Story of the Weeping Camel

This one is quite unlike any other documentary that I have seen. Saw it today morning before going off to sleep.

For one thing, the concept itself is unique. It wonderfully blends storytelling, drama, cultural ethnography and nature documentary into one. The documentary is shot in the Gobi desert of Mongolia. The story primarily revolves around a family of camel and sheep herders who face an unexpected crisis when the mother of one of the newborn camel calves rejects it. It simply refuses to give the calf any motherly affection and care. This is probably because the mother, Ingen Temee, has had a particularly difficult first birthing experience, being in labor for about 2 days. In fact, we witness the calf being literally pulled out because the mother does not have any strength left to push it out. The calf, Botok, is an albino Bactrian camel. It was heart-wrenching to see some of the scenes between this calf and the mother. Days pass, and even after the best of efforts to effect a change, the camel remains obdurate as ever. The calf becomes weak and seems to be losing the will to live, often refusing even the tender attention of the family who has been feeding it with milk manually.

Amgaa, an elder in the family, then decides that a Hoos ritual will be required. But for that they need a good violinist. So they dispatch the two young boys to Aimak to fetch a musician. Aimak is a place where the western way of life has already made its presence felt more strongly than in the remote place where the family lives. It was funny as well as troubling to see the behavior of Ugna, the younger of the two boys, as he encounters temptations such as television, bicycles, ice-cream and department stores. We see a consumerist in the making. :)

With the help of some family friends, the boys make contact with a violinist at the cultural center who agrees to help. After the boys reach some, the family waits anxiously for the violinist to arrive as the calf is even more desolate than ever.

We then witness the Hoos ritual which was wonderful and touching. This was the best moment for me. Offering prayers to the spirits, the musician first simply hangs the violin on the hump of the hassled and nervous camel. The violin strings vibrate as Odgoo & Ikhee try to soothe the camel. Odgoo then sings a melodic song to the accompaniment of violin to try and change the camel’s heart. However, it seems to have no effect. The violinist is about to give up but she continues to sing, urging him to accompany with his music. Finally, we see the camel weeping with emotion. Its heart has been stirred and it now accepts the calf as its own.

For me, this documentary was a fine example of magical storytelling and witnessing the way of life of these people who live in the harsh environment of the desert. It also shows how nobody can survive without love – neither the calf, nor us, nor planet earth. The funny way in which the childishness of consumerism has been portrayed was also nice.

al-Ghazali - The Alchemist of Happiness

"God caused my tongue to dry up, so that I was incapable of lecturing. Each day I tried hard to speak so as to please my students, but my tongue would not utter a single word, nor could I accomplish anything at all." This is how al-Ghazali described one of the symptoms of the profound existential and spiritual crisis that he went through at the age of 36. Besides this loss of speech, he also fell sick, and the doctors were baffled. They simply said that the illness lay in his soul and not in his body. Nobody could do anything to help him – not even his brother Ahmed al-Ghazali, a Sufi mystic and poet, who was close to him.

‘al-Ghazali – The Alchemist of Happiness’ is a remarkable documentary, or rather a creative docu-narrative directed by Ovidio Salazar that examines the life of this man who was the leading intellectual of his time and is considered amongst the most influential thinkers of humanity. His name was Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali - aka Algazel to the western world. The title derives from a work by al-Ghazali, ‘The Alchemy of Happiness.’ The reason why I say this documentary is remarkable is because it deals with a subject that is very difficult to deal with – the inner transformation of a human being. And it does so quite well. It does not delve deeply into any intricacies or attempt a biographical account of his life. It portrays him as a human being, his concerns in life, his crisis and how he cured himself by finding himself and experiencing the mystical union with God that the Sufis spoke about. It also brings out very well his relevance for us – because he too lived in times of great confusion, just as our modern times are also confusing in terms of the choices we have to make and the path we have to follow. His was also a time when established religion, becoming increasingly violent, radical and splintered, held no meaning for him as a person seeking the realization of truth or the understanding of things are they really are. Interspersed in the documentary are interviews with contemporary scholars of Islam, al-Ghazali and his era, which are insightful.

Ghazali was born in the city of Tus, Khorasan, and lived from 1058-1111. The Islamic civilization was then the most advanced in the world – the medieval renaissance of the western world was still far away. Even as a child, he was an intellectual prodigy and a seeker of truth. As he says, “From an early age I constantly thirsted for a grasp of things as they really are. For me this was something instinctive, a part of my God given nature, a matter of temperament, and not of my choice or contrivance.” He studied in Tus under a caretaker with whom he was left as a child upon his father’s death & later in Nishapur under a leading scholar and intellectual of his time. He exhausted all the books and intellectual possibilities of his time. He grew up to become the most prominent jurist, theologist, mathematician, philosopher, scholar and intellectual of his times. His stature was such that people called him the “Proof of Islam.” Gaining the patronage of a Vazir called Nizam al-Mulk and the Caliph of Baghdad, he was asked to head the Nizammiyah University in Baghdad. He was a man who could win any debate on any topic under the sun. Yet, it was this very same man who was also deeply aware of the futility of all debate, because it is about the ego and its self-aggrandizement. Two people could speak, and speak sense, only if both were together concerned with finding out what is true. Certain events in his life coupled with his own realization of how his knowledge and his personality were just a mask hiding his ignorance and darkness led to a crisis in his life.

Try to imagine what it must have been like for him. The most eloquent speaker, the intellectual leader whom to hear hundreds gathered, the advisor to Kings, the social reformer who attempted to lead his society towards sanity and unity, realized that he was ignorant of his own self. What a pitiable condition he must have been reduced to – his tongue could not utter a single word! And that was just an outer symptom of the inner crisis. The documentary then follows his journey briefly as he left Baghdad to become a Sufi and attained self-realization. I say briefly, because it was primarily an inner journey than an outward one, and that inner journey cannot really be followed. In his later years, Ghazali returned to Baghdad and his family and also taught for a while.

Making this documentary and following al-Ghazali’s journey, was like a journey that Ovidio Salazar the director undertook. As he says, “The afterlife approaches and this world passes by. The journey is long but the provisions are scant, and the danger is great. Having set out on this journey to discover more about Ghazali and to dispel some of my own doubts, I have come to realize that the certainty of knowledge lies in the taste of it. And while not achieving Ghazali’s certainty, at least I am beginning to understand what I need for this path.”

I hope that this write-up or review of the documentary interests whoever is reading this to watch it. For me, above everything else, it was a reminder of what needs to be my ultimate concern as a human being.


Some Links:
Information about the documentary on IMDB
Reviews on IMDB
The Heart and Mind of al-Ghazali
al-Ghazali – Wikipedia article
‘The Alchemy of Happiness”