BOOKreMARKS: Camels in Cars, Dogs in Zoos

You couldn’t turn to a media outlet this past week without hearing about the anniversary. The tenth anniversary, that is, of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Why did we do it? What did we accomplish? Was it worth it?

To mark this milestone, I have a book recommendation for you.

War is a topic I typically avoid when choosing books and films. But last month, a friend shoved a library book into my hands and said, “Here—I want you to read this. I loved it! Didn’t do anything for two days but read it.”

“Oh-kay…thanks,” was all I could muster. I didn’t want to dampen her enthusiasm. Yet I also didn’t a) want to be responsible for her library book; b) read about a war zone; and c) follow animals kept in a zoo. Reasons B and C promised gloom and doom.

I read it anyway, and I’m thankful I did.

Babylon’s Ark is a memoir of one man’s mission in the early days of the Iraq War to save the animals of the Baghdad Zoo. Lawrence Anthony left his home in South Africa, where he ran a wildlife preserve, armed only with knowledge about and compassion for large, wild animals—plus experience in negotiating on the fly.

This is not a sweet animal rescue tale. It’s full of adventure and darkness and provides some insights into the culture of Iraqis and their relationships with animals. Here are a handful of things I learned:
• Until Lawrence Anthony created one, an agency overseeing animal welfare didn’t exist in Iraq. There was no ASPCA equivalent.
• To much of the population, dogs were curiosities, hence their inclusion in zoos.
• Black market trade in exotic animals thrives in Iraq.
• Like royal families of millennia past, the Husseins had numerous private zoos on their palace grounds.
• Improvisation is critical to rescue operations—which is how a camel ended up a passenger in an open-topped vehicle.

If I were the publisher of Babylon’s Ark, I’d also market it to a secondary audience: business professionals and leaders. It would be a great book to discuss in a corporate book club or leadership seminar because every step forward (and five steps backward) taken during the mission was the result of a negotiation or barter. Diplomacy, communication expertise, and psychological/cultural considerations were always in play. Nearly every obstacle recounted in Babylon’s Ark demanded careful communications and collaboration with someone whose goals and perspective were at odds with the animal rescuers. Even the animal rescuers were at times at odds with one another. Plenty of these scenarios could easily be applied to a business environment. Of course, the additional benefit of marketing to this audience is attracting new animal advocates and more people committed to becoming better stewards of our planet—which would have pleased the author no end.

Had he lived to see this tenth anniversary, I’m sure Lawrence Anthony would have plenty to say about it. I’ll leave you with this excerpt from Babylon’s Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo.

“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.”

For All Who Have Served…

We thank you.

[Photo from Foreign Policy.]

Somewhere There’s A War…

And sometimes there’s art.

Those Wilco lyrics seemed the perfect introduction to a virtual art exhibition called “ARMS into ART.”

I don’t know about you, but I can hardly bear to watch the news anymore for all the reports about wars and warlike activities. So I was thrilled to find that this Mozambique artists’ collective, Núcleo de Arte, uses weapons in a more intelligent and creative fashion than the militia—by turning grenades, AK-47s, and land mines into sculpture.

Oh, if only artists ruled the world…





[Art, from top to bottom, by Mathe, Hilário, and Fiel.]

Wearing Your Heart on Your Car

Saw a bumper sticker in my ’hood yesterday. It read:

PEACE
Through Superior Arms

Made me want to attach this note next to it:

You mean, like,
Giant Hugs for Everybody?

[Art from wallartdesign.]

Helping Women Rebuild Their Lives After War

Stranger in a Strange Land – No. 9
Google reminds me that today is the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. To celebrate, I can take part in a “bridge event.”

Sounds like a good thing to do on a Tuesday, so I check the Google map for an event in the Bluegrass State. Back in the Windy City, bridges were easy to come by, what with a river zigzagging throughout the town. But Kentuckians will need to travel to Ohio or Tennessee to actively participate in a scheduled event.

Perhaps a smaller event is better suited for the population here—say, on a covered bridge? (I know, I know. Covered bridges are an endangered species. We could have our event NEAR them but not ON them.)

If you, too, are bridge-challenged, you can join the activities online and donate to the cause.

[Photo of Switzer Covered Bridge taken by Dave Elbon.]

This is part of an ongoing series regarding my transition from the Land of Lincoln to the Bluegrass State. For a list of previous articles in the series, type Stranger in a Strange Land into Lull’s search function on the right.

Reality Sucks

My husband is watching Restrepo as I write; I half watch. The opening aerial shots of the mountainous region are gorgeous. Could be lots of places in the world, but it’s not. It’s the very specific Korengal Valley of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border. And the American soldiers are getting shot at every day from ALL directions. They call it the Valley of Death for good reason.

I’m not a fan of war movies, yet I feel obliged to tune in to this one. Any problems I thought I had pale in comparison to what these soldiers face. The documentary is humbling and sobering. As filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger say, “[The soldiers’] experiences are important to understand, regardless of one’s political beliefs. Beliefs are a way to avoid looking at reality. This is reality.”

[Pic by Matthew Moeller.]

Thinking About Not Thinking

I’ve just turned the last page of Dark Horses and Black Beauties. I’m glad I read it, but it was a workout in facing the facts about human nature and our dearth of kindness. I shudder to imagine the overwhelming amount of depressing and shocking minutiae author Melissa Holbrook Pierson had to sift through for the book. Here’s a single paragraph—sans stomach-turning descriptive details—to consider:

The toll of horse life on the battlefields of human wars can hardly be conceived. With Napoleon in Russia, one division lost 18,000 of 43,000 mounts in the space of two months; in the 1812 retreat from Moscow, 30,000 horses died, mainly from cold and privation. The Peninsular War caused Wellington to call the Peninsula “the grave of horses”: the 14th Light Dragoons alone lost 1,564 horses (of 1,840 total), while their loss of men was 654. The Boer War cost the lives of some 500,000 horses, mules, and donkeys (the Australians shot all their surviving Walers over the age of twelve when the war ended, since they couldn’t be returned home due to quarantine restrictions). In World War II, Germany lost an average of 865 horses per day over the war’s two thousand days—52,000 in the Battle of Stalingrad alone. (Entire libraries of books are written about this war without any mention of the millions of animals who perished.) One day in 1939 the Pomeranian Cavalry Brigade lost 2,000 horses in thirty minutes; a witness described the road to Warsaw as lined with thousands of dead and dying horses. The annihilating charge of the Polish cavalry against German Panzer tank divisions stands today as the very emblem of grotesque futility. You will note that this very partial accounting begins only with the nineteenth century.

My reading since September has centered on animals, yet revealed some of the darker choices of humankind. My first impulse was to skip the awful passages of the books, but then I would have remained uninformed. My second urge was to share what I’d learned on Lull: explain my sorrow, which would partially explain my infrequent posts. But that would have required further examination of the material. So instead, I just continued reading and feeling trapped inside a vortex of suffering—easily imagining the fear and pain inflicted upon the creatures and characters of both the nonfiction and fiction of my reading lineup. (See books listed at right in “Current Reading Lineup” and “Books Read in 2010.”)

The price of a rescue story is being made aware of the cruelty or neglect that necessitated the intervention. But some of us pay again in the form of guilt and shame for either not knowing what to do or not doing enough in such situations.

I’ve decided to take a break from the bleak and turn to short fiction from a few favorite novelists. Otherwise, my ability to recognize and savor beauty in the everyday may fade. And then, what’s the point?

[See the story behind “Hitler’s Horse.”]