T A B L E_T A L K Offer your tips to a Table Talker who plans to spend Easter in Paris with his son   ___________________ Search and ye shall find -- personal health, family wealth and bibliophilic happiness at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author   ___________________   R E C E N T L Y Helen of Troy is in my taxi By Rolf Potts A wanderer discovers the ambiguity of language and love in the Philippines (03/19/99) "Don't shoot -- we're Americans!" By Daniel Becker A hike across the Macedonia-Albania border goes wrong (03/18/99) Original sin By Janis Cooke Newman A culinary pilgrim in Italy succumbs to temptations far more wicked than ripe produce (03/17/99) Where the wild things are By John Fox An archaeologist explores the Galapagos on an expedition run by school kids (03/16/99) Going native By Chris Colin For American college students living abroad, the question is: How local can you get? (03/15/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		THE CAMEL MARKET OF DARAW | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - After half an hour, my companions and I pile onto our lumbering chariot and head to the much-anticipated camel market, Suq el-Gimal, held in a dusty tract on the eastern outskirts of Daraw. Another stretch of bottlenecking and we are there. Pulling alongside the camel market I see hordes of drovers in the traditional garb of trousers, woolen cloak, dagger and sword shuffling beside throngs of the one-humped, four-legged curiosities. The men look weary; for what amounts to three months' hard labor, each drover receives about 100 pounds ($33). The local fellahin circle the camels as the guttural yelp of a diseased animal blares throughout the market, only to compete with the drone of the daily call to prayer that comes over a crude speaker at the corner of the lot. The camels stand helpless in herds, each animal's fourth leg bent at the knee and bound to itself with twine in order to keep them in place. As I study their sunken, suspicious eyes, this strikes me as some form of medieval torture. Mohammed Badawy serves as our guide; he says he has worked the market for 40 years. Mohammed explains that the hump, the teeth and the hooves determine a camel's value, which ranges from 300 to 3,000 pounds ($100 to $1,000.) Females are worth more because they breed, and the sleek, sinewy dromedary is the cream of the camel crop. In the midst of Mohammed's diatribe I am distracted by some scuttling behind him. A drover has grabbed one of the camel's bridles and another is forcing his shoulder roughly into its side. Together they lunge and push to get the creature onto a flatbed backed up to the lot; the men tug one way while the camel pulls the other, baring its huge yellow teeth. A cloud of dust rises above the commotion and another drover joins the fray, whipping the camel's rump mechanically with a long stick. Finally, the camel is forced onto the truck, where it sits, scornful. From here it will either be taken to Cairo to be sold abroad or, if it is a young one -- and it is -- skinned by a butcher for the cooking pot. If there ever were a beast of burden, I think, this sad soul is it. Leaving the market I am transfixed; the smells of mud, sweat and feces blend together in a sort of pervasive haze, slowing my every movement. A dimple-faced boy leaning on a haggard donkey smiles and waves. An almond-skinned girl with a bandage covering the left side of her skull, perhaps his sister, mistakes me for a Frenchwoman and asks for my stylo, or pen, with her tiny, outstretched palm. Unable to take my eyes off her soiled bandage, I surrender it instantly. Simultaneously sullen and stimulated, I study the mud embankment lining the 40 Days Road on the ride back to Kom Ombo, striving to digest the old, exhilarating chaos I've witnessed, half-chewed. In the scraggy sauna of the bus I eventually conclude, like my predecessor Flaubert, that the more you concentrate on the details, the less you grasp the whole -- and as the sun sets over silent pastures and a dusty breeze skims my cheek, I gather my thoughts like the folds of a robe and assume, once again, the tedious armor of a 20th century tourist SALON | March 21, 1999 Kristan Schiller has written for the New York Times, Newsday and Time Out. She lives in Hoboken, N.J.