Published in 2006, the short story collection Hayawanat Ayyamna (Animals in Our Days) by Egyptian author Muhammad Makhzangi evokes the long history of writings on animals within the Arabic and Islamic literary tradition. From the Qur'an itself, through pre-modern authors such as al-Jahiz and numerous Sufi scholars and poets, animals played a prominent role in Arabic literature and shaped how people viewed the world and humanity's role in it. Unlike pre-modern texts, however, Makhzangi's stories do not feature talking animals that mimic human characteristics. Instead, I demonstrate in this paper that in these stories, animals, although mute, eloquently highlight human brutality, particularly when technology and a globalized modernity have cut off human societies from the natural world around them. While animals are often portrayed as victims in these stories, they are also a locus of the supernatural. In counterpoint to the callous modernity of the human world, Makhzangi suggests, animals retain an element of the miraculous, the magical and inexplicable. Thus, these stories partake of the magical realism narrative tradition. In "He Was Pursuing A Butterfly in the Sea," for example, a paralyzed swimmer is miraculously saved by dolphins; in "Enchanted Rabbits," phantom rabbits appear on a city square at night, years after a popular uprising and its brutal suppression on the same site; and in "The Sadness of Horses," a horse dying in a minefield magically regains its life and walks to safety. The stories range widely in their settings as well, from modern Vietnam and India to rural Egypt, often with a semi-autobiographical Arab narrator. Additionally, the first three stories ("Deer," "Foal," and "Puppies") are inspired by well-known current events, and are seemingly set in Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the US-led invasion in 2003. In echoing recent history, they offer a timely perspective on the human capacity for violence. Other writers of modern Arabic fiction have addressed the conflicts and tensions between modernity and tradition in their societies. I suggest in this paper that Muhammad Makhzangi approaches this tension from a slightly different angle, finding in animals a common motif by which to illustrate the negative impact of modernity and globalization on humanity. Ultimately, it is humanity that is Makhzangi's foremost theme--both our capacity for cruelty, and the possibility that, through animals, we can restore our connection to the magical and the numinous.