Okay, so many of you are probabaly wondering about the title of this post. It's the name of the book I just read, by Ayun Halliday. The full name of the book is No Touch Monkey!: And Other Travel Lessons Learned Too Late. The entire book is her memoirs of different travels, and in the essay titled On Dress, Ayun recalls a trip her and her husband made across the desert on camelback in India. If a camel misbehaved in any way, the handler would hit and beat the camel in the face. There was one quote in particular that really stuck out at me, though. Halliday wrote:
"I couldn't bring myself to look her in the face, partly because I'd heard that camels' foul-smelling sputum could blind you if they spat in your eye, but also due to the cruelty of that wooden plug staked through her nostrils. The urban primitive movement was just gathering steam, and as a subway-riding city dweller, I'd seen my fair share of septum piercings and oversized jewelry whose purpose was to stretch. Still, I couldn't help noting that those were modifications humans had inflicted upon themselves by choice. I reckoned that if I were an animal and some two-legs drove a chunk of wood through my nose, I'd feel pretty f***ing stoned to get payback. I wouldn't hesitate to buck any brightly turbaned turkey making a show of steering me by yanking on a nylon cord," (Halliday 209).
My question this time is an easy one. What is your opinion on this quote?
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