Bedouin Proverb: "My treasures do not clink together or glitter.
They gleam in the sun and neigh in the night."
(660) 355-4555
Unionville, MO
ellen@antiquityhill.com

By Elizabeth Schnakenberg   Age 13

13 yr old Elizabeth is dressed in full native costume of Deep red, richly embroidered in gold and black and beaded with thousands of glass and antique beads in designs that encrust the entire Abbah or robe. She is carrying a Bedouin flyswatter made from the tails of our horses. She begins this speech….

"Well, Hello! Have you heard the tale of Moniet El Nafis- the Pearl of Great Price? You haven't?? Well then, take a seat as I tell you this story of great beauty and terrible tragedy …… the story of a great Arabian Stallion.

Excuse me while I become a horse….

(Colic signs)

(Pacing)

Doctors- What are they doing? Colic? What's colic? (groan) IT hurts! Why are you sticking me? What's a belly tap? What do you mean it's bad? Oh, make it go away... it hurts so bad. Please, make it go away. Oh, don't stick me again. What are you doing? There, there, what are you doing? I feel funny, everything's fuzzy. I'm... getting sleepy...what's....

I'm feeling a little better now. I think... I can feel the sun on me. Oh, it feels so good, laying on the grass with my eyes closed in the sunshine. Ooh- it's so bright! Hey, that's my mom looking over me. Hmmm. I can feel her soft breath as it tickles the long whiskers on my muzzle. That sun is so bright it makes me blink. She nickers and it startles me so I jump up and stretch my legs. Ooh it feels so good. Wait- I remember doing this. I've been here before. In this field- this scene. So long ago. I was just a baby. A foal. I remember this place. The warmth of my mother, the smell of her closeness and the sweet taste of her milk still left on my muzzle. This is the before place. I heard it was called "Bentwood". This is where Jerold and Peter were. And Lisa.

I lived in the before place.... Bentwood, for 2 years with Jerold and Lisa.... and Peter. Jerold used to come out and watch me every day. He would talk to me thru the fence. He would tell me how beautiful he thought I was. How he had waited for me all of his life. How he had planned and waited and prayed for me. But Lisa, she was my friend. She never wanted me to leave. Lisa was Jerold's daughter. She was very upset when she found out I was going to leave. I didn't understand them. My friend Peter brought me out that day, just like he had brought me out every other day, but this time there was another man there with them. I sensed that this time was different than all of the other times, and when I stepped out of the shadows, the man changed. I don't think that anyone else noticed it, but I did. He got excited, tense. Like a rubber band. I heard them talk about it for days after that day.

"$500,000! No person has ever paid that much for a 2 year old colt before--and he was sold in 30 seconds!" they said.

It turned out that Jerold McCracken had admired the broodmares at Imperial Egyptian Stud for years and that was the only reason he had let me be purchased at any price.

My name is Moniet El Nafis. Jerold named me "The Priceless One" in Arabic, but shockingly, Jerold's price had been met that day.

I remember what happened later. I remember the noise. My heart was pounding. The noise just got louder and louder and we got closer and closer. My handler was nervous too. I could smell his adrenalin coursing through his veins. Suddenly, we're there-- there are lights everywhere you look, and the noise- people clapping, shouting, whistling, and the pounding of our hearts louder and louder. I threw my tail in a fountain over my back and arched my neck as I struck the arabesque dappled grey pose I was becoming famous for, then departed with hooves flashing and knees popping foe everything I was worth. But I really wasn't ready to leave the ring yet- I was having entirely too much fun! When they put the pretty ribbons around my neck and led me around again I had just as much fun the 2nd time around.

I won many awards in the show ring as both a halter horse and English Pleasure performance horse including 2 time Scottsdale Top 10. I sired 159 Purebred Arabian foals. Many of my daughters are prized as broodmares. Some of my children excelled in the show ring- too many to name, while others excelled in Racing, such as Imperial Na Laseef- a Darley Award nominee and 1989 Armand Hammer Classic Winner- sold to the Royal Stables of Morocco; and ZT Ali Baba who won 14 races and retired to sire another generation of record setting racehorses and MHF Eclipse who broke track records at Los Alamitos. You know, the funny thing is that they didn't breed these race horses on purpose- they came about by accident- they were show horses that didn't make the cut! Hmmmmmm I wonder.... what would have happened if I would have been bred to produce race horses on purpose...

While I was at Imperial, they said I was to have an important job. A VERY important job. When Carl had seen me at the Before place, he had not been planning on purchasing another stallion, but thought perhaps he might lease one to cross on some of his Imperial mares. When he saw me, he saw the future of his breeding program, and so I was to be the father of some of the most important foals in the Arabian breed. And so they came, one by one... my harem. The most beautiful mares in the world came to visit me. At Imperial Egyptian Stud I reigned as Sheik and from my seed sprang some of the breed's most prized broodmares.... and from them have come Champions and Reserve Champions from all over the world. Arabian Race Horses Carry my blood across Finish Lines in this country and others. Perhaps Jerold was right after-all when he chose my name.

NO! NO! Oh, NO! Not him! Not the man with the Funny name! Not this day! I want to forget this day. Not this man! Not this day! This is the day my world changed forever!"

I am to go to Canada to one of the Walker farms. Most of the horses have to be sold. Since Carl has died there are just too many, so his wife decided to cut it down to a more manageable number.

But I never made it to Canada. The man with the funny name-- the designer of hand bags and shoes and clothes came to get me. The man named Paolo Gucci. He took me to New York to be the crown jewel of his Arabian program there. My harem became mares he purchased for me from Gleanloch Farm and other famous breeding programs. But there was trouble brewing, for Mr. Paolo Gucci was an unhappy man. When he decided to divorce his Opera-singing wife, he didn't want her to get any more of his money than necessary, so he stopped paying the bills. He thought that if he appeared that he was poor the courts would not make him pay her a large amount of money in their divorce settlement. As a result the farm was going bankrupt. While he found that he had no trouble signing an invoice to have $10,000 worth of landscaping done on his farm, he could not seem to see the point in signing an invoice for food for the horses that lived there. When Time/Life did a story they titled it "They feed horses don't they?"
The horses were starving and the people who worked at the farm who loved us were being forced to look for work elsewhere. The man with the funny name actually told them in the magazine interview that if you couldn't see our ribs we were too fat. The neighbors were leaving bags of feed by the front gate in hopes that someone would take it in to us and feed us. We began to die. Those that didn't began to look like walking skeletons. The man at Gleanloch farms had not been paid for all of his mares, so after the death of his wife wore off enough that he began to get some of his senses back, he got the US Marshals involved and they came to the farm in droves, but only because he hadn't been paid his money. Oh but it was a marvelous sight! The flashing lights and the sirens! The men in their uniforms came in droves to load us into trailers. And they brought some of the people like Kaye who used to work with us, to identify some of the horses so that their registration papers could be restored and they could be rescued. But for many of us, it wasn't soon enough.

Ohhh,, Ohh, it hurts so bad. Why does it hurt so bad??! Please make it stop! What did I do that was so wrong that it hurts so bad?? Why can't you make it go away??

(Elizabeth is now the Bedouin Narrator again) Why couldn't someone with so much money not see that the money he had already invested in us was going to waste as we died? Why hasn't someone come up with better laws to protect animals making it a felony for someone to willfully neglect animals on a huge scale such as Paolo Gucci?

Moniet El Nafis Born Feb 1976, Champion Arabian Stallion, Producer of Champions, Highest Selling 2 yr old of his time and sold later for millions of dollars, was humanely Euthanized after a bout of Colic at Paolo Gucci's Mill Crest Farm in New York State in 1993. Imperial Egyptian Stud was eventually made aware of Nafis' colic episode and made it possible for him to be transported to the University where a valiant effort to save him was made in vain before the decision to put down this great horse was made. Most of the hired hands quit the farm after this episode citing irreconcileable differences with management as their reason for leaving. Within months a forced dispersal sale was held and Gucci was out of business in the US. Shortly thereafter he died leaving a farm in the UK and no will. His girlfriend Penny was later charged with cruelty and neglect when she refused to feed the remaining horses because "they were too expensive". Her punishment included that she not be allowed to own horses for a period of 5 years.