The twenty-year-old son of the Algerian city of Annaba, Hossam Manam, clings to the house of Al-Mutanabbi, who said, "The horses, the night, and the desert know me", to adopt him as a way of life;

He spends most of his time on his horse and hides by himself in the wilderness to escape what he describes as "the falsity and noise of the city."

Far from the bustle of coastal Annaba (500 km east of the capital), Houssam (27 years old) spends nights with "Rais" the horse that changed his life and his view of the world.

city ​​knight

The inhabitants of his city can only see him as he escorts his horse, whether in the middle of the big streets or on the seashore, and in many cases he is absent inside the biological farm that he founded with his brother.

Hossam tells the story of his being called "The Knight of the City", and how he became roaming in the middle of urbanization and roads with his horse. The story goes back to 2016, when an equestrian club in one of the neighboring cities of Annaba expelled Houssam's horse from the barn.

At that time, the young Algerian did not find a place to put him, so he had to take him with him to his small house in his popular neighborhood.

This young man remembers the first time he decided to accompany his horse to the sea shore, crossing kilometers from his home, passing through the city center between pedestrians, cars and buildings.

This is how Hossam spends his needs in the city on the back of his horse (Al-Jazeera)

In love with horses

Hossam told Al Jazeera Net, "(Rice) needed a tour because he was accustomed to freedom in the equestrian club, which necessitated me to take him to the beach to get his energy out. that world."

Hussam then decided - with his brother - to establish a biological farm for "Rice" and all the animals that are deprived of their environment as a result of exclusion, and today the two young men take care of a group of animals as veterinarians.

The two brothers chose to specialize in animal medicine and nursing "for the love of nature and animals", and despite their old age in the city of Annaba, which is teeming with urbanization and life, they chose the life of the wilderness.

Hossam, unlike his generation, does not wish to have a luxury car. Rather, he dreams of owning a purebred Arabian horse of the "Al Shaqab" breed. He says that what draws him to this horse is "faithfulness, strength, softness, beauty, tenderness and the feeling of his knight, all of these qualities combine in one being, which cannot be combined." These features are in a person or machine, no matter how sophisticated."

volunteer

Hossam currently works from time to time to volunteer to train autistic children to ride horses, and believes that he has a unique way of taming and teaching horses to ride, and invented it based on his experience with "Rice" with whom he lived in various circumstances.

Today, Hossam travels with his horse to meet his daily needs from the administrations in the middle of his state, and races cars and enters between them in the midst of the suffocating city traffic. The "Annabis" do not surprise him, but they are used to seeing him tie his horse in front of the municipality, the post office or the market instead of parking his car.

Hosam believes that "life is too short to waste amid the contradictions of the city, and that man was created to roam the vast land, not to pant behind the fast pace of the city."