The Lost War Horses of Cairo

by Grant Hayter-Menzies

  “The whole story started in Egypt in 2005,” says Dr. Ammr Mahmoud, “and began at the initiative of Mr. Sherif Foda, Brooke Hospital for Animals Egypt Chairman. The initiative was the inclusion of an article on animal welfare.” Dr. Petra Maria Sidhom, who had retired from most of her animal welfare work in Egypt in 2008–9, assisted Brooke and several other charities brought together by constitutional mandate to draft this animal protection law. “The constitution required an umbrella of organizations for animal protection to come together and work on such a law,” Dr. Sidhom explains.59

  “The first conference I initiated was not about human corruption—it was about the degree of suffering and the ignorance of rules and regulations implemented in the Koran—rules that demanded that the slaughtermen must minimize the suffering of the animals during the slaughtering process, and regulations how to implement this, which were ignored on a daily basis; the second, to initiate the protecting legislation. But it was not really a homogeneous front,” adds Dr. Sidhom. “In the end, it was mainly The Brooke and myself working on it.”60

  To develop the language, Dr. Sidhom, who took her doctorate in animal welfare at the Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut (Criminological Research Institute) in Hannover, Germany, asked a variety of international charities to contribute their animal protection laws, from which the Cairo charities could pull what details were most useful for their purposes. But Dr. Sidhom began to have her doubts at the fourth draft, because the wording was becoming more and more diluted. Not all charities, in Dr. Sidhom’s recollection, were particularly attentive to this. “I remembered from the World Organisation for Animal Health that wording is really crucial,” Dr. Sidhom explains. “A single word can mean a world of difference. But the other Egyptian charities were so happy just to have an animal welfare law on the table they made huge compromises—regarding researching on live animals, product testing, appropriate penalties for violation of animal protection law. So I said, ‘If this is the law you wish to fight for, fine with me, just try to have the best draft possible,” and she bowed out.61

  The language ended up as a paragraph in the new Egyptian constitution, Article 45, but considerably watered down. “The whole article is much more environmental,” Dr. Sidhom points out. “It is all about protecting resources. Prevention of cruelty to animals is at the very bottom.”62 Moreover, Article 46 also deals with environmental issues, making the prior article seem a sort of afterthought, or a last-ditch effort to insert some sort of animal protection language in the final sentence of what is really a law enshrining protection of natural resources of interest to the government of Egypt and to large-scale exporters of livestock. It awaited the reconstitution of Parliament, which had been suspended since June 2012, with promises from the current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, that parliamentary elections would occur by the end of 2015. They did occur, but with notably low voter turnout. As for Article 45, in it the state commits to prevention of cruelty to animals.63

  Dr. Sidhom points out one bright spark of light. “You don’t see as many horses and donkeys as you used to,” she says. “Cheap Japanese minivans come into the country now, and they can pay for them in instalments. Luckily, a lot of the garbage donkeys, horses and mules are fewer in number because of this.”64

  Yet social media, which has an unsleeping eye open to every square inch of planet Earth, is rife with the visible consequences of age or illness for the working animals of Cairo—a situation that in many respects has not changed a great deal since the early years of the Brooke Hospital for Animals.

  People who follow the Egypt Horse Project, Egypt Equine Aid, ESMA, Brooke, and other animal welfare charities, on different days and sometimes on the same day, post to the Internet photographs of horses, mules, or donkeys in conditions not much different from the snapshots preserved in Dorothy Brooke’s albums, images to be viewed only by those who have the stomach for truth. Many of these unfortunate animals are pictured after their owner has brought them in for treatment—sometimes late, sometimes too late, but at least they bring them in. Many others are seen standing or lying along roads, barely alive.

  It’s a testament to the work begun by the Cairo SPCA and Dr. Alfred Branch, and Dorothy’s Brooke Hospital for Animals, and the many worthy animal welfare organizations scattered in and around Cairo, that it is recognized at all levels of society that there is no excuse for illness or injury to go untreated where there is free veterinary care available, where education reveals that the animal that is one’s livelihood may also be the life of the family and the love of a child, and where it is understood more and more that compassion in the home sends out endless concentric circles of benefit to people and animals one may never meet.

  Yet the specters pasted into Dorothy’s early 1930s picture album continue to reemerge out of the dust and exhaust of modern Cairo’s traffic-jammed streets. And they are not always brought in by a recalcitrant or remorseful owner. Many are simply abandoned, wanted by no one.

  On the day this sentence was written, a photo is posted to a Face-book animal welfare page. It shows a thin, despairing donkey. No longer young, worn-out beyond human uses, he stands in a heap of hot sand alongside broken concrete and garbage at a busy intersection in a Cairo suburb. He is tethered by a thin rope too strong for the weakened animal to ever break, even if he had had the necessary will to live to do so, or a place to go for refuge, if he did manage to get free.

  As many see this donkey, typed voices scream out of the Internet, in English and Arabic, in French and German: Please save him!

  But nobody can.

  Nobody can, because this little gray donkey isn’t the only old, starving, thirsty, and despairing working animal left tethered to garbage, treated like garbage, in Cairo, or Hyderabad, or Mexico City, or somewhere in the hills of Montana. Of the many benefits the Internet brings, a specially dubious one is its bird’s eye view of just how much animal suffering there is all over the globe, let alone in Egypt.

  In Cairo our donkey is a mere speck in a human landscape so huge it would take hours to reach all the animals needing help, hours no one has to spare in the chaos of an overcrowded, stressed metropolis where even human life is lighter than the feather that counterweights mortal hearts on the scales of the Egyptian underworld. Against this, what is the substance of a little gray donkey that nobody wants, that nobody sees? And he is not Cairo’s donkey alone. He lives in every society in every part of the globe where cruelty is tolerated and innocence exploited, where human suffering too often finds a scapegoat in abusing a defenseless animal. He has never fought a war, the little donkey—not the kind fought by Dorothy Brooke’s battle steeds. But he is a casualty of the conflict between the limits to which one life can be stretched to meet unrealistic demands, ending at death without the decent benefit of the brief rest accorded even the poorest human being before the soul lets go. The donkey, and others of his kind, drop in the traces, stumble, and are beaten even when it should be clear the punishment will do more to kill than revive. His human tormentor has too often felt that same lash, similarly seen as valueless in the eyes of those safe on the rungs above him. So the little donkey is, in fact, a warrior of a kind Dorothy would have recognized, and one for whom she would have moved the Mokattam Hills in order to get him the green meadow he deserved—cool streams instead of hot sand, compassion instead of carelessness.

  “The question is not, Can they reason?” wrote Jeremy Bentham, “nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

  The donkey suffers, and his suffering and that of working animals like him are all the proof necessary that the work of the Brooke Hospital for Animals, and of Brooke clinics it spawned around the globe, is needed, more than ever before—because little has changed since Dorothy Brooke arrived in Cairo in 1930 to find the ghosts of war shambling and suffering in its streets, alleyways, garbage dumps, and rock quarries, in a world where the wars of human beings are still exposing the innocents—the animals and the children—to violence they do not cause, do no
t understand, and do not deserve.

  If the donkey could speak, he and all the forgotten animals like him might be forgiven for confessing, in the words of an ancient Egyptian poem younger than the history of human strife and animal pain, that “Hearts are greedy./ No man’s heart can be relied on.”65

  In answer, Dorothy Brooke seems to respond from that green meadow of paradise she wished for all the horses, mules, and donkeys who came under her care: “From this community of suffering I have never tried to withdraw myself. It seemed to me a matter of course that we should take up our share of the burden of pain that lies upon the world.”66

  Her guiding spirit, through the ongoing work of Brooke, the Brooke Hospital for Animals in Cairo, and all the clinics to which it gave birth bears, shares, and helps cool that pain still.

  Epilogue

  Brooke

  Pray a prayer for the men at the war,

  As the bells ring out at noon,

  Pray for the reign of Love and Law,

  For the World-peace dawning soon,

  Pray for the mothers, and children, and wives,

  For all who suffer and do,

  Pray for the men who give their lives—

  Why not the horses too?

  —H.F.W.1

  Brooke is an international charity that protects and improves the lives of horses, donkeys, and mules, which gives people in the developing world the opportunity to work their way out of poverty. For 600 million people in some of the poorest and most marginalized places in the world, 100 million of these animals are the backbone of communities and their best means of making a living. Without healthy working horses, donkeys, and mules, people wouldn’t be able to put food on their tables, send their children to school, or build better futures for themselves and their families.

  Brooke works hard to deliver significant and lasting change, even in some of the world’s most challenging areas. We use our expertise to train and support owners of horses, donkeys, and mules, local vets, farriers, harness makers, and animal traders to improve standards of care. Operating in eleven different countries, and funding projects in many others, Brooke reaches more working horses, donkeys, and mules every year than any other organization. For more information please visit www.thebrooke.org. To support ongoing work to alleviate the suffering of working animals worldwide through Brooke USA, please visit www.BrookeUSA.org.

  Brooke’s Timeline

  The Early Years: Forging a Tradition

  1930 Dorothy Brooke arrives in Cairo, Egypt, with her husband, Geoffrey Brooke, a major general in the British Army.

  1931 Dorothy Brooke writes a letter to the Morning Post to urge the British public to help relieve the suffering of thousands of ex–war horses she encounters in Cairo.

  1934 The Brooke Hospital for Animals is established in Egypt.

  1938 The first shade shelter and water troughs are established in Cairo. The first motorized ambulance starts to operate.

  Decades of Change: Continuing Care

  1961 Alexandria clinic opens, Egypt.

  1966 Luxor clinic opens, Egypt.

  1984 The first best horse competition begins in Luxor.

  1988 Jordan clinic opens (Wadi Musa-Petra).

  1988 Aswan clinic opens, Egypt.

  1991 Brooke expands into Pakistan.

  1992 Mobile teams begin operating in India.

  1992 Edfu clinic opens, Egypt.

  1994 Brooke Netherlands begins to raise money.

  2000 Marsa Matrouh clinic opens, Egypt.

  Today: Reaching Out

  2001 Partnership programs begin in Kenya.

  2002 Groundbreaking research program begins with Bristol University Veterinary School.

  2003 Partnership program begins in Afghanistan.

  2004 Brooke launches partnership program in Guatemala.

  2005 Brooke carries out relief work with Mercy Corps, after the earthquake strikes in Pakistan.

  2005 Partnership program begins in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Palestinian villages in Israel and the West Bank).

  2006 Brooke expands into Ethiopia.

  2006 National Donkey Welfare Day is established in Kenya.

  2007 Partnership with Action for Women and Rural Development is established in Kanpor, India.

  2008 Partnership program begins in Nepal.

  2008 American Friends of the Brooke is established.

  2010 Brooke expands into Senegal.

  2013 A pilot project begins in Nicaragua.

  2015 Brooke USA commemorates its advancement with a visit to its location in Lexington, Kentucky, by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall.

  By 2016 Brooke hopes to have made life better for two million working horses, donkeys, and mules and the millions of people who depend on them for their livelihoods.

  Acknowledgments

  Equines run by the herd through my family history. My mother was an expert horsewoman, as comfortable in English saddle as Western; as a girl in central California, she loved directing cattle with the aid of her eager dog Tiny. Something about a given horse’s reticence, its basic impatience with being tied or stabled, its passionate resistance toward curtailment or control, and its heartfelt demonstration of affection toward those it loves resonated with my mother, who was very similar.

  I learned to sit a horse as a child on the farm of a friend who had grown up with horses. Lisa rode an old mare bareback, gripping her mane; I held on to Lisa, and we three paced the low, hilly woods around the farm, clopping through peaceful stillness and dappled sunlight, kept safe by the mare’s sure, untroubled steps over rocks or logs or gooseberry bushes, quiet but for her occasional snort or nicker.

  At home we had a pony, Dickens, who preferred being in our house to the yard. The floors of the 1860s structure creaked but held firm, as did our open invitation whenever Dickens needed human company in human habitation. And my grandmother, though a devout Christian lady, confided to me she wanted to believe in reincarnation, because if it were true, she said, she hoped to come back as a wild horse, running forever over green fields.

  Given this background, perhaps it was inevitable that I would come to write about Dorothy Brooke, whose love for horses and whose compassion for animals in need echoed my family’s views on the subject. It was not, however, a given that even with a grounding in compassion for animals I would be able to capture Dorothy Brooke’s life and her outlandishly beautiful idea, the Brooke Hospital for Animals, making her dream live again—showing why it has continued to inspire others—in these pages. If I have achieved anything close to this goal, it is because I have had the help of many friends and family who stood by me through many difficulties, faithful in all things, as I researched and wrote the book. Among them are these especial ones, given here in alphabetical order, as in no way could I assign each a level of consequence, when but for generous sharing of encouragement, inspiration, and wisdom by each (and by many I have not listed here, but who know who they are), this book would never have been written: Dr. Mohammed Abd-Elhay; Dr. Ammr Mahmoud; Dr. Marc Bekoff; Rachel Bhageerutty; Dr. Pamela Kyle Crossley; Elly Donovan; Judith Forbis; Susanna Forrest; Dr. Temple Grandin; Louise Hastie; Les Hayter; David Hogge; Petra Ingram; Rudi Klauser; Martin Laurie; William Luce; Joanna Lumley; Sarah Searight Lush; James Mayhew; Ronda Louise Menzies; Sean William Menzies; Dr. Alan Mikhail; Roly Owers; Monty Roberts; Cindy Rullman; Ann Searight; Richard Searight; Dr. Petra Maria Sidhom; Fiona Stevenson; and Maj. Gen. Sir Evelyn Webb-Carter.

  Last but never least, Freddie, my rescue pup, has sat at my feet through the research, writing, and editing of several books, including this one, always showing me why animal welfare and the efforts of so many compassionate people to support it are so important, for animals and for humans—undivided, unconditional love.

  Notes

  Prologue

  1. Rodenbeck, Cairo, xvi.

  2. Brooke, Horse Lovers, 1.

  3. Marriage license for Geoffrey Frances Heremon Brooke and Vera Mechin née vo
n Salza, Ancestry.com. England & Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567–1970, piece 0284. Vera’s marriage to Baron Mechin, a traveler and adventurer she had met when Mechin passed through Russia, ended in 1897. Vera’s father, Gen. Anton von Salza, is listed in Otto Magnus von Stackelberg, Genealogisches Handbuch der estländischen Ritterschaft, vol. 1 (Görlitz, 1931), 245 (Saltza [Salza]).

  4. Masefield, Poems and Plays, 446–47.

  5. S. Searight, Oasis, 8. Brooke and Combined Training were illustrated in midjump by artist Lionel Edwards, reproduced in Lunt, Scarlet Lancers, 119. In 1920, according to the Times (London) of June 25 (p. 14), Geoffrey and Combined Training won the Con-naught Challenge Trophy at Olympia.

  6. Graham, History of the Sixteenth, 176; Murland, Retreat and Rearguard-Somme 1918, 205; Paget, History of British Cavalry, 209–10. Note: Warrior, the mount of Jack Seely, commander of the Canadian Cavalry, would not only survive the war but live till 1941. Warrior’s obituary reads, in part, “The horse served continuously on the Western Front till Christmas Day 1918. Twice he was buried by the bursting of big shells on soft ground, but he was never seriously wounded.” See Brough Scott, “The Mighty Warrior, Who Led One of History’s Last-Ever Cavalry Charges,” Telegraph (London), January 12, 2015.

  7. Brooke, Horse Lovers, 38–39.

  8. Brooke, Horse-Sense, XV.

  9. Per Dorothy Brooke’s gravestone in Cairo.