Our Story
An oasis in the Middle East: NK Arabians & The Nofal Kahook Family.
As with most stories with Arabian horses, Nofal’s Arabian horse involvement was put on hiatus as the busy day-to-day life took priority. Eventually, Nofal traveled back to the United States to further his education and to assist with running his fathers company. Starting out with his undergrad studies at the Palm Beach College in Lake Worth, Florida, Nofal furthered his studies at the University of Miami by beginning a major in PreMed. It was during this time that Nofal met his wife Muntaha and were married shortly thereafter. With the growing responsibility and workload of assisting with his father’s business, Nofal changed direction of his career path and his studies to focus on Business and Finance, which he later graduated with top honors. It was through his education, along with Nofal’s innate excellent business sense that he was able to found and grow very successful businesses around the world and later focused his interests to mergers to acquisitions, including assisting two private companies from private ownership to public trade on the NASDAQ. Family is an essential element of Nofal and Muntaha’s life. Together they have five beautiful children who have also started family’s of their own. Dakallah is Nofal & Muntaha’s eldest son and has his Juris Doctorate and practices Law in Colorado along with his wife Areej who together have two children. Ayah has her Masters in Education and Business and lives with her husband Mohammad and two children in Dubai along with sister Dallal, who also has her Masters in Education & Business, lives with her husband Firas and children. Jadallah lives in Miami, Florida and is studying International Business and Jawad is completing middle school in Florida. “It’s truly a family involvement,” says Muntaha. “All of our children love to join us in the stables when they visit us. They enjoy the horses and take great pleasure seeing the mares with their babies,” continues Muntaha.
“The difference between who you are, what you want to accomplish, and who you want to be, lies within what you do.” A more truer statement couldn’t be made of Nofal Kahook. His story and journey into the Arabian horse world is no fairytale and was not by mistake by any means. The journey is a culmination of hard work, determination, sacrifice, strong beliefs, and moralities that have been passed down unchanged for over two thousand years. The oldest of seven children, Nofal Kahook was born in Jerusalem, Palestine amidst the brewing tension, which escalated to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Experiencing the war and the devastating aftermath was enough to instill determination and willpower, enough so that Nofal’s father felt that the visceral relationship of where Nofal and his children came from had been instinctively instilled and decided it was time he moved his family back to the United States so they could experience the enrichment of both worlds, of course always being reminded where “home” was. Introduced to Arabian horses at a very young age, Nofal’s father was influential in the then five year old boys infatuation with the Bedouin tribes scattered along the outskirts of his hometown of Al-Bireh, a small town outside of Ramallah, Palestine. As with most first introductions to Arabian horses, the love was instant and a flame had been ignited within the young boy. Nofal and his father drove by daily and each time Nofal’s curiosity grew and grew. After many requests asking his father to stop, it would be this one time his father finally obliged and made a stop to visit with the Bedouins. With no horse sense whatsoever, Nofal jumped out of the car, taking no caution of any surroundings, and ran to the white horse who was tied to the side of the tent, the horse belonging to the Sheikh. “It was a magical moment”, says Nofal. “I can close my eyes and still remember that brisk cold morning like it was yesterday – the air was clean and crisp. I ran so fast towards the snowwhite mare all awhile my father yelling at me to come back to him. Of course, the Arabian mare’s natural instinct comforted me as she lowered her head and rested it in my arms as I hugged her for what seemed like an eternity,” continues Nofal. “It was right then and there that I knew Arabian horses were someday going to be a part of my life. After all, Arabian horses have been apart of our culture for thousands of years,” continued Kahook. For the next several years, Nofal would go with his father to visit the Bedouins and the grey mare. “I think it was about a year later that the Chief gestured to me to get up on the mare, and of course I didn’t even blink. A leg up and I was off trotting around. Looking back now and remembering these experiences really brought out the love of the Arabian horse and instilled in me a great respect for this creature that played such an important role in our culture, in the evolution of man,” says Nofal.
