Babylon's Ark (17 page)

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Authors: Lawrence Anthony

BOOK: Babylon's Ark
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People stopped and stared, and then laughter and clapping spontaneously erupted as children pointed excitedly to the pelican and the vultures and waved at the soldiers. Fathers lifted sons onto their shoulders, and mothers and daughters jumped up and down to get a better view. It was a magnificent sight, the first time I had seen such joy on Baghdad's streets.
It suddenly made everything worthwhile. These animals, abused beyond belief, were having an impromptu parade of honor. Even the battle-tempered soldiers were smiling as they constantly scanned the perimeters, ever vigilant for a sniper attack or ambush.
At the Baghdad Zoo the animals were off-loaded into cages the staff had prepared and given food and water. It all went smoothly, except when they got to the camel. He had no intention of going anywhere.
The soldiers even reversed the Humvee up to an embankment so he wouldn't have to jump off, but he still refused to budge. Perhaps he thought he was going to go on another victory parade; perhaps he feared he was being transferred to another hellhole cage. Whatever, he sat down and rejected any attempts to eject him point-blank. No amount of cajoling or tugging on his lead would persuade him otherwise. The Humvee, he had decided, was his new home.
Dr. Barbara Maas, who had cradled the surviving swan during the trip back to the zoo, was adamant that the “softly-softly” approach would work and tried to get the camel to stand up by dangling a piece of lettuce in front of his nose. But the animal wasn't interested in the slightest. He sat and stared at the lettuce leaf with dignified but absolute disdain.
The rescue had taken longer than anticipated and the soldiers
were now growing impatient. They needed their Humvee for operational work and told me so in no uncertain terms. After twenty minutes with the camel still eyeing the lettuce as if it were a piece of dung, the soldiers gave me an ultimatum: either the camel moved voluntarily or they physically turfed it out.
Adel and Husham had been watching all this with some mirth and came running over. They told me they, as Iraqis, understood camels and it was imperative we got Barbara out of the way.
I knew they were going to do something that would upset her, but I wasn't sure how to get her to move on. So I asked her to check if the foxes were okay, but she didn't fall for that. She was determined to entice the camel out with that lettuce leaf. But if the camel thought it was unappetizing before, he was even less likely to go for it now, as it had shriveled like a green dishrag in the sun. We also weren't sure if lettuce was even camel cuisine—it's not exactly something you find every day in the desert.
The soldiers were getting more and more agitated. Suddenly Husham had an idea.
“Barbara,” he said. “Have you touched camel?”
He knew full well she had. In fact, she had even had her arms around the animal's neck for various press photo shoots.
“Yes, of course,” she replied.
“Oh no!” he gasped with theatrical horror. “You get mange. Your hair fall. You go bald. Quickly wash hands in office. Very important.”
Barbara understandably sped off like a gazelle, every now and again glancing over her shoulder with a ferocious frown as if she knew something untoward was about to happen.
As soon as she was out of sight Husham and Adel jumped onto the back of the Humvee, grabbed the camel's tail, gave it a firm twist, and administered a hard kick up his butt. He shot up with alacrity, and before he could sit again, they yanked him down from the Humvee with the neck rope.
Problem solved. When Barbara returned with hands scrubbed pink, the camel was happily adjusting to his spacious new enclosure.
The zoo had a designated camel den, but a bomb had hit it and there was possibly some unexploded ordnance still embedded in the ground. He was consequently placed in the elephant enclosure, although thankfully the zoo had not housed any jumbos before the war. The staff piled in bales of alfalfa and filled the water trough. The camel drank for several minutes and then ate until every morsel had been finished. It was a sight to behold, as his teeth were angled forward like the prow of a ship and he was humming with pleasure as he munched away. Sumner in particular grew attached to the camel, spending hours clipping his matted, filthy coat to help cure the mange.
“This is a fine camel,” Sumner said to anyone who would listen. “He doesn't hiss or piss and crap all over the place. He's just a friendly guy.”
Dr. Adel started mange treatment, and the good news today is there is one happy, well-fed, humpedback ship of the desert residing at the Baghdad Zoo.
 
 
IT WAS NOW A RACE against the clock to rescue the other animals still holed up in their cages at Luna Park. These included the huge brown bear, a striped hyena, a bobcat, two badgers, and some pigs that couldn't be squeezed in during the first raid.
As we were planning the next sortie, my Thula Thula game reserve manager, Brendan Whittington-Jones, arrived from South Africa. I desperately needed backup and Brendan was a competent manager and absolutely dedicated to animals, so I had asked him to come and help out.
“How do I get there?” he asked when I phoned him.
“Go north and turn left,” I told him. “You'll find it.”
He had a torturous journey getting to Baghdad, spending a mind-numbingly dull eighteen hours at the Dubai departures lounge trying to catch a flight to Kuwait, which he alleviated by downing some “Guinnae—plural of Guinness”—at the airport's famous Irish bar.
I had also given Brendan strict instructions to get the dart gun Barbara Maas had brought in, which was being held at Kuwaiti customs. This proved to be a major problem, as the officious Kuwaitis dug in their heels, refusing to release it.
The stalemate lasted for three days and Brendan, who was itching to leave Kuwait and get to the action in Baghdad, summed it up to me perfectly: “Here we were in the middle of a military zone with cruise missiles and depleted uranium shells, and the Kuwaitis were worried about a dart gun that could fire tranquilizers at one hundred yards.”
Finally an American officer at the coalition's Humanitarian Operations Center lost patience, went to the customs offices, and when no one was looking quietly grabbed the gun. He gave it to Brendan and rushed him to the military airport outside Kuwait City to catch the next flight to Baghdad.
They were just in time. On the runway was a C-130, a massive, squat, oddly beautiful monster, shimmering in aviation gas fumes and with propellers the size of roof beams. The C-130 is a military cargo plane specifically designed to make passengers as uncomfortable as possible. The seats are a cramped crisscross of webbing, and if you don't instantly get deep-vein thrombosis, you never will. You strap yourself in with a seat-belt buckle that looks like a blunt can opener.
The pilot handed out earplugs with the texture of bubble gum and his sole briefing to Brendan and other passengers was a laconic: “If there's a fire, or if we go down, follow me.”
The flight was ninety minutes of restless tedium edged with fear that a surface-to-air missile might come hurtling out of the sky. It was virtually impossible to talk as the engines were too loud, and Brendan gave up trying to read as the vibration from the turbines was too jarring. Once over Baghdad's airport the plane literally dropped out of the sky, swiveling down to avoid enemy fire and popping passengers' ears like corks. For obvious reasons, pilots flying in Iraq don't have the luxury of leisurely landings.
Baghdad Airport was a maximum-security area and no unescorted
civilians wandered around unless they had a death wish. There were signs all around warning that this was a shoot-to-kill zone. A shoot-to-kill zone, of which there were many in the city including the Al-Rashid hotel, meant just that. No warning, no pity. If you violated the rules you died, no question. Unfortunately, we couldn't dispatch anyone to meet Brendan, and as he couldn't walk outside onto the road to find a lift, he had to wait in the VIP terminal—a dusty shot-up building with every window blown out. All around were battle-weary soldiers napping on stretchers or eating MREs and listening to music. He eventually bummed a ride to the hotel with a group of British soldiers, who were astonished to find a conservationist, let alone a foreign civilian, in the war zone.
An hour or so later we met up as I was coming back from showering at the swimming pool. The pool's shower was the only place in the hotel—possibly even in Baghdad—that had running water, as it was tapped directly from an artesian well. Each evening there would be a snaking line of tank crews waiting their turn to soap off. To conserve water we would strip and lather ourselves up while still in the queue. And then for a few ecstatic seconds the sweat and grime and stink would sluice off our bodies. The water was ice-cold, as it was piped from deep in the earth. It made you want to yell, such was the intense pleasure after a day in the dust and the heat.
To while away the evenings prior to Brendan's arrival, I had built him up to be some sort of bush superman, a cross between Crocodile Dundee and Tarzan. The legend grew to such an extent that soldiers at the hotel now believed Brendan to be a modern-day caveman. They asked if he was like Steve Irwin, the Australian Crocodile Hunter, who was a major TV star back in the States. Well, I said, Brendan was way, way ahead of him. In fact, I told them Brendan complained that on TV Steve Irwin was given three or four camera takes to catch a reptile whereas Brendan, who operates in the real world, only gets one.
So when he arrived, he had a tough reputation to live up to. But to Brendan's relief there were no crocodiles in either the zoo or
that section of the Tigris for his reptile-wrangling skills to be put to the test.
I was delighted to see him, as his presence would take huge pressure off me. He has a degree in zoology and wildlife management, plenty of bush experience, and just by looking at him you know things are going to get done. What you see is what you get; a solid, capable, friendly guy with a great sense of humor.
That afternoon I showed Brendan around the hotel and introduced him to the DOD photographers and Captain Burris and his men. I also briefed Brendan on security, instructing him to obey the military at all times and outlining what one could and couldn't do at the Al-Rashid and the zoo.
We then went over to the zoo and I took him on a grand tour, introducing him to Adel, Husham, Stephan, and the staff. We visited each enclosure and I recounted the history of the individual animals inside, describing what we were doing to keep them alive. I also told Brendan how I spoke to them individually each day, and he nodded. He knew what I meant.
The animals were still scrawny, but they were in far better condition than they had been when I first arrived. Both the tigers' pelts were starting to get a little gloss, while the male bear, Saedi, no longer spent his days aimlessly pacing up and down his cage. The lions also were far more alert and active than they had been when I initially found them dehydrated and starving, and they watched us with interest, hoping we were bringing food. Their healthy appetites were a good sign.
The two dogs were still living with the lion cubs in their own cage, barking as we approached, and Brendan was as intrigued as we were to see the incredible bond between canine and feline formed in such dire circumstances. The two cheetahs were also putting on weight, and the nasty leg wound on the female had now closed up. She was no longer limping.
I was about to comment on how well the animals were doing compared to when I first arrived, but Brendan got in first.
“Shit,” he said, looking around. “There's some work to be done here.”
And there I was thinking how much progress we had made!
However, the best news was that with Brendan's arrival we now had a dart gun. With this vital new piece of equipment, we could launch the next rescue raid on Luna Park.
Sumner wasted no time and the following morning our military escort arrived and we were off to the vile private zoo—giving Brendan an impressive baptism of fire of what we were up against. Once again, the man purporting to be Luna Park's owner whom I had threatened to thump accosted us, shouting that we were on private property and were thieves and trespassers—or whatever other insult he could muster. Sumner warned he would be forcibly removed if he made a nuisance of himself, and he stormed off, muttering furiously.
Adel, Husham, and Brendan took control and decided to kick off the rescue by sedating the striped hyena. The press had again come along for the ride, and in front of TV crews and flashing cameras Adel prepared to fire our brand-new dart gun at a hyena.
The first inkling Brendan and I had that darting the animals might not work as well as we hoped was when we saw Mohammed Ali rigging up the gun. Ali was a taxi driver, and while his driving prowess was legendary, no one was aware that his skills extended to animal sedation. I was about to ask Brendan to assist but figured Adel was a vet and knew what he was doing. We watched apprehensively.
Dr. Adel was indeed a dedicated veterinarian, but due to sanctions in Iraq he had not fired a dart gun for more than a decade. If he needed to tranquilize an animal, he merely clipped a syringe onto a pole, stuck it through the cage bars, and jabbed the creature. Perhaps that's why he asked Ali to pressurize the gun for him.

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