The word ‘kadish’ (feminine kadishah, plural kudsh) is one you will hear often if you become involved in Arabian horses in their native land, the Middle East. I for one, encountered it very early on in my life. I would be on a visit to a horse farm with my father, and we’d be looking at the mare herd that was roaming freely in large enclosed courtyards or open pastures, and learning about their elaborate origins and pedigrees (‘this one is a Saqlawiyah from this tribe, this one a Hamdaniyah from that clan’, and so on), when a wretched-looking horse typically kept in a separate enclosure would draw my attention, perhaps exactly because he was being left apart: ‘And what about this one?’ I would naively ask our host. “Oh, this one is just a kadish, we use him to pull the cart”, would be the usual answer, often uttered in a dismissive tone, as if discussing the ‘kadish’ further was a distraction from the more interesting conversation about the other horses. The less people talked about these ‘kadish’, the more the curiosity of the ten year old I was back then was aroused. On the way back from these visits, I…