The family that smiles together, psychoanalyses together The meeting of minds Profile by Yasmine El-Rashidi Meeting a psychiatrist is a nerve-wracking affair. Meeting two is no more assuring. I had no choice, however. I had to. "His daughter Shahira will be there too," the young psychologist who set up the appointment told me. "Don't worry though, she's very nice. And so is Dr Fathy. He's a darling." I was sceptical. The idea of interviewing two psychiatrists seemed more daunting than going into therapy. What would they think of me and my questions, I wondered. Arriving at the grounds of the Behman Psychiatric Hospital in Helwan was an ordeal in itself. The winding roads and narrow side streets were enough to make the most avid of drivers dizzy. I felt queasy. I wished I had never come up with the idea. "Relax," a group of five or six 20-something junior psychologists told me as I waited. "You'll love them, they're wonderful." A few hours later I felt like an idiot. Everyone had turned out to be right. Both Fathy and his daughter were warm, cheerful, agreeable, a far cry from the image of white-coated people with stern looks and critical personas I had created in my head. "My whole family is in the field," Fathy chuckled in his deep, kind-of croaky, kind-of husky voice. "You see outside," he says, pointing to the closed door of his office. "There's my son's office (Naser), my daughter's office (Shahira), and mine. The three of us work together." There is another son, but he is the odd one out. Shahira and Fathy both shake their heads, and laugh. "He's the black sheep of the family," Fathy says. "He's the only one I failed with. Even my grandchildren are in medical school," he says of Shahira's children. He worked hard to have it that way. And Fathy is the first to admit that he used his experience in psychiatry and psychology to get his way. "I call it psycho-manipulation," he chuckles again. "It works." His skills almost wavered with his daughter, however. Shahira was close to fleeing from the hard-grind and long hours of medical school and studies. "She came to me one day and said that she didn't want to continue," he says. "I told her to take the exam, pass, then stop medicine, because if she didn't she would never forgive herself," he says of her exams one year. He chuckles again. "I know my daughter very well. I knew if I told her that she would continue." She did, and the hospital blossomed into a family affair. The main administrative building on Behman's grounds comprises the senior doctor's offices. There are three of them and all three say "Loza" on the door. The family closeness is intriguing. "His grandchildren always go and talk to him about things," Shahira says. "They love him." I speak to one of his grandchildren -- Aziz, one of the medical school clan. He readily shares his great admiration and respect for his grandfather. "He's a great guy," he says on one occasion. "My grandfather's cool." When it comes to Fathy the grandfather, his profession has meant that no topic is off bounds or taboo. "So that means you believe that everyone should do what they want to do?" I ask during one of our meetings, curious about the parenting role philosophy embraced by the Loza's, and whether they believed it important to adhere to the imposed social norms. Fathy and Shahira immediately jump with their responses. "He was strict within reason," Shahira says of her father. "Some things were clearly non- negotiable." He nods. "The norm is not to shock people around you," he says, a casual smile rooted on his face. "If you shock people around you, then this is not the norm." Fathy has mastered the art of diplomatic compromise and his daughter nods in acknowledgment of his skills. "There is couple A and couple B," he says. "With couple A, I kiss X, and shake hands with Y. With couple B I kiss Y and shake hands with X," he continues. "I go to this party and everyone is dancing and drinking, and at the next they are more reserved," he says. And the point of the parable is that he learns to enjoy both. Fathy is a big party-goer. "You know, he comes home and complains that he is exhausted and no longer has the stamina he used to have," Shahira laughs. "Well, it's not surprising, he has been to work, come home, entertained people, been to one party, then another. I'm not surprised he is exhausted." Fathy suffered from a stroke a couple of years ago -- a fact that has made him just a notch slower than he would like. "We tell him he was living the life of a 25- year-old," Shahira laughs. "And now we're asking him to live like he is 35." And if he is not totally adjusted to being 10 years older, he is well on his way. One thing he has mastered other than the art of psycho- manipulation, as he calls it, is that of psycho- adjustment, as I call it -- adjusting to any situation enough to enjoy it, even when it comes to work. "I never wanted to be a psychiatrist." He continues to chuckle. "But I got trapped." Fathy does not, I think, intend to be amusing; it is just that everything he says, even if not intended to be funny, or even if not properly heard, is accompanied with a chuckle. And you smile back in response. "I started off in gynecology and surgery!" he says. "But at the time the law wouldn't allow me to leave if I was in surgery or gynecology, so I came into psychiatry. It made it easier for me to leave," he offers bluntly. "But as soon as I did, the law changed." Things kept rolling on from there. "I got my diploma in psychiatry, worked as a consultant at first, then head of a section, then of a department, then I took over in the sixties." He is talking about Behman -- a hospital synonymous with the name Loza. The hospital has been in the family since the 1920s. It is considered the ground-stone of private psychiatric care in the country, and Dr Loza one of the nation's grandfathers of psychiatry. He is making sure that this reputation and history of sound practice and professionalism run in the family. It is, in his eyes, their life. "They grew up on the grounds," Fathy says, talking about his children and looking at his daughter. "Really," he chuckles. "They did." In those grounds are several buildings and villas one of which, until 1967, was Dr Fathy Loza's home. Yet still, he insists, he never took his psychiatry or psychology home. "Once he came home," Shahira tells me, "he became like any other father. Not wanting me to do this, or that." But of course, he stresses, he always did keep his work away from home. "Except for the psycho-manipulation," he laughs. These days it is more difficult, though, to play mind games on the younger generation given that they are all in the medical business too. Nevertheless, he continues to bring to his medical school manipulation the same passion and professionalism with which he approaches his work. "He is passionate about everything he does," his daughter says. "From partying to patients." Fathy initially appears quiet, almost shy, about sharing his life, and does not seem to quite understand why he is being interviewed. He is not used to being on the other side of the desk, and it takes a while for him to loosen up. A few weeks at least. Sitting in the picturesque garden of the Swiss-looking Maadi villa that he shares with his wife and sons -- over a month after our initial meeting -- the ice finally begins to crack. "I love what I do," he begins. "It's my passion. I work with both psychiatry and psychotherapy. It depends what a person needs. Some need psychotherapy and some need medication. Everyone is entitled to the right kind of care. They're human." His belief in every individual receiving individual care and attention extends beyond the realm of his clients. He extends his life ethic to employees too, and as director of the hospital takes their personal care as seriously as he does his patients. "It's a family thing," he says of the hospital -- the first private psychiatric hospital to be established in the Middle East. "Not just the Loza's, but the entire staff. Behman wouldn't be what it is today without the entire family." The hospital started with 20 beds; a time when he dealt with every single patient on a one-on- one basis. Today the hospital has over 230 patients divided across seven wards. There is "the villa", which is the only open ward and houses patients whose condition is more stable. Then there are the wards for addiction, females, geriatrics, MR (mental retardation), and males one, two and three, three being the chronic cases. "We're seeing a lot more addiction," he says. "We're seeing a lot more patients in general," he continues. "People are recognising more and more that if they're not well emotionally, they need help." He believes that society is becoming increasingly aware that a doctor is a doctor, whether for physiological or emotional care. While society still has a way to go when it comes to normalising the notion of psychiatric and psychological care, the hospital, he says, shows that psychological care is not as great a social taboo as is generally believed. "We've never had to advertise and we've always been full," he says of the hospital. "That means that people come when they need. We don't have to go out and look for them." It sounds like a breeze, but for Fathy it is hard work. "I used to take holidays," he laughs. "But only for a week," he continues. "I would go sailing." Sailing, along with gardening, is one of his passions. "I have a catamaran, 39-feet, four bedrooms and bathrooms. I brought it from Greece through Alexandria six years ago." "You know," Shahira pitches in, "his passion is not just for his job and people. It's for life in general." She pauses momentarily, and I reflect on the stamina and energy, not to mention the love it takes to give and give and give to patients all day long. "It is exhausting, of course, to listen to people's lives and problems all day," Shahira continues, " but you see him, and speak to him, and realise that he doesn't feel it. Whatever he is doing, he enjoys doing it and doing it to the max. When he's working he's having a ball, when he's partying he's having a ball." He agrees. "I like to work the best, and party the best. It comes from the heart." They both look at each other and laugh. The warmth between them, between the family as a whole, is striking. "We meet every Sunday for lunch," he says. "All the children and grandchildren. I like having them all around me. We all get along very well." Fathy's mobile phone rings. He looks at it, answers almost apologetically, and whispers into the phone. It is Francine, Fathy's wife and the only other non-psycho related character on the Loza scene. They chat for a little while in muffled voices. He passes the phone to Shahira, and she does the same. "You ask if my work drains me," he says. "But it actually gives me energy. My patients have changed my perspective on life. You get to know the inside of a human being. Through people you understand more and more; about life, about yourself, about people. At the start it is hard but after time you get used to the emotional separation and a patient becomes a patient. Subjectivity comes with years of work," he continues. "I learn from every single patient." "I have something to learn from every person about life, about myself, about how to deal with people, about how to deal with myself," he says. "Each patient gives me something, or helps me with something. Each patient has something I learn from." "Except," he laughs, "when I have patients who are doctors themselves!" He chuckles. So does Shahira. "Doctors make the worst patients," he smiles. "They think they already know everything."
