The Lost War Horses of Cairo

by Grant Hayter-Menzies

  Conscious of the damage it could do not only to her search for war horses but to funding, Dorothy could not afford to let Dr. Branch have the last word on her work. If he succeeded in turning people in Egypt against her, rumors might reach abroad and dissuade overseas donors from support also. As this support was essential, Dorothy couldn’t afford to lose any of it. So going to meet with Branch at his office, she begged him to reconsider his decision. But her olive sprig was not well received. Branch quixotically complained that he was “sick of the whole business and that she had bought enough horses.” Further to this, he threatened to obstruct any further buying, adding that he would find a way to stop her even if she managed to find another location for her charity on her own—in itself a significant threat to the future of the buying committee and its work.14

  The heat was turned up a few days later when a letter arrived from the Cairo SPCA. It was about two former war horses Dorothy and General Spinks had found who, though they had served in the war and were no longer young, were strong enough to work for the fund as draught horses for the equine ambulance Dorothy was planning to purchase. Without this ambulance, such a vital feature of future Brooke work, it would have been impossible to transport downed patients to the hospital who were unable to walk or stand. Now, however, according to the SPCA, this pair of horses had tested positive for glanders, the bacterium from which was lethal enough to be considered for germ warfare in World War II. The letter made it pointless for the committee to argue that the animals they considered to be infected had been fully inspected by them and judged free of disease. It was obvious to Dorothy that there was no room for discussion. There was now an embargo on bringing any more war horses to the SPCA site. The Old War Horse Fund effectively had no home to do its work in.

  After informing the committee of the decision, Dorothy hurried again to the SPCA, where she found the gates crowded with owners and their elderly and ill horses. None had been told that there was no longer a buying committee. “It was bad enough when one knew one could at least put an end to their suffering,” Dorothy recalled. “But then I realised that I could do literally nothing—nothing but tell the men who had dragged them there and who even now were fighting for positions nearest the gates, to take them away again.” She went to see Branch in his office and for the last time tried to reason with him. She explained the problems, why it was vital to continue the work, and told him about the group gathering at the gates even as she spoke. Branch had no intention of giving in. He told Dorothy they needed to all go back to where they came from. “The war horse work was finished,” he thundered. He again warned her that she had best not try to set up her own organization anywhere in Cairo. “He said that she would be unable to do so as the Ministry of Health would never permit the housing of a large number of horses anywhere in the city,” wrote Spooner. Any attempt to gather up suffering equines would not be “a good thing” as, aside from not being allowed to do so on her own, she would find the law against her if she tried to euthanize animals on site. “They would all have to go to the public abattoir to be killed by the butchers in the ordinary way,” Branch told her. It was a curt statement that called forth to Dorothy’s mind all the horrors of butcheries in Egypt.15

  This seems to have been the last time Dorothy met with Alfred Branch face to face. She walked out of his office, trembling with anger and anxiety for the fate of the many working animals that needed her help, not to mention those waiting in vain outside the SPCA grounds. Her first inclination, however, was not to sit down in despair, though that was what she most felt like doing. Instead, she drove straight to the Ministry of Health—in this case, seeing what Branch had threatened, this was tantamount to walking straight into the dragon’s mouth. There Dorothy was received by a British official. He “listened with patience and sympathy,” Spooner wrote, “to her request for permission to house the war horses in Cairo should she find a suitable place.” At the end of the conversation Dorothy asked whether, in the event she secured a new site, she could receive permission to have animals euthanized there rather than sending them to the public butchers. The official assented to this, saying that if her new hospital met all the Ministry of Health’s requirements and that the carcasses would be disposed of according to law, she would be permitted to put down sick animals on site. This was more than Dorothy had dared to hope for. Now she only had one more mountain to move—finding a new location, and soon.16

  6. Street of the English Lady

  Compassion gave her the authority to interfere.

  —DR. PETRA MARIA SIDHOM

  Over the next three weeks Dorothy visited corners of Cairo that she had never imagined existed.

  With her went Farrier Sergeant McCullock, “a large and brawny Scot.” McCullock had managed the Army Veterinary Stables at Abbassia camp between Heliopolis and Cairo, base of the Imperial Camel Corps during the Great War, so he was well familiar with the world into which he and Dorothy were about to enter. Armed with McCullock’s size and his fluent Arabic in the passenger seat, Dorothy drove the car, searching all over Cairo for new quarters for her war horse hospital.

  Her must-have list was a long and possibly impossible one.

  First of all she had to secure a stable of such size it would permit shelter for as many as fifty animals at a time, with space to lie down if needed. The location must have good ventilation, and it should have facilities on site where euthanizations could be carried out safely in accordance with official regulations and far enough away from the other patients to not distress them. It should also present none of the problems that had caused trouble with the sites at the RAS and the SPCA—there must be no lines of haggard equines to disturb those who preferred not to see such suffering, or to give the government more ammunition with which to close down the new hospital. And time was of the essence. Dorothy remembered the animals waiting outside the gate of the SPCA the day she had gone to Dr. Branch’s office. News reached her that animals were still being brought into Cairo for sale but were being turned away by the SPCA, proof that Branch was holding to his bitter resolution. This both frustrated and invigorated her. “The realisation that instead of mitigating their suffering she was adding to it, goaded her on to further efforts to find accommodation,” Spooner wrote.1

  It was difficult enough for Dorothy to maneuver her car through people, animals, peddlers, horse-drawn gharries and carts. Streets turned to alleys, which themselves became passages better suited to foot traffic, where building facades seemed to lean toward one another overhead, blocking sunlight and congesting all activity below as the vehicle slid slowly forward.

  Glenda Spooner describes one occasion when, having been guided too far down an increasingly narrowing street to what proved to be a property entirely unsuited to Dorothy’s purposes, she and McCullock found themselves literally stuck there. Even if Dorothy could have driven the car farther, there was no exit to the alley; it was too narrow to turn the vehicle, and backing down the long way they had come was not an option. As Dorothy and McCullock sat, uncertain of what to do next, a crowd gathered, which “filled even the imperturbable McCullock with misgivings,” wrote Glenda Spooner of what Dorothy had told her. Then McCullock had an idea. “Having sorted out twenty of the strongest-looking young men,” recalled Spooner, “he told them to lift the car up and to heave it round till it faced the other way, at the same time telling Mrs Brooke to remain where she was at the steering wheel, as he was not at all sure of the temper of the crowd”—though how safe she would have been held aloft in a motorcar above a raging mob is certainly debatable. Thrilled to be asked by the foreign soldier to come to the rescue of the English lady, these young male Cairenes hefted the car over their heads like a coffin in a procession, turned it in the opposite direction, and set it down again, all with Dorothy still coolly upright. Dissuaded by McCullock from handing out tips to the young men, Dorothy recalled, all she could do “was to endeavour to express my gratitude with smiles and signs and by uttering the Arabic for ‘thank you
’ which happens to be one of the biggest tongue-twisters in a language which to this day I have failed to master more than half a dozen words.” (This was probably mamnoona gedaan, the formal expression of thanks.)2

  In all, during their peregrinations about Cairo Dorothy and Sergeant McCullock visited some thirty stables, or what were described as such. None was suitable, and frustration was running high. So it was all the more heart-rending when in one of these lightless holes, which normally were empty by day as their occupants were working in the streets, Dorothy found a large black horse at the back of the stable, barely distinguishable in the darkness. The animal was evidently injured in some way, but it was difficult to tell what was wrong with it. McCullock felt over the horse’s body and found out why it was half-standing, half-crouched against its manger: one of its hind legs was completely broken. When McCullock asked the owner about this injury, the man told him that the break was about two months old. So for eight weeks, unable to stand properly or move, this animal had been leaning against its food trough in agony, which nobody had done anything to alleviate.

  The owner added that the horse was one of a pair he had bought shortly after the Great War—leading Dorothy and McCullock to conclude that the injured horse had served, like its mate, in the conflict. Both had been worked together, but with this one unable to walk, the other was out in the streets working and was the owner’s only means of livelihood, which in any case appeared too insufficient for him to do without the injured animal, though it would never be able to labor for him again.

  The man told Dorothy that the two horses were devoted to each other. Remembering the piebald and his mate, she worked out a deal with the owner to purchase both horses together. A horse with the this type of injury would have normally merited a few pounds from the buying committee, but Dorothy was not interested in dickering; she felt she had been directed to this stable for a reason, to ease the pain of one injured war horse and to free the other from its labors. She and McCullock waited till the other animal returned to the stable, noticing that when he did, the injured one, though unable to cross the stable floor to greet him, nickered to him softly from the darkness in a heartbreaking example of an animal’s affection for friends and ability to endure pain. Dorothy paid the owner over and above the rate for both horses, and McCullock put down the black horse as soon as the money had changed hands. Arrangements were made to transport the sound horse to a safe place, but sadly, before this could be done, he fell into depression and refused to eat. The owner, who had no other means of contacting Dorothy, and of course could not reach her through the now off-limits SPCA, was conscientious enough to travel out to Heliopolis to tell her about the situation. Dorothy had McCullock return to the man’s stable to put the horse down, its grief “further proof,” Spooner noted, “that friendships formed under such adverse circumstances are stronger than those made under normal ones.”3

  Despite the fact that she had rescued two war horses she had not even known existed, Dorothy was still without a new home for the Old War Horse Fund, and there was no sign of any rescue for her on the distant horizon.

  The Cairo Manure Company stood a few miles outside the Old City, and came well recommended for all the needs of the new hospital. Driving out to see it with Geoffrey and Capt. Meade Dennis, Dorothy arrived to find a site and location that could not have been a less adequate answer to her prayers. “The Manure Company was one of these nightmare establishments which disposes of carcasses of animals unfit for human consumption, chiefly horses,” she wrote. Certain aspects did recommend the location for use as an equine hospital. It had stables erected to house the mules who transported the carcasses from the abattoir. There were obviously facilities for disposing of these carcasses. The trouble was the horrible stench, “an appalling atmosphere” that clung like a London pea soup fog.4 The smell made everybody physically sick, even officers who remembered the corpse-strewn battlefields of the Great War. Horses are not believed to have as strong a sense of smell as of sight, but what appalled Dorothy was the notion of old, weary, and sick animals having to spend their last hours so close to a place of such concentrated misery, the stench from which would be miserable for the humans who had to work there.

  Dorothy turned down the property, against the stringent objections of both Captain Dennis and her husband. For the entire drive home, they argued the pros and cons. To reject the location might mean Dorothy would not have another chance at any place at all. The future of the hospital was at stake, along with the donations so many had made to the cause, which she would be failing along with the animals that needed rescue. So Dorothy made herself a deal. She would try one last property, which, like all the others, had been warmly recommended but which she had avoided up to now, because it appeared to be too close to another public abattoir. If this one did not meet her standards, she would hold her nose and agree to the Cairo Manure Company site.

  Next morning Sergeant McCullock accompanied Dorothy to look over the new contender. The property was located in Sharia Bairam al-Tunsi street in the busy district called Sayyida Zeinab.

  A granddaughter of the Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) and patron saint of the city of Cairo, Zeinab (b. 626 CE) was a figure of defiance in the face of inequity. A woman of heroic character, she “may never have set foot in Egypt,” writes John Reynard, “but Egyptians, though virtually all Sunni, celebrate her heroism during and after the battle of Karbala,” the AD 680 clash between what would eventually divide sharply into Sunni and Shia sects of Islam. “People seek out Sayyida Zaynab, who was a champion of justice for the oppressed, to obtain relief for eye ailments and to gain access to the heavenly council of Friends who are believed to converge on the shrine.”5 According to tradition, a mosque, later to flower in refulgent Mameluke style, was built in Zeinab’s name not long after she arrived in Egypt. Tradition claims that she was buried in or around the mosque, where her mausoleum shrine exists today. The neighborhood bearing her name had itself a colorful history even by Cairo standards. It was a place where you could find the mansions of upper-class families as well as the modest dwellings of working-class people; this amalgamation of classes and the sharing of mutual grievances helped lay the powder train to the 1919 revolution against British rule, which started in the square adjacent to the Sayyida Zeinab Mosque.6

  As Dorothy wrote of her introduction to the neighborhood:

  With a ruffian of a guide we drove to the uttermost end of one of the byways of old Cairo. The road was wide and led straight to the sand hills skirting the town on that side. At the end of this road, we were conducted to two very large garages and two unusually roomy livery stables. Beyond these buildings was a wide open space, rough and stony, but airy and about four hundred yards wide. A small, unoccupied house stood in the centre—the rest was just rough ground. The abattoir I had so dreaded was a quarter of a mile away, up a side street. The traffic to it went along another road, and not, as I had feared, past the stables.

  Our guide led us to the furthermost stables and there we found the owner who had obviously been warned and was waiting for us. A big double door gave access to a very large stable indeed. This was of course filthy, but it was at least high, airy, and well lighted by several tall windows. It was evidently used to house gharry horses that, at the time of our visit, were out working in the streets. Big mangers lined the two sides of the walls. The floor was in the same filthy state, but by now I was accustomed to that.7

  The property, located at 2 Bairam al-Tunsi Street, was located in the middle of a poor and crime-ridden part of the city in which, it was said, Europeans in military uniform (especially British) were not welcome. For the wife of a British officer, whose hospital would be staffed by British officers, this rumor must have given Dorothy pause. But there were good points to consider, one of especially happy significance: the abattoir that Dorothy hated was well down the street.8

  It was obvious that much would need to be done to make the Bairam al-Tunsi premises livable for the animals
and useful for staff, and the nightmare task still remained of meeting the standards of the Ministry of Health so that the hospital could be opened for business. But all taken into account, Dorothy had landed in a good place to start her work all over again and on a much surer footing. In fact, she could not have found a better spot had she tried. “Mrs. Brooke chose a very interesting site in Sayyida Zeinab,” says German Egyptian veterinarian Dr. Petra Maria Sidhom, who was involved with the Brooke Hospital for thirty years. “She was where the working people are, where the working animals are. She would have had more support in richer areas of Cairo, or in the expats’ district, but she wanted to be where the help was most needed.” And because she was where the help was most needed, Dorothy could reach out beyond the slums where she provided that help and could in turn ask for help from those in the wealthier areas of Cairo. From the hospital in Sayyida Zeinab, Dorothy would tell the whole of the outside world about the animals in whose lives she tried to make a difference, and about the people for whom she made a difference, too. “Not too many upper class foreign ladies were taking their tea in Sayyida Zeinab,” laughs Richard Searight. “And she was the wife of a general. When she spoke about what she saw and what needed to be done, even from a slum, people listened, and they helped.”9

  It was October 1934, three years since she had founded the Old War Horse Fund, and four years since she had seen her first war horses at Ramses Station. The unassuming site, hemmed in by tenement blocks on one side, their balconies hung with washing, and by a handsome European-style municipal courthouse block on the other, would be named the Old War Horse Memorial Hospital—now called the Brooke Hospital for Animals. In time, this modest equine cross between hospice, hospital, and respite care center would make famous a thoroughfare that would shed its original name honoring a nationalist Egyptian poet and take on a moniker memorializing the English lady who worked there.10