With Egypt's tourism industry badly affected by the January Revolution and the ongoing unrest, some of Giza's horse owners are struggling to keep their animals alive, says Ingrid Wassmann Corpulent men in galabeyas with chocolate-coloured tans clutching long whips and the reins of their horses anxiously wait in the narrow dirt alleyway that leads up to Hamada's house and courtyard tucked inside the village of Nazlet Al-Semman, at the foot of the Pyramids. Today is an important day. The horses will get another free feed. Many of the gathered animals look very emaciated, and they also suffer from open wounds on their backs and across their bodies. During better times these small horse-owners would be finding good business among the steady waves of visitors who flock to the Giza Plateau, tempting tourists with a "good price" to saddle their horses for a ride around the Pyramids. But since the 25 January Revolution, some 200 of these horses have died of starvation due to the tourist downturn, their boney corpses abandoned in an improvised horse cemetery. This harsh reality is a bleak reflection of Egypt's present economic gloom. The country's tourism industry suffered a heavy blow from the Arab Spring with a staggering $3 billion lost, according to Amr El-Ezabi, chairman of the Egyptian Tourism Authority. Many small businesses, including horse-owners in Giza, have been struggling to make ends meet. The Egyptian Society for Mercy towards Animals (ESMA), a non-profit animal-rights organisation based in Cairo, has been lending a helping hand since February to take care of some of these horsemen by providing feed and medical care for their animals over recent months. The gate of Hamada's courtyard, where the ESMA feeds are regularly held, is finally opened. Men busily unload heavy bags of feed from a pick-up truck and hurry to pile them against the wall of the house. The ESMA volunteers are already setting up medical supplies for the veterinarians, collecting the IDs of the horse-owners standing around outside, and giving out free nose pads to wrap around the chains of the horses' muzzles. "At first, people used to steal the feed right off the truck," explains ESMA volunteer Sherif Amasha, a film director and professor at the Academy of Arts, recalling the initial reaction of the horse-owners when ESMA volunteers first reached out to this community. Since then, a good relationship and feeding system have been established. "We made a list to differentiate between the smaller and larger horse-owners in Giza," Amasha explains, noting with his characteristic energy that it can be easy to get some of the men mixed up as many look alike in their identical galabeyas. "The feed ESMA distributes is only intended for the smaller owners, not for larger stable owners," he adds, emphatically. At each feed, the NGO's volunteers compare the names of the horse-owners present with a master list compiled by ESMA over recent months. "We check to see if the names and numbers of the horses match," adds Amasha, with a half smile that conceals an unspoken comment. "They can be organised to scam us." ESMA, which began its operations in 2007 by rescuing stray, injured, maltreated and abandoned animals, now feeds about 400 horses three times a month, funds permitting. Each horse is usually attributed one bag of feed, equivalent to 10 kilos, a ration that is meant to last three days. The feed distribution in Hamada's courtyard begins, but very soon the commotion and noise level peak, making it difficult to track which owners are carrying what quantity of feed for which horses. The gate is therefore briefly pushed closed again until some order is temporarily restored. Lolly Arafa, also an ESMA volunteer, knows all too well just how quickly tempers can flair and the repercussions these can have. "During the last feed, I was a little tough with them in distributing the sacks of feed and later I found that the tyres of my car had been punctured." The reason for today's unusual excitement and large turnout lies in the bags of feed, which contain 20 per cent pellets and bran, the rest being a combination of dry white and yellow corn. "When we hand out only pellets, people don't show up," explains Ahmed El-Kilan, another dedicated ESMA volunteer. "Corn is like meat: the owners think it is better for their horses, but it is also more expensive and we can't buy as much." Pellets are not only cheaper, but they also contain the amino acids, protein, minerals and vitamins that these horses badly need. "We mix bran and pellets into the feed, so that the owners can't go out and sell the corn again," admits El-Kilan. While the sacks are being distributed, these small horse-owners, who each on average owns between one and five horses, may also bring their animals into the courtyard for food and water. A large number is then painted onto the animals' backs in order to indicate that they have eaten and been attributed their share of the feed. "We mark the horses with purple paint that is supposed to last for days, but some horse-owners still find ways to erase it," explains Amasha, who knows many of the owners now by name. Compelled to add an example to illustrate the utility of this measure more fully, he adds that "sometimes the owners find a taxi-driver, give him a horse, and tell him to come back and ask for feed for the horse." The cost of each bag varies between LE30 and LE40 depending on the price of corn. ESMA raises the funds for the free feeds through donations collected in Egypt and abroad. The organisation has been handing out an average of three tons of feed each month since February. Amr, nicknamed "Antar" by the other owners and "Hercules" by his close buddy, is a heavy, 37-year-old man with hard eyes and a big scar on his upper chest that shows through the open collar of his galabeya. He doesn't let go of his whip, and with the other hand he brings another Cleopatra cigarette to his mouth and inhales deeply. Amr owns eight horses and ordinarily rents them out to tourists. Asked if business is good these days, he immediately replies "not very." If business were better, Amr could be earning more than LE500 a day. "When tourism is good, my horses are healthy," he says, and he does not like to be reminded about the wounds on the animals' backs. Even so, he has an answer ready: "when they lose too much weight, the saddle digs into the skin. If their weight were normal, they wouldn't have these wounds." Saddle wounds are just one of the dilemmas that ESMA vets, also volunteers with the charitable organisation, are regularly faced with. As Amasha explains, trying to understand the mentality of somebody like Amr, "you have to accept that an owner will never take a saddle off. If the horse doesn't bring in money, then for him the horse is just not worth it." Since he first started heading the ESMA horse feed operation, Amasha has been stressing the importance of raising the horse-owners' awareness of the issues by advocating a "teaching by showing" approach. He believes that this approach has allowed him to gain their trust. "You have to present them with alternatives and solutions. Just yelling at them does not work." However, El-Kilan is more direct; "The owners think of the horses as machines," he says. Both men agree that the animals are overworked and that the summer months are the toughest for them. "I try to work with the younger generation in order to change mentalities," explains Amasha as he looks around at the young men present, many sporting hip-hugging jeans and tight T-shirts with messages on them like "Heart Break Brake", and visors. Meanwhile, the two veterinarians are busy cleaning up infections, giving the horses tablets or injections, and checking their eyes and mouths for other symptoms. The diagnoses can vary from injuries such as inflammation of the tendons, to abscesses, deep wounds, and diseases like horse flu or intestinal parasites such as strongyles. Some of the horses' ailments may also be inflicted directly by their owners, as a consequence of common practices that are handed down from generation to generation like piercing the skin of the horse and pulling a string through a part of the animal's body that the owner thinks is injured or swollen. Today, a mare is getting much-needed medical care, its skin dotted with several wet wounds and bits of protruding string. "People here think that this practice is good for the horse's immune system," explains Dr Mohamed Abdel-Hay, a volunteer vet with ESMA who also works with Animal Friends, another NGO. He tries repeatedly to explain to the horsemen that such incisions can lead instead to infections and other complications. Other horses rescued and treated by ESMA show signs of maltreatment. "During one of the horse feeds, we found two horses that were blind because they had been hit on the eyes," Abdel-Hay notes. Amasha brings in religion in order to sensitise owners about animal rights. "You are serving religion if you treat a horse well," he tells them, using excerpts from the Quran as illustration. However, Amasha says, "if you want to encourage the horse-owners to treat the horse properly and encourage them to respect the animals out of a love for God, you also have to show them that there is a financial benefit involved." One horseman, 40-year-old Hani Abdallah who owns three horses, two of which are sick, and who has turned to ESMA for help, replies that "it is bad to hit animals" when reminded of the hadith that warns believers to fear God when dealing with animals that cannot speak for themselves. However, Dr Mohamed Hamad, a passionate rider and committed ESMA volunteer veterinarian with 10 years experience with Arabian horses, does not necessarily count on the faith of the owners in improving the conditions of the animals. "I don't think they read the Quran," he says, adding that unfortunately many of the owners may be illiterate. In Hamad's opinion, they simply do not love the horses. "The horses are treated simply as money machines, and for the owners it is very often a case of either they feed their children or they feed their horses," he says. Yet, sometimes Hamad can be proved wrong. During the feed, Hamad receives a call from one small owner in Giza. The man is crying on the phone as he explains that a vein on one of his horse's legs has been cut on a wire and that the animal is bleeding heavily. The vet and Amasha get into a car and drive off to see the horse, which is later taken to hospital, operated on, and saved. As the feed winds down, one young man on horseback pulling two other horses behind him, arrives at the gate. He is told that all the feed has now gone and that he should return next week. It seems that Khaled is one of the baltageya (thugs) that rode into Cairo's Tahrir Square on that now infamous day in early February. "I now feel remorse, and I am grateful to ESMA for their help," he says, especially now that he knows that people like Amasha were among the protesters in the square that day. For horsemen like Khaled, the revolution has also left its mark.
