Los Animales del Mundo, part I

Los Animales del Mundo, part I | June 22, 2025

Luxor, September 2023

The tears started to fall and streak down the dirt-encrusted sunscreen of my face. Silently at first but, gaining momentum, upwelling into an audible sob. I couldn't take my eyes away even as the searing heat of the midday sun burned my vision. The image of the horses blurred into a haze through the veil of tears.  

"HEY, why you crying? Why sad?" a man jeered loudly. He was lounging on top of a large, rickety cart, picking his teeth and almost purposeful in his depiction of noontime leisure amidst the picture of misery which surrounded him. Dozens of emaciated horses stood with their heads hanging, dull eyes unfocused or slightly lidded as they took respite from their labors. The scars on their legs from hobbles past were visible even from 30 feet away. 

"Come on, let's go," my husband urged. The jeering man was now sitting upright and continuing to loudly mock us, the two obvious tourists pausing in the street. My husband wanted to get us out of there before I attracted even more attention with my crying. The man was obviously enjoying the diversion of the scene at hand and standing there would only contribute to its continuation. 

We had decided to take a walk through downtown Luxor to see some of the rest of the city, having spent the cooler morning hours sightseeing at Luxor and Karnak temples. On our walk, we had visited a bookstore and ate under the golden arches, America's true embassy. Now, we were paused on Mabad al Karnak, one of the main roads in Luxor and the site of some sun awnings erected by the Brooke Society, if I remember right, in their efforts to promote equine welfare for the local working horses.

Throughout our entire trip I had watched the equines, just as I watch all the animals that live in the background of the humanscape we dominate. They emerge from the shadows, if you look hard enough. These creatures persist through their ability to fade into the background of our lives, making their living by blending into the places that they occupy. The cats physically melt into the shadows, avoiding tuk tuks, cars, and scooters, and seeking refuge in the doorways and alleys of the world. Horses and donkeys, those poor beasts of burden, cannot physically slip away into the shadows. Instead, they blend in by becoming living statues, shutting down mentally and fading the consciousness behind their eyes. It is not just the result of physical exhaustion and lack of conditioning, but also the only strategy they have to momentarily seek respite from the harsh world they are forced to labor within. 

For the last week, I had been able to keep my emotions in check as we encountered the working horses singularly or in small quantities. In Cairo and Giza, there were working horses in poor condition, but somewhat spread out such that we passed by only one or two at a time. At the pyramids, conditions were poor but not horrific. Contracted heels, jutting hipbones and ribby torsos, ill-fitting tack, sores and wounds both fresh and old. It reflected poor conditions but nothing that couldn't be compartmentalized for the enjoyment of the trip. My distress was consistent but kept at a level that could be contained. 

Now, standing in front of the couple-dozen horses in Luxor, the sadness overflowed. Seeing so many of those animals in one place, standing together with heads down in stillness and bones jutting through thin skin was too much. People passed by, talking, laughing, taking pictures with their phones. The horses were the unnoticed backdrop of lives and travels. 

How can people walk past and slip their eyes over the misery that is right in front of them? How can we, collectively, not see the cruelty of our actions? What occupies us such that we no longer see emaciated bodies of the living beings that labor among us? We may not be the ones who lace the chain around that horse's fetlocks, or yields the whip that forces one to trot, trot, trot for hours on contracted heels and swollen fetlocks, hauling overweight and unbalanced carts under the Middle Eastern sun. But, we are complicit in our inactions and our contradictions. 

Thousands of dollars and untold hours are spent in looking, awestruck, at the monuments of the distant past. The silent facades of sand-whipped colossi watch us as we mill about, staring up into their ancient eyes. What do they think we see? We travel across the world for the privilege of gazing into their blank faces hoping to gain... what? 

The statues of living horses stand behind us, near us, all around us. They are distant, and they are close. The horses wait for us to return from our seeking, to use them, to work them out of stillness and into life. Our eyes don't pause on their visage in hopes of seeking anything. Maybe we have learned all that we need to by looking into the dead eyes of the stone statues; the liquid eyes of the living reveal nothing to us. 

The hot winds stir golden sand around the antimonuments: the horses of Luxor.