BAGHDAD ZOO NEWS

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Iraqi veterinarian moves to N.C. after working at the Baghdad Zoo

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By BARBARA BARRETT

The News & Observer of Raleigh

 

July 16, 2005

 

 

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Dr. Farah Murrani arrived at the N.C. Zoo one recent morning and faced a

daunting list of tasks: A giant lizard needed a bandage for an infected tail.

Sickly meerkats and fennec foxes were expecting their medicinal baths. A

Thompson's gazelle with an abscessed jaw was going crazy in its pen, and that

was upsetting a 200-pound constipated warthog named Pebbles.

In July 2004, Murrani, an Iraqi veterinarian, left behind the Baghdad Zoo and

the lions that had belonged to Saddam Hussein's son Uday. Her journey would land

her in North Carolina, administering a high colonic to a big, angry pig.

 

She came because the violence was too close - two friends who worked as

interpreters had been killed - and the Westerners working with her feared for

her safety.

 

" For people back there, I wasn't working in the zoo, " Murrani said recently. " I

was working with Americans. That was bad. "

 

So she fled, helped by leaders at the zoo in Asheboro. The N.C. Zoo, which had

helped rebuild the Kabul Zoo in Afghanistan, organized an international team to

rescue the shattered exhibits in Baghdad. It collected donations from across the

nation, provided expertise to veterinarians and sent equipment. It also helped

Murrani find training overseas when she had to leave.

 

" Right now, if she went back, she'd probably get shot, " said David Jones,

director of the N.C. Zoo and a longtime worker in Middle Eastern zoos.

 

Jones and the N.C. Zoo may be more involved than any other in the nation in

rehabilitating the zoos in Kabul and Baghdad. Jones, who used to run the London

Zoo, led a national effort to raise more than $400,000 for Kabul's zoo and

$110,000 for Baghdad's.

 

He also is looking out for the zoos' long-term interest, grooming young

veterinarians such as Murrani who someday can return home to take over.

 

In Asheboro, Murrani's ID says " veterinary clinical associate. " Technically,

she's studying, and the zoo's nonprofit arm pays her living expenses. Her visa

expires in the fall, and she's not sure where she'll go next.

 

She has looked for work with groups such as the Humane Society, but nonprofit

agencies don't have the cash to hire a new vet. She's considering going to South

Africa with a friend, or maybe to Afghanistan to work in the Kabul zoo.

 

In any case, it will be far different from what she thought she'd be doing a few

years ago.

 

Murrani, 29, grew up in an upscale neighborhood of Baghdad, the daughter of a

pharmaceutical company worker and a veterinary technician. She was the child of

educated parents and had advantages, traveling the world and often speaking

English at home.

 

She went to veterinary school at Baghdad University, then started a small animal

clinic.

 

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. She was at a cafe with friends when news came of the

planes slamming into the World Trade Center. They had an immediate thought: This

is going to come back to us.

 

In the days before the invasion, she and her friends went clubbing every night.

They knew they wouldn't get a chance again for a while. You have to joke about

it, she said. Otherwise, you couldn't bear to think about what Iraq is going

through.

 

After the invasion, the Baghdad Zoo drew a lot of media attention. Saddam's

forces, the Fedayeen, had dug in among the cages, expecting a firefight. The

coalition fought from the air instead.

 

When the bombing stopped, looters moved in. They scrambled over bodies of the

Fedayeen, stealing padlocks, supplies, animals - some to eat, some to sell,

Murrani said. Animals escaped. Three looters were killed by a hungry grizzly

bear.

 

" They got too close to its bars, " Murrani said angrily. " That was good for him,

I think. "

 

She saw a man on television asking for help at the zoo and hitched a lift there

with Special Forces soldiers she had befriended.

 

At first, she worked as a volunteer, joining U.S. troops and international

animal welfare workers. Then she was hired as the zoo's assistant director. She

drove daily through the American-controlled Green Zone, was happy when the zoo's

poorly trained keepers actually mucked out the lions' cages and hoped she didn't

get shot by insurgents for cooperating with the occupying force.

 

She and a friend founded the nation's first animal rescue group, the Iraqi

Society for Animal Welfare, in an empty building near the zoo. They rescued

about 75 stray cats and dogs, with names such as Bullet and Freedom. With the

military's help, they found Arabian horses that had belonged to Saddam Hussein

and brought them to the zoo, she said.

 

Under Saddam, the Baghdad Zoo was awful, Murrani said. It stank. Workers stole

the animals' food money. Now, she said, volunteers have told the keepers how to

clean cages. The exhibits include 19 lions - 14 that used to belong to Uday

Hussein. She used to play with the cubs.

 

Now the zoo is open, she said, and Iraqis, striving for some kind of normality,

are visiting.

 

And back across the world, Murrani is training at another popular zoo.

 

At a morning meeting in Asheboro, she and the vet techs talked about the new

puffin baby, the emaciated owl, the mysterious skin condition on the grizzlies.

She had to get drugs into the warthog, and the techs recommended she first give

the gazelle a sedative before the poor thing hurt itself.

 

She figured the dosage, made up the darts, called the head vet to check her

recommendations. Then she tiptoed along a concrete hall to the gazelle's pen and

kneeled, waiting long minutes for a good shot, poking the dart gun's barrel

around a tarp as the gazelle paced. A vet tech, Megan Feindt, whispered

directions.

 

The gun popped. " Did it go? " Murrani asked. She pumped a fist. " Yesss! Finally.

What a pain. "

 

Murrani's learning plenty - about new surgical techniques, about welfare and how

to keep the animals happy. She smiled when the fidgety warthog's keepers drove

from the main park to the hospital to scratch the pig's head with a giant

scrubby brush.

 

" They are great people, " she said.

 

Though Murrani likes it in the United States enough that she taught a

belly-dancing class in Greensboro this past spring, she thinks constantly of

home. Thunderstorms rolled across the Piedmont this summer, and she heard again

the bombs falling in Baghdad.

 

" I told myself, 'It's OK. It's just thunder,' " she said. " But deep inside me,

I'm still scared. "

 

She said her country still needs Americans. If troops pull out now, she said,

Iraq will plunge into chaos. " You hate (Saddam) so much, but oh, my God, the

whole country's falling apart now, " she said.

 

In the past three years, since she lost her clinic, her dreams have changed. She

wants to work in management, focusing on animal welfare issues.

 

She wants to return to Baghdad, but not before experiencing the world.

 

After medicating the gazelle and the stopped-up warthog and rebandaging the

lizard, Murrani and a pair of co-workers headed to a diner for lunch. They piled

into her rented Ford Taurus, listening to Arabic pop music on the way.

 

What's he saying? a co-worker asked.

 

A love song, Murrani said. " He's telling her, 'I miss you so much.' "

 

She steered sharply around the two-lane bends, through the lush Piedmont hills,

past mobile homes and farm fields, a landscape so different from the metropolis

of 5 million she left behind.

 

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