It is a special anniversary for me as it honours the most extraordinary person I’ve had the privilege of knowing, as well as the writing of my first published book.
The person was Lawrence Anthony, who tragically is no longer with us. A sketch of him hangs in our living room and I walk past it with a salute every day of my life.
The rescue itself is a larger than life epic of courage, grit and steel cojones that few possess these days. I personally have never met a man braver than Lawrence. And what is really ironic is that it not only took a South African 6 000km away to get off his butt to do something in the middle of a blazing war, but it was a man who didn’t even like zoos.
To Lawrence, the purist conservationist, the only good cage was an open cage. But he understood the realities of the situation and if he didn’t do something, the animals would die.
Just to get there was an odyssey. In Kuwait he had to hire a car and he didn’t have a driver’s licence on him. Can you imagine the charm needed to persuade a foreign car rental company to loan you a vehicle when you don’t even have a licence? And then to take that car across the border into a war zone?
The Americans had instructed him to stick to the main road as there were armed Saddam loyalists around who would shoot a white man on sight. Lawrence had two Kuwaitis with him, who thought it more likely the Americans would shoot them, so they took the ‘scenic’ route to Baghdad through bandit territory.
Lawrence, who stood nearly 2m tall with a flaming red beard and blue eyes, spent the entire journey cramped on the car’s floor.
When they arrived at the zoo, requiring Lawrence’s supreme oratory skills to talk their way through roadblocks bristling with edgy soldiers, his heart sank. It was little more than rubble. The battle for Baghdad had been fought in the zoo grounds and out of 650 animals, only 35 remained. The survivors all had big teeth or claws that deterred rampaging looters who had killed any edible creature the bombs had missed.
Lawrence asked for a rifle. There was only one solution – to shoot the crazed, shell-shocked creatures and put them out of their misery. But something held him back, particularly when a zoo worker who had risked his life trying to get water to the lions, wept and held Lawrence’s hands, thanking Allah that help had arrived.
Lawrence started work immediately. He and three Iraqis set up a pipe and bucket system and hauled fetid water from a nearby lake, trickling it into the cages. He measured success in tiny increments – every sip that dampened a parched tongue was a win. In the searing desert heat, they toiled hour after awful hour to keep the animals alive.
As people started to hear stories about a crazy South African, help came from unusual quarters. Soldiers donated their rations.
Officials turned their backs when he looted supplies to feed the skin-and-bone animals. People bought donkeys for the lions. Hard-eyed mercenaries guarded the zoo from roving gangs of fedayeen in their free time.
Then an Iraqi told Lawrence that the zoo had once been the hub of Baghdad life. It was the only open space in a squalid, seething city. Four million people visited it a year.
Armed with that knowledge, Lawrence went to the American administrators and told them that if they restored the bombed-out zoo it would be a supreme public relations coup – a symbolic indication of peace. For a man who could persuade grumpy Kuwaiti jobsworths to hire a car to an unlicenced infidel, this was child’s play.
Never one to miss an opportunity, Lawrence then initiated an extravagant blueprint for the new zoo. Instead of cramped, Victorian-style cages, the animals would have open air enclosures. For a man who didn’t even like zoos, this was as good as it could get.
With his right-hand man Brendan Whittington-Jones and Iraqi vet Farah Murrani, he also set up the first SPCA in a Middle Eastern Country. They then rescued a prized herd of Arabian horses whose bloodline dates back to Saladin and the Crusades.
The rest is history. From 35 traumatised survivors, Baghdad Zoo today boasts 1 070 animals. It gets 8-million visitors a year. The gift Lawrence bequeathed to the Iraqi people is incalculable.
However, closer to home, that zoo rescue was seminal in the lives of all of us involved. To Lawrence’s utter amazement, he was heralded as the Indiana Jones of conservationists. He was awarded the prestigious UN Earth Day Medal. Brendan Whittington-Jones and Farah Murrani got married and together do animal welfare work.
And me? I got to write a book.
