Read Babylon's Ark Online

Authors: Lawrence Anthony

Babylon's Ark (2 page)

BOOK: Babylon's Ark
10.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
But as we crossed Al Jamhooriah Bridge, spanning the river Tigris, everything seemed to go suddenly quiet. After the raucous gauntlet of gunshots and traffic chaos, the only noise now was the hum of the hired Toyota—ominously out of place in the eerie stillness. We were the solitary car on the road, although gutted Iraqi trucks littered both sides of the double-lane highway as far as we could see. Some were still smoldering.
From one side of the muddy river to the other, traffic had simply disappeared. We soon discovered why. Looming menacingly before us at the top of Yafa Street was a massive roadblock: Bradley tanks and machine guns spiked above sandbags and tightly coiled razor wire. Khaki-colored helmets peered above the barricades, commanding the street with absolute authority.
The desert sun was pitiless, blasting down like a furnace. Above the brooding bulk of the tanks, sand-colored camouflage nets twitched nervously in the heat, the only shade available for soldiers clad in full combat dress and ceramic bulletproof plates.
I felt uneasy about driving any closer, so the two Kuwaitis and I decided to stop right there. We were about one hundred yards from the barricade when I slowly got out and approached the machine-gun nest gingerly, my hands stretched wide to show I was unarmed and a friend.
Everything was tense. It was as if something brittle was about to shatter. I couldn't understand it … surely Baghdad was a liberated city? I had seen the footage on TV of Saddam's statues falling like giant metal dominoes. I had heard the reports that his fedayeen were on the run. That the Iraqis were rejoicing in the streets …
There was no rejoicing in this street. In fact, all I was aware of was a creepy sensation slithering up my skin like a snake.
I kept walking, slowly, with arms stretched.
The soldiers who had been watching my car as it came down the street were now monitoring my every move through high-powered binoculars. I tried to look as harmless as possible as I approached.
“Back off! Back off!” they suddenly yelled, waving me away. Machine guns now poked out from the bagged fortress, their barrels focused on my chest.
I stopped, stunned, feeling as though I had been punched. I had expected the Americans to be friendly. After all, I was here with their blessing.
“I've come to help at the zoo,” I shouted back, waving my authorization papers.
“Fuck off! Just fuck off!”
Jeez, I thought, these guys are serious. They must've heard my shout, and I certainly don't look like one of Saddam Hussein's fedayeen.
I yelled out again that I was on a rescue mission for the zoo. This time there was no reply, just a sinister silence.
What the hell was going on here?
It was obvious I was somewhere I shouldn't be. But I never would have guessed I was at the entrance to the most heavily armed, highest-alert security zone in the city, somewhere nobody without top-level clearance was allowed in. In fact, I was just a block or two away from Saddam's palaces, the designated headquarters-to-be of interim administrator Gen. Jay Garner. Security was so paranoid that Abrams tanks firing 105mm shells casually vaporized any unauthorized vehicle driving or parked in the area.
This was strict “shoot to kill” territory, and soldiers at the checkpoints surrounding it were primed to do just that. Unescorted civilians were given one warning only.
I was on my second.
The Americans were understandably on hair triggers. There was
a good reason for all of this security. For despite TV images of quick victory, much of Baghdad certainly had not fallen and firefights with die-hard Ba'athists loyal to Saddam Hussein were raging all over the city.
I also was unaware that a few days previously a suicide bomber had blown himself up at a roadblock near Al Narjaf, killing four marines, while at Karbala soldiers had riddled a car that refused to stop, killing seven people, including a woman and her child.
The two Kuwaitis frantically signaled to me. Al Zawra Park formed a dominant rectangle in the heart of the city; there was probably another entrance to the Baghdad Zoo. Wheels spinning, we made a quick U-turn and sped away.
About a mile or so farther on we came to another roadblock. There the heavily armed Americans, also dressed in full body armor and desert camouflage stained dark with sweat, were quizzing some Western journalists.
This time I refused to back down and got permission to approach. A soldier asked what I was doing, and I showed my authorization papers, explaining that I had to get to the Baghdad Zoo on a rescue mission.
For good measure I added that I had urgent supplies—including drugs—for the surviving animals. If there were any, of course. I still had no idea what condition the zoo would be in.
The soldier just looked at me; here they were fighting a war and, if he was hearing right, some madman had pitched up in the middle of it with animal narcotics. He asked me to repeat what I had just said. Perhaps it appealed to his sense of the ridiculous.
I again flourished my papers: “Here're my credentials from the Coalition Administration.”
The American scrutinized the papers, shook his head in amazement, and smiled.
“A South African,” he said. “You're sure a long way from home.”
He radioed through for instructions and indicated that I should bring my hired car up to the side of the roadblock and wait.
I parked in the lee of an Abrams tank and greeted the crew, who
stared at me with openmouthed curiosity. The tank was a huge, vicious monster of a machine, dirty and battle worn. Unlike the tensely wired soldiers at the first roadblock, this young crew—who looked and smelled as though they hadn't seen soap for months—was friendly, and a couple of them jumped down to shake hands.
“So you're here for the zoo,” said one. “It's right behind us, just across this wall. Had the shit shot out of it.”
“You mean to say you came here on purpose?” asked another.
I nodded.
“You're nuts, man. Me, I would turn around and go straight back to my girlfriend. This place is a shit hole. It's not worth fighting for.”
This wasn't what I wanted to hear.
Then, as a rattle of AK-47 fire split the air, I realized why the roadblock soldier had told me to drive up to the tanks. Their brooding presence was the only shield in that hostile street.
“When did you guys get here?” I asked.
“First in,” was the proud reply. The soldier looked down the street, raising his gun and taking imaginary potshots. “We came straight in. Killed anything that came near us and plenty more.”
It dawned on me I was actually chatting to the same tank crews whom I, and millions of others, had watched on TV storming the city just a few days before.
No wonder the soldiers smelled as though they had just emerged from some fetid pit. They had been in continuous combat for the past three weeks, holed up in the sweaty, claustrophobic confines of their tank. The bitterly pungent odor of cordite mingled with the rank sweat of battle and acrid adrenaline was all-pervasive. I didn't breathe too deeply.
My little car looked absurdly incongruous parked among all the military hardware, like a rabbit among wolves. I realized what an absolute gate-crasher I was in this world, a million miles from my normal life. This was about as far removed from my natural element as I could get—where bullets were flying through the street and people you couldn't see wanted you dead. It was some bizarre situation and I was the supreme interloper.
Eventually the soldier on the radio got through to the right person: 1st Lt. Brian Szydlik. But it took another thirty minutes, with me marking time and feeling wretchedly exposed on the side of the road, for him to arrive. Once he did, he leaped out of his armored troop carrier, checked my permit, and nodded.
Szydlik (pronounced “shadalack”), a blond, square-jawed, compact man with bull shoulders, exuded a powerful presence that was almost tangible. He was someone you wanted on your side in a fight, and with him there you felt you would win it.
“All seems okay,” he said with a curt nod. Then he smiled and I blinked, astonished at the transformation of his granite visage into sudden affability. “That zoo sure needs help all right. Follow me.”
We drove under the crossed-scimitars archway, one of Baghdad's most famous landmarks, across the military parade grounds, and into Al Zawra Park, a huge, sprawling open area similar in size to Central Park in New York, where remnants of a fierce shoot-out that had raged just days before were starkly evident. Twisted metal that was once sophisticated Iraqi weaponry lay blackened everywhere. Road surfaces and paving had been powdered to grit by charging Bradley and Abrams tanks, while culverts and walls were speckled with thousands of chipped holes from a maelstrom of lead. Trees and buildings looked as though they had been through a chain-saw massacre. Irrigation pipes, vital to prevent the desiccated ground from reverting to a dust bowl, had been squashed flat.
However, I soon learned that despite the apocalyptic scenario, the biggest damage to the Baghdad Zoo had not been done in battle, fierce as it had been. It was the looters. They had killed or kidnapped anything edible and ransacked everything else. Even the lamp poles had been unbolted, tipped over, and their copper wiring wrenched out like multicolored spaghetti. As we drove past, we could see groups of looters still at it, scavenging like colonies of manic ants.
Eventually we stopped outside a large dust brown wall, crumbling in some sections from mortar bombs and pitted with countless
bullet scars. Behind it wispy smoke still rose from fires that had obviously been burning for some time.
“Well,” said Szydlik with an elaborately grandiose sweep of his arm. “That's your zoo.” He then eyed me quizzically. “How the hell did you get caught up in this nightmare?”
It was a good question … .
 
 
PERHAPS THE DEFINING MOMENT was a fortnight or so previously on my game reserve, Thula Thula, thousands of miles away in Zululand South Africa, when a soft-lilting voice whispered in my ear, “Wake up, darling. Your babies are here.”
Françoise, my girlfriend of fifteen years, was very French and very beautiful. I had always wondered what exactly it was she saw in me but had decided some things were better left unknown.
However, I knew exactly what she meant when she said “your babies.” For the past few nights the elephants had been coming up to our game reserve lodge—something they had never done previously.
We soon discovered why. The matriarch, Nana, and her second in command, Frankie (named after Françoise), had recently given birth, and they wanted to show us their babies. Nana and Frankie's pride in their offspring easily matched human maternal love.
For the past five years I had been concentrating on restoring Thula Thula, our beautiful Zululand game reserve home, to its natural glory, removing alien plants, improving infrastructure, and allowing the wildlife to flourish undisturbed in their native environment. I had also been involved with several of our neighboring Zulu communities, assisting them to create their own game reserve and by so doing help rebuild their traditional cultural relationships with nature, which had to a large extent been eroded by apartheid.
My personal love is the African elephant. Five years ago I had offered sanctuary to a traumatized herd who were due to be shot by their previous owners for being “troublesome,” and I had been
working closely with them to ensure they settled down at Thula Thula. They had been wandering deep in the bush for a while, and even though it was 3:00 A.M., I was excited to know they were here at the house again.
I pulled on a battered pair of khaki shorts and unlatched our bedroom's stable door that opened onto the lush lawn, sheltered by a giant African marula tree. Sure enough, I could make out the herd's gray hulks in the murk.
I felt a warm glow spark in my core. The sheer joy of being alive was as bracing as plunging into a crystal mountain stream. Who else in the world was lucky enough to be woken up by a honey-silk Gallic voice on a game ranch in the Zululand bush to be told that elephants were in his garden?
Nana, the matriarch, was in front as usual. She saw me, tested the air to get my scent, and then slowly walked over and stretched out her trunk. A little figure was beside her, nuzzling her for milk.
“You're a clever girl, Nana,” I said, carefully judging her demeanor and that of the herd behind her. These were wild elephants that for the past four years had been unusually proactive in forging a relationship with me. Even though they knew me well, I still had to be very cautious. “Thank you for bringing your baby to see me. He is beautiful.”
A couple of the younger elephants were at the side of the house, tugging thatch out of the roof. This would require some serious repair work once the sun was up, but what the hell, it was worth it for the privilege of being visited by a herd of wild elephants.
A streak of lightning lit the sky in the east, illuminating the beautiful tract of lush African wilderness that I am privileged to own. A storm was brewing far out over the Indian Ocean, and for a moment I was reminded of Iraq. I had been watching the war on CNN earlier that evening, and for some reason the nonstop TV coverage unsettled me.
BOOK: Babylon's Ark
10.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Light My Fire by Katie MacAlister
The Magickers by Emily Drake
A Wild Night's Bride by Victoria Vane
The Master of Misrule by Laura Powell
Ghostwalker (Book 1) by Ben Cassidy
Hiding Tom Hawk by Robert Neil Baker
The Mistress's Child by Sharon Kendrick