Egypt’s female lion tamers show the men how to do it
GAMASA, EGYPT>> At her apartment in a seaside town, Luba el-Helw, a working Egyptian mother, faced multiple demands. She juggled business calls, prepared a chicken dish and parried the demands of her three sons, ages 4 to 8, who were stretched out before the TV.
By her own admission, she can be pushy. That was a factor in her divorce, when her second husband complained that she treated him “like a circus lion.” He meant it literally.
Hours later, el-Helw strode into a circus ring wearing a leopard-skin bodysuit and black boots. Music boomed. Children cheered. Lions and tigers trooped out behind her.
El-Helw (pronounced hellOU) strolled up to a perched tiger and nonchalantly stroked its face, drawing a roar. She made a theatrical grimace.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” announced a voice. “The dangerous and exciting parts are about to begin!”
The struggle for women’s equality is lagging badly behind in Egypt, where only 25% of women are in the labor force. Egypt ranks 134 out of 153 in the Global Gender Gap, an index published by the World Economic Forum. But in one field, Egyptian women are dominant.
El-Helw is one of six working female lion tamers in Egypt, mostly from the same family, whose old-fashioned shows draw and delight legions of Egyptians every year. Wearing spangled outfits and using stage names like “The Queen of Lions,” they coax big cats through rings of fire or allow them to stroll over their bodies.
Some have become minor celebrities. Others have survived attacks. None has a man in their acts.
“I feed them myself,” said el-Helw as she dropped a side of donkey meat into a small cage occupied by Hairem, a 6-year-old lion. “And they look on me as their mother.”
Lions have always been symbols of prestige and power in Egypt. In ancient times, pharaohs hunted the big cats along the Nile. The Great Sphinx guarding the pyramids at Giza, which features a human head on a lion’s body, is one of Egypt’s enduring emblems.
For el-Helw, though, lions are a family business. Her grandmother, Mahassen, was the Arab world’s first female lion tamer, and her father, Ibrahim, was a star of Egypt’s state-run National Circus during its heyday in the 1980s.
Her father passed his skills, and his passion, to his daughters.
Two followed him into the ring: el-Helw, 38, who succeeded her father as a lion tamer at the National Circus; and her sister Ousa, 35, who performs at a private circus. Their aunt, Faten, and two of their cousins are also in the business, as is a sixth woman not part of the family.