At a camel market outside of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a man with a bag of sugar drew an interested crowd.

By KATHERINE ZOEPF

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - This time of year, when the weather here is still cool and comfortable and the flowering plants and shrubs are everywhere, how better to spend a day than to be out in the desert with beautiful camels? To be sure, the untrained eye might find it hard to appreciate such beauty.
But here, camel aesthetics can be evaluated according to a series of precise and exacting “It’s just like judging a beautiful girl,” said Fowzan al-Madr, a camel breeder from the Kharj region southeast of Riyadh.
“You look for big eyes, long lashes and a long neck ? maybe 39 or 40 inches,” he said, or about a meter.
As he spoke, Mr. Madr was surveying the offerings at Saudi Arabia’s largest camel market, on the outskirts of Riyadh.
The souq al-jamal, as the market is called in Arabic, sprawls over the open desert for so many hectares that it is useful to have a car to drive from pen to pen.
The days are long past when camels were crucial to life, a chapter lost in increasing urbanization and technology.
But there is still pleasure in raising them, as a touchpoint to history, for milk and meat, for racing and, yes, for their beauty.
Camel beauty pageants, in which camels are judged on their looks and dressage, are held all over Saudi Arabia.
The death in January of Mashoufan ? a male camel who earned celebrity status after winning first prize in a number of pageants and was said to be worth more than $4.5 million ? was widely reported, and his owner received condolences from around the country.
Camel breeding is a multimillion-dollar industry in Saudi Arabia, and late winter is a popular time for wealthy Saudi camel owners to arrange parties in the desert to spend time with their favorite camels.
Ali bin Talal al-Johany, a former minister of telecommunications, owns a herd of 124 camels and keeps a large framed photograph of his prized bull, Musfer, in his home.
He explained that because Saudi Arabia had developed so quickly, camels had a great deal of symbolism for older Saudis, and owning them was a pleasurable way to feel connected with the past.
“My family always had a very strong relationship with the Bedouin, and the camels remind me of my childhood,” Mr. Johany said of his passion, which began when the crown prince, Prince Sultan, sent him 15 camels as a gift.
“Owning camels is a very sentimental thing for most of us.
” Back at the souq al-jamal, Haza al- Shammari, a camel breeder from Ha’il in northern Saudi Arabia, agreed.
“Camels are just like humans,” Mr. Shammari explained.
“They love and hate just like humans.
” “See this one?” he asked, pointing to a white female camel with long eyelashes and a calm gaze.
“She isn’t married yet, this one.
She’s still a virgin.
Look at the black eyes, the soft fur.
The fur is trimmed so it’s short and clean, just like a girl going to a party.
” Suddenly, Mr. Shammari grabbed the white camel’s chin and kissed it right on the mouth.
“When you get to know the camels, you feel love for them.
My camels are like my children, my family.”