Babylon's Ark by Lawrence Anthony Page B

to square one. I again dug into my pocket and sent the workers on a foraging party into town, hustling among the gunfire and the looters for more donkeys.
    Finding meat was a hit-or-miss affair. The Iraqis merely asked passing pedestrians if they knew of any donkeys for sale, as one would ask strangers for directions. Sometimes we would strike luck in the first hour; sometimes it took days. Indeed, on one occasion later on we had to travel fifty miles out of town. But no matter what, Kazim the executioner was always there with his swinging ax.

    Much as I love the noble donkey, feeding them to the zoo’s giant cats never worried me. Many conservationists have subsequently queried the ethics of killing one animal to keep another alive, but the Baghdad Zoo’s carnivores had always feasted on donkey meat, under the simple premise that donkeys were plentiful and lions and tigers few. It was a straight mathematical equation. The Iraqis did not question it; the harsh reality of nature is that death nurtures life, and conservation politics sometimes must step aside in the face of circumstance.
    At that stage there was no other option. Morality was fine in air-conditioned offices of the West, but here in anarchic Baghdad there was a sharp disparity between abstract theory and crisis reality. Even if more buffalo meat were available—which it wasn’t—it would be way out of my dwindling-into-a-black-hole budget. Donkeys provided the only affordable protein. The solution to the problem, whether one liked it or not, was clear.
    The next piece of equipment we desperately needed was a wheelbarrow to cart food. Each mealtime we had to lug bloody chunks of freshly hacked donkey flesh around by hand, not hygienic and not pleasant, as swarms of metallic black flies covered both carcass and carrier.
    I solved the problem temporarily by hijacking a baggage cart from the Al-Rashid Hotel. It was impossible to believe what a difference such a simple tool made. Feeding the animals was now almost a pleasure.
    A day later looters broke in and stole it.
    That was it. Enough was enough. It was clear to me that something had to be done. Every bit of progress we made was reversed through brazen theft. Unless we confronted the rampant looting problem, the zoo would perish.

FIVE
    T HE SEARING HEAT scalded my lungs, but I couldn’t afford to let up for a second.
    Perhaps somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind alarm bells did trigger that a fifty-three-year-old should not be sprinting through a park in a war zone after five people who could well be armed. But such was my anger.
    While checking on the cages I had stumbled upon them, a family of looters pillaging at the zoo. Something snapped, and I gave chase.
    They had a start on me and for a time it seemed they would escape. But adrenaline does strange things, and I began to close the gap. The family could only go as fast as their youngest child.
    Eventually I caught up with them and grabbed the father firmly by the arm.
    â€œWhy are you doing this?” I wheezed, each breath knifing my chest.
    They looked at me, eyes wide with fear. The mother clutched her youngest child close to her. They didn’t understand what I had said.
I pointed to the cages. “Why? This is your zoo. Why do you steal?”
    They stared at me vacantly. I then looked at what the man was holding, his booty from the zoo. It was a length of iron, probably wrenched off one of the fences.
    My rage exhaled like a popped balloon. Scrap metal. There was a shortage of almost everything in Baghdad—except scrap metal. Just ask the Iraqi army. That was all their tank regiments now consisted of.
    I put my hand in my pocket and found a crumpled five-dollar bill. I gave it to the man. He switched from blank resignation to utter incredulity. What was this crazy white foreigner doing?
    I pointed at the little girl next to her mother and motioned my hand to my mouth. “Buy food for your children. But