Animal-loving is often a phase, and one that tends to end abruptly sometime in early teenage years. Not so, though, for Brigadier Hassan Sami.
"As a start you can say I am an animal lover," says Brigadier Hassan Sami. And certainly the words appear to be uttered from a face that has a great propensity for excessive kindness and giving. "I always have been since I was young. But really," he continues after a contemplative pause, "you can say I am actually mad about animals."
Equines, to be precise
"I love and care for all animals," Sami says. "But here at Brooke we deal only with equines. Horses, donkeys, mules," he explains. "You develop a weak point, a passion," he continues. "I can't really be in the street, see a horse or a donkey, and not feel I want to jump up and go to it to see if it's in good health." It is, he says, the guiding instinct of his life.
"No," he says, "I am not a vet. Before you ask," he adds with an almost shy smile. "Everyone wonders about that. I was a Brigadier in the Egyptian Army. And I graduated from the Military Academy with a BA in psychology. I also have a diploma in management."
He stops for a minute, contemplating which to follow, then continues.
"But I've been involved with Brooke for as long as I can remember. One of my very close friends was the former director."
Brooke is the Brooke Hospital for Animals, and Brigadier Hassan Sami is its managing director. The friend he speaks of is Dr Murad Ragheb.
"Without this man," Sami says, "Brooke would have never survived. He was with Brooke from 1937 until he passed away in 1990."
"It was started in 1934," he says. "By an Englishwoman by the name of Dorothy Brooke."
Ms Dorothy, as she is referred to by most of the hospital staff, was the wife of a general in the British Army. After World War II, when the army sold the remainder of its 22,000 horses and donkeys to Egypt, Ms Dorothy -- visiting her husband -- decided to found a hospital to care for these waning equines. The funding and equipment were obtained from the United Kingdom, a fact that has not changed until this day.
"That is sort-of where I came in," Sami explains. "As a close friend of Dr Murad I used to visit him at the hospital often. And of course I would do my best to offer help in any way I could. When I was in the army I was serving in Alexandria and so through my colleagues I took care of Brooke shipments, seeing them all the way through customs clearance. Things like the x-ray machines, certain drugs for the horses."
He appears to be shy about the exact extent of his help and commitment to Brooke, brushing off further prodding as to why he was asked to join the ranks of the hospital's administration.
"When Dr Murad was about to retire," he says, "he and the headquarters in London asked if I would join them as deputy director. That was in 1982."
"Then in 1988 I was chosen as director. Dr Murad then served as a consultant, and two years later he passed away. I learned a lot from him, he had the talent of joining two skills: he was an expert vet, and he was a very good manager. Usually, you only find one of these attributes."
Sami is not quite sure -- or perhaps he is too modest -- to list his own strengths. He seems apologetic about the attention, and ill-at ease with the amount of time he is taking up. He needs to be encouraged to talk.
"Psychology is very interesting," he says, the interest evident in his still shy eyes and body language that suggests stifled forward momentum. "You get to observe the behaviour and attitudes of others. For me the most interesting thing about psychology is studying the behaviour of people under very specific circumstances."
Such as the army, he elaborates.
"It helps you a lot in life, and helps you deal with people. It helps me a lot with my job now," he says, picking up one of several cigarette packets from his paper-strewn desk.
"Do you mind?" he asks very quietly.
This has happened several times already.
"I had to leave the army," he says. "I lost a kidney. In surgery," he continues. "I had the chance to go to Kuwait to work as a lecturer in psychology but then I got the Brooke offer and so I stayed. I preferred to be doing something for my country, and Brooke was already very much a part of me. My wife, Helen, was also involved -- she began running the Alexandria clinic in 1961."
They are very much an animal-loving family. His daughter, too, is part of the Brooke family -- having succeeded her mother in running the Alexandria clinic.
"Odd?" he retorts. "Yes, people do find it odd that we dedicate our lives to animals and Brooke. But not all people are created the same, and personally I believe in animals and I believe in helping them. And what people don't realise, or don't look at, is that we are also helping the poor. Many families depend on their equines as the only source of income," he continues. "They are their life."
Sami re-adjusts himself in his chair, shuffles a few things around on his desk to give himself more space, and leans forward. He seems, at last, ready to talk.
"A very important part of our work is the education element. It is critical to our work that we educate owners and users about the care of equines," he says. "There are over 100,000 working equines in Cairo and the surrounding area. About 2,500 of these equines work at the kilns south of Cairo, pulling cart-loads of bricks from the machines to the furnaces," he continues.
The problem, he explains, is that both time and load represent money for the owners and users, i.e. those who rent donkeys for the day.
"You see owners beat their donkeys and horses to make them go faster," Sami elaborates. "You see a lot of maltreatment. Most people look at it and say that it is part of the owner's character, or the Egyptian male character -- that it's aggressive. But I believe that it is not," he says. "These people are poor. The more loads of bricks they can deliver, the more money they make for the day. So they pile up an extra-heavy load on the cart, and they want their animals to hurry so they get more turns. That's where the whip comes in -- livelihood."
He pauses.
"Or take the man who goes out with his horse for the day and looks for someone to use it. He doesn't find anyone, which means he earns no money for the day, which means no food for the day, which means no social insurance or health insurance. They can't even deal with life. How can they deal with their animals?"
The psychologist in him comes increasingly into play.
"The big, the important difference," he says, "is to know the causes and reasons, and to deal with them accordingly. I believe that there is a key to every human character and my task is to find it. We treat the animals for free, and we talk to owners about how to treat the animals and how it's to their benefit, and so in that way we build trust. We see the results because now owners and users come to us. Our target is to listen to the suffering of animals, and to teach and educate owners how to treat their animals to maximise their own economic benefit. Good health is equal to good money."
The education entails courses for saddlers, farriers, workshops on how to deal with colic, talks to young boys on why it's to their advantage to treat their animals well.
"Our target is the welfare of the animals," he says. "But it is also about helping the poor."
Like all else involving a change of attitude and perspective it is an uphill task but Sami says that the results can be seen.
"Owners and users now come to us, we don't seek them out. But it's still challenging. Dealing with people, in any field, is difficult. In this case they are poor, and are bringing their source of income to you. They don't want to stop the animal working on order for it to be treated. To persuade an owner to admit his animal for treatment, or to persuade an owner that his animal must be put to sleep, that's the most difficult part of it. Some of them have other animals, but others don't. We give the poorest owners money to keep them going."
It sounds, to many, like an odd job, but to Sami and his team it is their daily business.
"The hospital is special," he says. "Next year will be our 70th anniversary. We now have clinics in Luxor, Aswan, Edfu and Marsa Matrouh as well. Not only do we treat and educate here and at our other clinics, but we also have mobile clinics. We go to the kilns, for example, and owners and users can bring their animals to us there."
The energy seems to mount in the room as Sami leans further forward.
"There's something I call a sort of magic about this place," he says, his eyes wide. "It absorbs you completely. Once you step inside the door time disappears. You don't feel you're working, and you don't feel the time go by. You look at your watch, or you decide to step outside, and you find that the sun has gone down and it's evening already."
It is partly the place and partly the people.
"Dealing with animals takes a special kind of patience because they can't express themselves," he says. "But at Brooke you meet people who can contact animals in a special way. Dr Murad was one of those. When we had a vicious horse, and nobody could get near it, he would go in with the horse and a few minutes later the animal would be calm. It was as if he knew the language of the animals and would speak to them. My daughter is like that too."
Animals, he says, can feel if you like them or not.
"It's scientific," he explains. "When you're scared adrenaline is produced in your body, and a guard dog, for example, can smell it. And it knows you're a stranger, so the instinct is to protect itself. So it barks. That's why most children can deal with animals and animals are very gentle with them because up until a certain age children are still not aware that animals can harm them. Most animals can smell or sense things," he continues. "After the big earthquake in 1992 I had lots of people calling up to ask if the animals had acted differently before it. At the zoo they had acted differently, definitely. But here there was no change. But that's because their central nervous system differs. These animals have been beaten all their lives and have been under pressure all their lives, so they are used to tension, they are used to aggression and turbulence. To zoo animals the coming of an earthquake -- if they sense it -- is reason for fear. For our animals it is the norm."
One of the hospital vets interrupts for a few minutes. He has come to brief Sami on one of the "patients" -- a horse.
"Brooke is such a part of me," he picks up haphazardly. "I see myself in Brooke. Here we are working for the welfare of the miserable animals and the welfare of the poor people, and so on that level you feel you are giving and not waiting for a reply. That's part of the magic. You are not waiting for an owner to say thank you, or to pay you, or to receive a favour in return. You don't need to hear the thank you, you can see it in their eyes. It's as if you're building a building, but it's not routine, because the building gets higher everyday, and stronger everyday. It is just going up and up."
He pauses and lights another cigarette which will remain untouched in the ashtray for the remainder of the interview.
"Brooke is a life organisation," he says. "People depend on these animals for their own lives."
Brooke itself depends on donations. "Largely from out of the country," Sami says. "Sometimes we have difficulty dealing with the authorities but then, suddenly, we find the doors opening, and our cause has been adopted completely by an influential figure."
He pauses, and casts a stern, somewhat mysterious, glance.
"God is helping us," he nearly whispers. "I never say that we have done something, I say, always, that God has, because even though we may be dealing with lives, actually," he says taking a breath, "we don't really have power over lives. We do the work, but God grants the life."
