Authors: Lawrence Anthony

Babylon's Ark (7 page)

BOOK: Babylon's Ark

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I was aware of this and said that after we had filled the water troughs we would gather debris to plug the hole, binding it with bits of wire we could scrounge from the rubble. I said I would later ask American military technicians to fix it properly.

The two Bengal tigers were also dangerously skeletal, but like the lions they would survive as long as water kept dribbling in. Apart from their raging thirst, they also needed extra water to cool them down in the scorching sun.

The bears were ravenously gobbling vegetable scraps that had been tossed into their cages, the old blind brown bear that I had just spoken to, Saedia, pausing occasionally to gaze vacantly in our direction. In the adjacent cage Saedi, the other bearâthe Ali Baba killerâwatched us warily as he munched moldy gray cabbage leaves. His water trough was dry as dirt, and I instructed the staff to get containers of the precious liquid into the cage immediately.

In short, the vets said that although all the animals were in awful condition, they were satisfied none were irrevocably on the verge of death. The key question, of course, was how long could we provide food and water?

It was a question none of us could answer.

I drew up a mental balance sheet. On the credit side, I had a few willing workers, some U.S. dollars in my pocket, some meat and vegetables from Kuwaitâalthough much of that was turning rancidâand a trickle of water.

On the debit â¦ well, I didn't want to dwell on that. It was simply too huge to contemplate. So I compiled a list of absolute essentials.

First, I needed food for the staff. Without that, they would understandably just grab what we had for the animals. Their families
were starving, that much they had made plain, and even the wages I had given them didn't count for much, as shops were either being ransacked by looters or boarded up.

Second, we needed proper buckets to haul water from the canals until we could get the pumps working.

And third, we needed to fix the pumps. Urgently.

The pumps â¦ they were the key to everything. Just getting a consignment of water to the cages in the heat on that first day was a forerunner to how cruelly unremitting our workload would be. It was enough to exhaust an ox, sheer backbreaking, muscle-tearing drudgery. We had no proper buckets, so we lugged the precious liquid up with whatever we could find, mainly just rusty cans. It took ages to slake the thirst of a single animal, leaving no time for long-term projects.

If we didn't sort the pumps out soon, more animals were going to die as my ill-fed men dropped from exhaustion. It was as simple, or difficult, as that.

I took Husham aside. He was an impressive handyman, as his jury-rigged viaduct system currently keeping the animals alive attested, and I asked if it was possible to fix the pumps. If so, what did he need?

“Batteries,” he said, looking at me as if I were some crazed alchemist. “And a dynamo for the generator.”

Batteries? A dynamo? May as well place an order for Beluga caviar. Just the thought of trying to procure something as obscure as a dynamoâa direct-current generatorâin a city plunged into anarchy was laughable.

We broke for a canned lunch and I wandered off alone, seeking some respite from the sun's furnace under a giant eucalyptus. I leaned against the trunk and looked up at the sky. Two Black Hawk helicopters walloped past nose to tail overhead, and in the distance I could hear guttural machine-gun staccato.

Hey â¦ this was like
Apocalypse Now
, dammitâand in my head I heard the first bars of “The End,” the haunting Doors anthem that kicks off the movie, keeping beat with the thudding chopper blades.

An image of the elephant herd back at Thula Thula, which I loved like a second family, flashed so vividly in my mind that for a moment I thought they were standing next to me.

What the hell was I doing here? This was all wrong; this war was supposed to be over. I had known I wanted to make a stand to help the animals of Baghdad, but from the safety of Thula Thula I hadn't realized the full extent of the everyday military hostility in this city. Just a few days ago in Kuwait I had seen cheering crowds on TV welcoming American troops and toppling Saddam's statues.

But this image wasn't reflected here on the ground. In fact, the only area under American control was a few blocks around Saddam's palaces, the park, Al-Rashid, and the conference centerâand even that was as dodgy as a sack of rattlesnakes. The rest of the city was a wretched hellhole. Firefights were ongoing, we could hear them all the time, and people were dying violently all over the place.

I also had begun to realize just how dangerous our trip from Kuwait along those desolate back roads had been. It was an absolute miracle we had made it to Baghdad in one piece.

I sat under the tree for several more minutes, daydreaming of home. Then with immense physical effort, literally shaking myself like a wet dog, I yanked my wild-flying thoughts together. There was work to be done. There was no point in feeling sorry for myself.

The younger tiger's cage was just ten yards away and I noticed the majestically striped feline staring quizzically at me. This tiger, Malooh, was the most stressed of all the zoo's afflicted inhabitants, hissing and snarling if anyone got too close.

“Don't worry, fella,” I said aloud. “You and me are going to get through all this just fine.”

Just saying that made me feel better. I hoped the tiger did as well.

BACK AT THE HOTEL that night, I had supper with the Kuwaitis and then knocked on the smashed door of Alistair McLarty's room.

“Come in,
boet
[brother],” said the South African.

Inside his room, lounging on the disheveled, grimy beds, were
three of Alistair 's colleagues. They introduced themselves: Bob Parr, Peter Jouvenal, and another man who only gave his name as Nick. They were British exâSpecial Service soldiers, hired to film the war as it unfolded at the front lines for the U.S. Department of Defense's archives. They had flown into Baghdad the day after the airport had been overrun and had been at the sharp end ever since. Now that Baghdad had been nominally taken, they roamed around photographing the vicious rearguard attacks from Saddam's fedayeen that were flaring throughout the suburbs. They regularly went in with their cameras to videotape the most dangerous parts of the city: the souks, narrow-streeted slums, and criminal hideouts. They didn't carry just cameras, either. They were also heavily armed. They had to be, as they could not claim to be neutral pressmen. They were contracted to the Pentagon, which made them fair game for guerrillas. If they got into trouble, they would have to drop their cameras and shoot their way out.

It was not the sort of job a file clerk would want. These men were adventurers in the true, swashbuckling sense of the word.

I sat down on a rumpled bed. They were drinking the powdered cool drink that comes in a sachet in each MRE, mixing it with bottled water from their daily ration. The room was strewn with cameras, videos, and photographic equipment, and an assortment of firearms was lying around.

As the evening progressed they started asking questions about the zoo. I mentioned we desperately needed buckets to water the animals, and the photographers said no problem, there were some in the hotel. That's what they used to carry the algae-ridden slush up from the swimming pool to flush the stinking toilets. In fact, being five-star hotel buckets, they were made from shiny stainless steel, unlike the common garden-variety galvanized iron buckets. Would that suffice?

You bet. It was our first major breakthrough, and the next morning I arrived at the zoo triumphantly holding four gleaming buckets, each capable of holding up to ten liters.

Throughout the morning we worked in temperatures steaming
up to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. We were little more than beasts of burden, drawing bucketful after bucketful of stagnant water from the canals, staggering up the banks to the cages a couple of hundred yards away, and pouring the contents into Husham's pipe viaduct. The water was fetid but drinkable for the animals and was also used to speed up defrosting buffalo chunks that were tossed to the carnivores. We had to move quickly, as pillagers stole any food left out too long.

Unfortunately, we didn't move quickly enough. By midafternoon looters had stolen all the buckets. I couldn't believe it; our most valuableâour onlyâequipment was gone within hours. However, I managed to scrounge a couple more from the hotel, and staff had strict instructions never to let these out of their sight during the day. I took the buckets back with me at night and kept them next to my bed.

The next day a group of helmeted journalists arrived at the zoo, moving awkwardly in bulky Kevlar vests and surrounded by a retinue of armed bodyguards looking menacing in wraparound dark glasses. They were intrigued by what they saw. In between the blood and bullets, here was an offbeat human-interest story. They thought it was good copy; a white African who had gate-crashed a war zone on a zany conservation mission and a group of dedicated Iraqis saving a zoo rather than looting and running rampant downtown. Indeed, the Iraqi zookeepers were probably some of the first Baghdad residents to start reconstructing their city.

One of the journalists, a short, cynical Irishman, asked what I planned to achieve.

“Simple,” I said. “We want to save these animals. It's not their fault they're in the shit.”

He laughed and shook his head. “They're not even going to save this city. How're you're going to do it with a bloody zoo?”

It was a question I had no answer for. I shrugged: “Perhaps we're just Horatio at the bridge.”

He looked at me blankly. He didn't have a clue what I was saying. Horatio was a Roman legionnaire who with two comrades
held the invading Etruscan army at bay on the narrow bridge spanning the river Tiber in 510 B.C., allowing the Romans the chance to destroy the structure at the other end and save the city. It was one of the most uneven contests in history, and as I looked at the few exhausted men I had with me that was almost how I felt.

The following morning, newspapers around the world carried reports of the wrecked zoo with picture spreads of bone-thin animals, smiling Iraqis, and me wearing a Thula Thula baseball cap. I never saw the reports at the time but later heard it was a major public relations boost â¦ absolutely essential, as I knew all too well that media focus was crucial to galvanizing international aid. Whether we liked it or not, at this pivotal point publicity was our oxygen. I just hoped I could keep things ticking over until our plight affected the conscience of the world.

Later that day a few more zoo workers arrived; no doubt the grapevine message was out that at last they would be paid. Any extra hands were crucial in carrying water to the cages, and I welcomed them with wide arms.

If only I could get those pumps working and our biggest obstacle, water, would be solved.

That was just one of many pressing problems. Dr. Husham again reminded me the staff was close to starving. They saw the animals getting food, and I was sure some of the better cuts of buffalo meat for the carnivores were already being filched for the staff's families.

I couldn't blame them. But even if I gave them more money it would not be of much use, as there was precious little food to buy in Baghdad at that stage.

This posed a serious dilemma. It was pointless trying to run a zoo where the staff was as hungry as the animals.

I said I would see what I could do and at the very least get some MREs from the army. MREs are scientifically programmed food packs with enough nutrition to keep fighting people going under any circumstances, and they would be just what we needed to keep our struggling staff going.

I didn't know if I could officially ask the army to give me a bulk order, but I had no doubt soldiers would hand over any surplus supplies that they could. Before I arrived, some soldiers, sickened by the plight of the starving animals, had fed them with their own MREs. Like every battle, the fight to save the zoo would only be won by grassroots support. And in this regard the ordinary American soldier was magnificent.

However, MREs would be little more than a stopgap. I needed a more permanent source of food.

It wasn't only the staff that was hungry. The supplies from Kuwait were by now almost exhausted, and we were down to the last few frozen chunks of buffalo meat. I decided to keep them for a rainy day, so in the meantime I had to find new outlets for animal food urgently.

The answer to the latter problem was as simple as it was harsh. In ravaged Baghdad there was only one source of affordable meat: the ubiquitous donkey. Even so, war shortages had rocketed the cost of donkeys through the roof and the price was climbing daily. Each one of these gallant and loyal little beasts was now being sold at more than a quarter of an average Iraqi's monthly salary.

We had no other option, so I summoned a nearby worker, peeled off a number of dollar bills, and told him to come back with donkeys.

I never saw the man or my money again. I cursed. If I couldn't trust my own people, whom could I trust?

BOOK: Babylon's Ark

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