Egypt’s dynasty of big cat trainers takes the show home

Cairo: At his Cairo apartment, located just off a busy road along the Nile River, Ashraf el-Helw, a third-generation Egyptian lion trainer, prepares for a show with his big cats.

Instead of a circus ring, his living room is his stage. He has already posted one online video of the lions performing tricks inside his home since Egypt imposed restrictions to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, including a nightly curfew.

He is now getting ready to film the second one and says more are in the works, claiming he wants to encourage people to stay at home amid the pandemic. The first video received rave responses from Egyptians on social media _ but also raised questions over how the country's most famous lion-training family treats its animals.

The family's big cats are kept on their farm an hour outside of Cairo, and el-Helw says he brings them into the city for the shoots. After filming is over, they go back to the farm, with the some 40 other animals who live there, including monkeys and other large cats.

El-Helw showed off Joumana, one of the family's female lions. He prompted her to put her paws on his shoulders and the two moved as in a dance. In another trick, the lioness obeyed a command, a light prod with a stick, to walk across a plank, stepping over el-Helw's sister Bushra, also a lion trainer.

The show's climax comes when el-Helw places a piece of meat hanging from a stick into his mouth, and Joumana jumps to grab it.

The el-Helws have been doing circus shows with the big cats for over a century. Ashraf's grandmother was a renowned circus performer, Mahassen el-Helw, the Arab world's first female lion trainer. She was known as ``the iron woman'' for her stern stage demeanor.

For the el-Helw family, the lions are both a livelihood and a family constant. "They are like my children," said Bushra, giving Joumana a loving pat on the back.