«لَا شُفْتِ الْجَمَلْ وَلَا الْجَمَّالْ»

At face value, the speaker says they themselves never saw the camel, nor the man who drives it. Naming both together turns the reply into a blanket first-person disavowal, a claim to know nothing about one part of the affair or the other.

In practice, the saying characterizes someone who guards a matter with intense secrecy. The denial is a chosen posture of concealment rather than an honest admission of ignorance, making clear that the speaker will disclose nothing about the business at hand.

Use it when someone presses you about a matter you have resolved to keep entirely to yourself, or to describe a person who holds a secret tightly and professes to know nothing about any part of it. It signals deliberate silence, not simply not knowing.