about those horses

Forgot to finish the story. On our bumpy ride up from the Treasury to the entrance ( ancient paving stones are not pleasant in a carriage with no springs), when we could talk, we asked our driver a few questions. Turns out, the whole in-site transportation concession is run by basically one big Bedouin family. “My uncle” owns it, is the standard answer, along with “my cousin”.
I asked why the horses were all draped from their shoulders to past their tails. ” Because they poop” was the answer. When we dismounted, I looked more carefully and saw that the horse was wearing a sort of diaper ( I think the Central Park hansom cab horses do too) and that the whole messy thing was covered to protect tourists from the unpleasant facts of a horse’s life. The horses do a really hard job, but not as hard as the donkeys. Like everywhere they exist, a donkey’s life is a hard life. Here, they were carrying people, often large people, around the site along semi-paved paths and limestone block areas. In Morocco, they are often piled with straw, baskets of fruit, kindling, way taller than the animal itself. And yet, they trudge along. Someone should make a monument to the donkey, beast of burden for so much of the world. As we were walking back, at around 6:30, we saw one donkey, loose, running as fast as it’s little legs would carry it, with a kid on another donkey in pursuit. Earlier, as our group was leaving one area, a donkey kind of joined our bunch of tourists, seemingly trying to escape in the crowd. It didn’t succeed!
Karen

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