”

“He said that there was nothing wrong with me. That I was just worrying too much.”

“Are you worrying too much?”

“I guess I am if the doctor says so.”

“What do you worry about?”

“When I wake up at night, I worry that I don’t feel as smart as my parents say I am. They want me to be a doctor, but I don’t know if I can.”

The rabbi nodded again and then fell silent for a long time. The young man began to fidget. Finally, the rabbi spoke. “Let me tell you the story of Shmulik the Camelherd. Many years ago there was a young man named Shmulik. From the day he was born, his mother and his father told him that he was going to become a camelherd. Not just any camelherd, but a great and famous camelherd. He was going to raise camels that would be renown throughout the land for their ability to carry enormous loads, travel for weeks without food or water, and win races against the fastest horses. He was going to be the most famous camelherd in history.

“When Shmulik grew to be a man, he left home to seek his fortune. There were no camels in his village. Sheep and goats and donkeys aplenty, but no camels, so what could he do? He had to leave his village and look for camels elsewhere.

“Shmulik soon encountered a caravan with a hundred camels in it. They were big and hairy and smelly. They bared their teeth and spit at anyone who approached. Shmulik found nothing to like about camels, but what could he do? He was a camelherd, so he went to the first camel in the caravan, the lead camel, and stood in the road and called up to the driver, ‘Hey, sir. I am a camelherd.’

“The driver stopped the camel. What else could he do? He did not want to trample the young man. And the camel behind him stopped and the camel behind that one and, though it took a quarter of an hour, eventually every camel in the caravan stopped. Camels toward the end of the caravan were stopping long after the lead camels were moving again, but that is not what this story is about. This story is about Shmulik. The lead driver was annoyed at having to stop, but he was also curious about the young boy who called himself a camelherd. He called down to Shmulik and said, ‘If you are a camelherd, then where are your camels?’

“Shmulik shrugged and said, ‘I don’t have any camels yet. I was wondering if you could tell me how to get a camel.’

“‘You buy a camel from some other camelherd, of course. That’s how we got all these camels.’

“‘I don’t have any money.’

“‘Then you better get a job so that you can earn some money.’ The driver thought that, for a camelherd, Shmulik was rather ignorant about the business.

“‘Where can I get a job?’

“The leader of the caravan felt some sympathy for a young man who was so naïve, so he said, ‘I’ll hire you to help the cook. I’ll let you eat with us and, when we get to Damascus, I’ll pay you five shekels.’

“’Will that be enough for me to buy a camel?’

“‘No. But you will be five shekels closer to having a camel than you are now.’

“Shmulik saw the wisdom of that so he agreed to travel with the caravan and help the cook. The caravan leader was happy to be underway again and told Shmulik to wait until he saw the cook walking at the end of the caravan and join him. ‘You’ll know him because he’s the fattest man in the caravan.’

“Shmulik soon learned that the cook was a lazy fellow and that he, as the cook’s helper, would be expected to do most of the cooking himself. By the time the caravan reached Damascus, everyone knew that Shmulik had become the real cook and were not surprised that the leader of the caravan introduced Shmulik to the guards at the gates as ‘Shmulik the Cook.’

“Nobody was surprised except Shmulik, that is. He was shocked and, as soon as he was inside the city, he told the leader, ‘I’m not Shmulik the Cook, I’m Shmulik the Camelherd. I will take my five shekels now and be on my way.’

“As the leader counted out five silver shekels, he told Shmulik, ‘I would like you to stay with me. If you’ll be the cook, I’ll let Abu go and give you his salary from now on. It’s good pay.’

“‘No,’ answered Shmulik. ‘I’m a camelherd. I have to be what I am.’ And he walked away.

“He soon found that, as he had been told, he could not buy a camel for only five shekels. In fact, he found that it was expensive to stay in the city; his five shekels would soon be gone. So he spent one of his shekels to buy a bit of food and set out again, once more alone.

“After walking for a full day, he came to the base of mountain and found a small spring. Travelers always stopped at the spring for the night, but it was too small and too remote to support a village. Shmulik decided that it would be the perfect place to be a camelherd. His camels, when he got some, would be able to drink from the spring and there would be many travelers passing by who would be interested in buying camels.

“It happened that, within the month, the same caravan that he had traveled with was left the city and spent the night at Shmulik’s spring. He was tired of sleeping under the stars and wanted a tent of his own. He negotiated with the caravan leader to buy some canvas, thread, scissors, and needles, part of the cargo that the caravan was taking to Bagdad. It cost him three more of his precious shekels, but the leader had given him a good deal; it would have cost far more if he had had to bargain for each of these things from different shops in Damascus.

“Shmulik had never made a tent before, so he spent two weeks trying to do it one way and then another, trying to make his tent look like the tents that the caravan used. It took him three tries to get it right, but he did not lack for thread or canvas, so that was not a problem.

“Travelers stopped every night or two and, as soon as Shmulik had finished his last tent, one of them offered to buy it for ten shekels. The traveler said, ‘I don’t like the way those other two tents look, but this one is perfect.’

“Shmulik asked, ‘Is ten shekels enough to buy a camel?’

“’I don’t think so. But it will be a start. If you make more tents and sell them, you’ll soon have enough money to buy a camel.’

“’Good because I’m a camelherd,’ Shmulik replied.

“To get more money, Shmulik bought more canvas and thread, made more tents, and sold them to travelers that stopped at the spring. All was going well and he had earned almost enough money to buy a pair of breeding camels, but for an unfortunate event. One day he was walking back to Damascus to buy more material when he met a stranger on the road. The stranger stopped him and asked, ‘Will this road lead me to Shmulik the Tentmaker? I need a tent and I’ve been told that Shmulik the Tentmaker makes fine tents and sells them at a fair price.

“Shmulik was shocked. ‘I’m Shmulik the Camelherd. There is no one named Shmulik the Tentmaker on this road.’ And, true to his word, Shmulik never made another tent. He did not want anyone to get the wrong idea about him.

“Not having anything else to do, he stayed by his spring, using his savings to buy food and supplies. He spent his evenings, talking to travelers who were staying the night, listening to their stories and telling them other stories in exchange. He had been at the spring for so long that he noticed that many of the seeds from the dates that he had eaten had germinated in the moist and fertile soil around the spring. During his days when he had been making tents, he had let date palm seedlings grow wild. Now, though, his days were free so he occupied himself by tending the young palms. There were many palms and tending them took considerable time. They also used much of the water from the spring so Shmulik explored the mountain and found two other springs. He dug trenches to route more water to his palms.

“One night, a traveler came to the spring and said, ‘Hello. Are you Shmulik the Storyteller? I’m on my way to Jerusalem and everyone in Damascus said that I should stop here and hear the wonderful stories told by Shmulik the Storyteller.

“‘No,’ replied Shmulik. ‘I’m Shmulik the Camelherd. I’m not Shmulik the Storyteller and I don’t tell stories. And, from that day forward, he never entertained another traveler with his stories.

“By this time, the money that he’d made from selling tents was exhausted, but it did not matter because his date palms were bearing fruit. He not only had all the dates that he cared to eat, but he sold them by the bushel to travelers and by the hundredweight to caravans. He was soon known as a man who sold the biggest, sweetest dates anywhere.

“It was not long before the inevitable happened. A man came asking to speak to Shmulik the Date Farmer. Shmulik replied, as always, that he was Shmulik the Camelherd and, the next day, he went to Damascus, bought the biggest, sharpest axe that in the city, came back, and spent a month cutting down every single palm tree at the spring. A camelherd had no need for date palms.

“He no longer talked to people who stopped at the spring, no longer had anything to sell them, only stayed in his tent until he had used up all his money to buy food. Finally, in the end, he grew ill and died.

“A traveler buried him at the spring and marked his grave with a simple wooden stake. Shortly after his death, the leader of the first caravan, the one that had hired him as a cook, head the story of Shmulik’s death and, on his next trip to Damascus, stopped by the grave to pay his respects.

“When he saw the simple wooden stake, he said, ‘I knew Shmulik well. I hired him as my cook once, then bought tents from him, ate the dates that he grew, and spent many a night exchanging stories with him. He deserves better than a stake at his head. I will buy a stone for him.’

“The man went to a stone carver in Damascus, picked out a stone, and had the name, ‘Shmulik’ carved on it. Many who had known Shmulik gathered to admire the stone. Then the carver asked, ‘What else goes on this stone to identify him?’

“‘He was a fine cook,’ the leader said, ‘You should carve “Shmulik the Cook” on the stone.’

“‘No,’ another man said. ‘He never wanted to be a cook. He made fine tents. You should carve “Shmulik the Tentmaker” on it.’

“‘No,’ a third man replied. ‘I was told that he stopped making tents because he hated to be thought a tentmaker. He was “Shmulik the Storyteller”’

“‘No, he didn’t want that, either,’ said yet another man. ‘He was a fine date farmer. You should carve that.’

“‘You can’t put that on his headstone,’ countered another. ‘He chopped down all his trees because he didn’t want to be a date farmer.’

“The men who had known Shmulik argued far into the night, but could not decide on anything. Not a one of them suggested ‘Shmulik the Camelherd’ because they all knew that Shmulik had never so much as touched a camel in his life.

“In the end, they carved nothing on the stone but the single word, ‘Shmulik’ and, to this day, when people see his grave, they have no idea what Shmulik had done during his life.”

When the rabbi finished the story, he waited for Benjamin to say something. After a long while, Benjamin nodded and said. “Shmulik wasn’t a camelherd.”

The rabbi shrugged and waited.

“He wasted his life.”

The rabbi smiled. “See, you are a smart boy. Now go and listen to your mother.”

Benjamin smiled back and said, “Sure, rabbi. Sure.”

After the door shut behind him, Rabbi Kravitz nodded and said, to himself, “If you’re smart enough to be a doctor, you’ll be smart enough to understand the story of Shmulik. If not, you can be a camelherd.”