Babylon's Ark, page 5
Before the invasions, the 379-room hotel had been the buzzing hub of Baghdad and Saddam himself regularly used it as a pleasure dome for entertaining foreign dignitaries. It was also where his sons picked up girls who dared not say no—a decadent oasis where alcohol gushed in an austerely dry Muslim city. At night men and women clad in designer clothes gyrated in the discos to hip-thrusting pop music, light-years removed from the djellabas, burkas, and kaffiyehs on the streets. At least three a-la-carte restaurants catered to those with bulging wallets.
It also was where Iraq’s abhorrent secret police, the Mukhabarat, hung out. They were so obvious in their cheap suits and bushy Saddam-aping mustaches that their businessmen disguises were a joke. There was, however, nothing funny about their brutal interrogation procedures and the human shredding machines that were said to be their preferred method of disposing of bodies. Apparently they routinely bugged the hotel’s rooms, and stories were told of legions of guests who, having just decided what to order from room service, suddenly found a waiter at their door. He knew their orders before they had called, courtesy of the bumbling Inspector Clouseaus listening to the hidden microphones.
Indeed, Saddam’s security paranoia was microcosmed at the Al-Rashid. Each floor had had a round-the-clock concierge sitting at a desk by the elevators to report the comings and goings of every guest to the secret police.
The hotel became internationally famous, albeit probably not in the way its management would have chosen, in the First Gulf War after Peter Arnett’s CNN team filmed from its roof the nightly pyrotechnics of Baghdad’s administration infrastructure being bombed at will.
This time around, as the war approached, the Al-Rashid was known to be a potential military target and so most journalists booked into the less ostentatious Palestine Hotel on the other side of the river.
However, if the coalition forces regarded an extravagantly opulent hotel as a prime target in their hunt for Saddam, they had good reason. For the Al-Rashid was no mere civilian establishment; it had been specifically designed to be one of the dictator ’s numerous bunkers around the city, and its thickly reinforced concrete walls were built to withstand rocket attacks. Saddam’s final preinvasion propaganda clip of him discussing military tactics with his cabinet was filmed in one of a series of heavily fortified underground chambers that honeycombed the foundation. Lengthy underground tunnels provided a whole host of escape routes.
As we surveyed the devastated lobby, another soldier walked up and Lieutenant Szydlik introduced us to him: Lieutenant Case. They had been at the West Point Military Academy together, and Case was happy to take his friend’s word that we were worth looking after.
Officers had taken the bottom floors and after that rooms were grabbed by the crews on a first come, first served basis. The only available accommodations now were on the seventh floor or higher, and we were directed to the staircase.
When we finally reached the seventh floor, chests heaving after the climb, there was a handwritten sign in the foyer near the elevators that was not exactly hospitable: THIS IS DOD PHOTOGRAPHERS’ AREA. KEEP OUT.
I assumed, correctly, that DOD stood for Department of Defense. But I had been told by the officer in charge to find a room on the seventh floor and I intended to do just that.
There were no keys and I started testing doors to see which rooms were vacant. This was easy, as all locked doors had been smashed open—courtesy of a sledgehammer conveniently placed against the corridor wall.
Suddenly a voice boomed from behind, “Who the fuck are you?”
It was said with a smile that robbed the obscenity of belligerence. And to my utter astonishment, the accent was South African.
I turned around to see an unshaven, wiry man with a cigarette curling smoke from his bottom lip. He was obviously one of the photographers. Maybe even the guy who had put up the KEEP OUT sign.
“Howzit,” I said, giving the colloquial South African greeting. “I’m Lawrence Anthony.”
The man looked at me suspiciously, equally astounded to hear an idiom from his homeland. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked in jovial amazement.
“I’m a conservationist. Come to help out at the zoo.”
“The zoo? The one down the road?”
“Ja. It’s in a complete mess. They fought a battle right through it. Shot the shit out of the place.”
The man laughed as if this were the funniest thing in the world, his chest heaving with crazy mirth. “Everything’s a fucking zoo here, man.”
I laughed self-consciously with him.
Eventually he put out his hand, stilling chuckling. “Alistair McLarty. Where’re you from back home?”
I shook the proffered hand. “Zululand. And you?”
“Jo’burg. Shit, didn’t think I’d find another compatriot in this hellhole.”
I waved a hand down the corridor. “Which room do you recommend?”
Alistair paused for a moment. “This floor ’s no good. You’ll want to go higher.”
He then looked at me for a long moment. He was sizing me up; should the DOD photogs allow me on their floor? In a situation where resources were minimal, you jealously guarded what meager assets you had. This was their floor. They were there first on it, and they decided who stayed there. Or not.
“What do you do back home?” he asked.
“I have a game reserve,” I replied. “Thula Thula.”
“I’ve heard of it. That’s where they handle problem elephants. Is that you?”
“That’s me.”
Most South Africans have empathy with wild animals. It’s part of the national bushveld psyche.
He stroked his chin, as if wrestling with a dilemma. “Well, okay. Let’s see what there is here.”
We forced our way into the first room, shoving the sledgehammer-shattered door aside.
“The first thing is to check out the toilet,” said Alistair.
He gingerly opened the bathroom door and then slammed it shut with force.
“Whoa! You don’t want to go in there!” He shuddered, his face wrinkling with revulsion.
We tried a few more, and Alistair eventually declared that under the circumstances Room 720 wasn’t too bad—which meant the toilet wasn’t more vile than absolutely necessary. I took that room and the Kuwaitis took the room next door.
Exhausted after the tense nine-hour drive through smoldering battle zones and our first depressing introduction to the zoo, we ate some of the canned food we had brought with us and went to bed.
It was not an agreeable night. The disheveled beds had been slept in before, and dust and grit layered the grimy sheets. The floors were so filthy we left smudgy footprints wherever we walked.
The key choice facing everyone in the hotel was whether to close the windows and steam in the sauna-temperature rooms or open them and be eaten alive by the seething clouds of flies and mosquitoes. Most chose the latter option.
I closed my eyes. Sleep was elusive, despite marrow-sapped exhaustion. I kept getting magnetically pulled to the window by the sounds of fighting that thundered across the city. Tracer bullets and parachute flares incinerated in the sky while tank shells screamed into targets with meteoric ferocity. Firefights erupted every few minutes or so, and just as I fell into a fitful doze, the stuttering hammer of machine guns somewhere on the streets roused me with a start. Radios regularly clattered into life in the hotel around me, and through the open windows I could hear the revving engines of tanks and Humvees seven floors below.
Often in strange places you wake wondering where the hell you are. Not in Baghdad. You knew every minute, indeed every second, exactly where you were: in a damned war zone.
Sweating, filthy, scratchy, mosquito-itchy, noisy … it was wretched. Absolutely wretched.
I closed my eyes.
The initial thrill of adventure was by now harshly sullied by the reality of where I actually was. In the middle of a very real, very violent war. This was not part of the plan. Not at all.
God, I’d better not tell Françoise about this.
FOUR
AT EXACTLY 6:00 A.M. I shot out of bed as a terrifying commotion thundered through the Al-Rashid. It was as though a squadron of jumbo jets had flown straight into my hotel room—the bone-shuddering whine of scores of turbocharged engines at full throttle.
I rushed to the window. Outside, seven stories down, drivers of the Third ID were starting up their Abrams tanks for the early-morning patrol. I realized how harrowing it must have been for civilians to watch a formation of these awesomely powerful machines storm their city. Until you got used to it, the crescendo was as disorientating as a panic attack.
I later learned it took twenty-five liters of gas just to kick one of these jet-turbine-powered juggernauts into life. And every morning, the volcanic whining of tanks warming up would be my wake-up call. At the Al-Rashid, that’s what passed for room service.
I washed with some of the precious bottled water we had brought from Kuwait. The Kuwaitis were also awake, and after a meager canned breakfast we went downstairs to find an escort to the zoo. It was only a mile or so away, but no civilian car could travel unaccompanied in the immediate area surrounding the Al-Rashid—it would be bombed to smithereens in a blink.
While waiting I found a pile of guest questionnaires on the reception desk, quizzing patrons on whether they had enjoyed their stay at the hotel. I filled one in commenting on lack of room service, food, water, flushing toilets, and electricity. Under “Guest Comments” I complained there were armed men running all over the place shooting at everything in sight and recommended this be reported to the police as soon as possible.
Deadpan, I handed it in to Lieutenant Case saying that unless these matters were dealt with I would consider taking my business elsewhere.
Lieutenant Case guffawed, “apologized” for the inconvenience, and suggested I forward my complaints to a certain Mr. Saddam Hussein, proprietor—but unfortunately he had left no forwarding address.
Case had assigned an armored troop carrier to chaperone us to the zoo, and the distant thud of a mortar bomb greeted us as we left the hotel, followed by the staccato of rifle fire. The Black Hawks circling above dipped their cockpits as they swung toward the firefight, somewhere in the east of the city. The soldiers didn’t flinch; this was just the heartbeat of Baghdad—a flare-up here, another one there. They erupted all over the place like minivolcanoes. I marveled at the soldiers’ nonchalance, little knowing that within days we would be exactly the same.
Once in the park, soldiers duct-taped the word ZOO across the hood of my hired Toyota. Lieutenant Szydlik radioed all checkpoints instructing that a red-bearded Anglo wearing a khaki baseball cap with the words Thula Thula stenciled on it and two Arabs with white and green Kuwaiti Zoo caps, in a new white Toyota with the word ZOO taped on it, were to be allowed access throughout the high-security zone. We were not, repeat not, to be fired upon. It possibly was the strangest order the soldiers had been given since they took the city.
I was also instructed to drive extremely slowly, to stop at least fifty yards from every checkpoint, and to get out of the car with hands exposed and identify myself. I was told not to walk anywhere outside the zoo or hotel grounds. But most important, the Kuwaitis and I had to wear our baseball caps wherever we went. If we lost our headgear, it was possible we would be shot on sight.
Dr. Husham, who had got into the park by clambering over a burnt-out truck jammed in a bomb-blasted gate at the northern entrance on Zaitun Street, was waiting for us. With him were four staff members whom he had managed to contact. I could see they were famished and immediately gave them some dollar bills as advance wages. Abdullah Latif also handed them souvenir Kuwait City zoo T-shirts and caps. He meant well, but given that most Iraqis would not be seen dead wearing Kuwaiti gear, I was not sure how that went down.
I then called everyone together; the five Iraqis and two Kuwaitis. It was time to formulate a plan of action.
I had thought long and hard about what I was going to say. I would base my strategy on two central concepts that formed the core of every project I had tackled, whether in business or the bush: once committed to something, make it go right at all costs; and always complete any cycles of action that you start.
In other words, whatever happens, finish the task you start—easier said than done with fighting and looting rampant all around. But even so, here in a city at war, I already had five people—Husham and his four helpers—prepared to risk their lives just to come to work. This was something precious to build on, and I knew that in order to foster fragile morale I had to keep them productively occupied.
Speaking slowly in basic English, I pointed to the animal cages around us. Every one of these creatures, I said, depended on us. Every single one. It was up to us whether they lived or died.
The American soldiers had said they would help us if they could, but the bottom line was the zoo lived or died under us. We were the last chance. And we were going to make damn sure these magnificent survivors, helpless victims of a brutal war of which they had no comprehension, were going to live.
We lived in a world, I continued, where the environment and animals were viciously abused and soon we are going to pay a terrible price for our neglect. Here in Iraq, we would make a stand that would send a message to fellow humans: that you don’t do this to other creatures. More prosaically, I also reminded them that without animals there was no zoo and thus no jobs when the war was over.
I then called upon each of them to speak about their experiences, as a type of catharsis.
A man called Ayed was the first to come forward. “Nobody care about zoo or animals, or people working here, nobody help, everybody fighting, but we try. My wife also she help; she wash your clothes.”
I hadn’t even thought of that and appreciated the offer, as there was no water at the Al-Rashid.
Husham was next, speaking quickly and animatedly to the others in Arabic and then saying to me. “We thank you; we will be here; we will try.”
Then the other Iraqis spoke. They knew each animal well and told of their anguish at what had happened to their zoo, emotionally recalling the names of the creatures they had cared for that had been slaughtered or were missing. It was a type of requiem for the lost animals. Dr. Husham translated their words into rough English, his broken syntax adding a quaint, poetic poignancy.
“Giraffes gone—Ali Baba eat, sure,” said one, shaking his head at the utter futility of the slaughter.
“Bomb, lions come out. Soldiers kill too quick, shoot … brrrrrrt,” said another, imitating a machine gun with his hands.
“Why all birds gone? Why Iraqi people do this?” asked another, grappling with the enormity of the trashed cages around him.
After that came the anger. Some of them cursed Saddam Hussein, others the coalition forces. They needed their jobs; their families were as hungry as the animals and their future looked bleak.
Each man repeated the same theme, albeit in different words: It was their zoo and it must be saved. No question about it.
How were we going to do that? I asked.
There was silence. The clarity of our predicament was suddenly and brutally distilled.
I answered my own question. “We will do what we can, right now, using whatever we’ve got right here in the zoo. And we will make it go right, whatever happens.”
The men nodded.
The next question was would they be safe coming to work? Would the Americans and fedayeen busy shooting each other on the streets let them through?
There was nothing we could do about Saddam’s thugs, but I pledged to get whatever passage and protection I could from the Americans. My staff, like all civilians, was not allowed even to approach checkpoints and had to come the long way around, through the bomb-blasted gate on the northern perimeter of the park. However, I had no doubt men such as Lieutenant Szydlik would assist us.
Ticking with my fingers, I tabled our priorities.
First we would get what water we could to the cages, as we had done yesterday. That was essential. Water was life.
Next we would feed the animals with what was left of the buffalo meat from Kuwait.
Then we would inspect the animals to determine which ones needed emergency medical attention. I stressed the word emergency, as the entire wrecked zoo’s inmates needed urgent care. I had brought a limited supply of medicines and antibiotics with me from the Kuwait City zoo—but unfortunately no sedatives—and said I would try to get disinfectant and other basic pharmaceuticals from the Americans.
Hygiene would be the next priority; we would have to scrub the filthy cages until they were livable.
Last, I repeated what I had said to Husham the day before. Any staff members who came back to work would be paid. As I said that I waved a crumpled dollar bill.
“Dollars make them more brave,” said Husham, and they all burst out laughing.
I had been waiting for something positive to end the meeting on and decided this was it.
“Let’s get started,” I said.
That humble gathering of very ordinary men held in the shell of a wrecked office was possibly the most crucial—and emotive—meeting in the zoo’s history. Amid the chaos and carnage, without even a chair to sit on, the tiny group of men huddled around me as I outlined in the sand my vastly overoptimistic plan of action.
Somehow, without me even knowing, my simple words—food, water, care, nurture; the essence of Mother Earth—touched a chord. We were going to save the zoo, whether we dropped dead in the attempt or not. I could see it in their eyes. Their determination was tangible. Dr. Husham in particular was moved almost to tears.
This was to be our stand. This was more than just a zoo in a war zone. It was about making an intrinsically ethical and moral statement, saying: Enough is enough. You just can’t say to hell with the consequences to the animal kingdom. It’s all very well getting rid of a monster like Saddam, but that doesn’t mean we can forget what we are doing to the rest of our planet. It doesn’t excuse a zoo getting trashed just because nobody had the foresight to put a basic survival plan in place for hundreds of animals utterly dependent on humans.
