I inherited the business from my father, so I’ve been working in this trade for 45 years. I hand make every kind of product for horses, sheep, camels, and donkeys. My grandfather did this work too. And now I teach it to my sons. I like it because it’s artistic. But, also one must be clever and always inventing new processes. In the past, we would have to import camel saddles. Imports sometimes hurt the animals. We did everything we could to make them as comfortable as possible. Now we can hand make the saddles here. In the end, animals can’t talk. So we look at them very carefully to make sure they are not hurting.

Once, we had a cat that was pregnant with her second litter and was accidentally killed by a car. We took in all her kittens. The older of the litter wouldn’t eat until all his siblings did. Animals have so much compassion. We have speech and developed brains. So why not us?

- Imad Salhab