Zoo on the Road to Nablus Book

There is a rarity among non fiction writers to engage the reader as Amelia Thomas has. I found this book refreshing in that it serves as a documentary of the lives of both human and animals in one of the political hotbeds of the world, while showing the goodness, the sadness, the uncertainty and harshness of a place far away from the imagination of the western mind.

Qalqilya is on the border of Palestine and Israel, about an hour north of Jerusalm. I probably passed it without knowing it last October during my stay in Israel. Pity.

A Palestinian veterinarian, Dr. Sami has great dreams for his zoo. Once it was a beautiful place with a luscious environment for exotic animals for the British overlords to enjoy. Now it is a dilapidated facility with a few animals fighting for survival. The political tensions between Israel and Palestine make the zoo's existence low on anyone else's list of concerns.

Through Thomas, we follow Dr. Sami around as he fights, begs, cajoles and pleads with city officials, other zoos in Egypt and Israel to help populate his forlorn zoo and keep the animals alive and healthy.

He seems to be fighting a losing battle. His animals die, some because they weren't viable to begin with, some because keeping wild animals alive in enclosures is hard and costly and some, it turns out, because somebody was poisoning them.

The reader gets a glimpse of a country whose value on human life has become numb due to violence and a fatalistic philosophy. Animals are not accorded that much respect. His daughter comes home to find out an odious aunt has killed her beloved pet chicken and roasted it for her personal culinary delectation. She refuses to speak to her father for two weeks.

But Dr. Sami loses neither optimism nor resourcefulness. He takes under his wing and into his office newborn bears, ibexes, and monkeys who, in spite of being nursed by Dr. Sami still suffer a high mortality rate. He travels to Egypt to possibly procure some animals from a similarly neglected zoo, where the animals are treated even worse, because the keepers won't even feed the animals unless the zoo visitors pay them.

While the animals are seen with no rights respecting treatment, neither are the humans. The zoo's manager, due to his own stupidity, is ravaged by a camel. He ends up several weeks in the hospital and comes out a withered man. However, the camel is not destroyed.

Not that an attempt on the camel's life is not made. The manager's son creeps in at night and shoots the camel in the jaw. He is not arrested or charged, but his father disowns him because of the shame. It's a different world.

My personal opinion is that, while I understand that children in Palestine deserve a place to go to to alleviate the dreariness of a war torn country, I don't think it should be at the expense of suffering animals. Thanks to the high mortality rate of his animals, Dr. Sami has quite a taxidermy collection going. Maybe it would be better to show the children a museum of stuffed animals. They could see exotic animals and stuffed animals would be easier to maintain.

As sad as this story was, I'm glad I read it and appreciate Thomas' combination of writing skill and compassion in writing this little known zoo's story.

First of all, let's be clear about one thing: This is not the story of a zoo. It is the story of Dr. Sami of the Qalqilya Zoo, who prioritizes his job, his reputation, and his unrealistic dreams over the welfare of the animals who he's paid to care for. It is the story of a man who focuses much of his time on expanding two museums (and at the end desires three), one of Natural History and one of Agriculture, and on bringing in more animals, rather than on caring for and ensuring the welfare of those he has.

You might read this and think it's harsh, or think I'm exaggerating. I'm not. Some of the anecdotes included in the book show him taking bottles full of grass snakes from boys who bring them to him in the hopes of some reward--they're local snakes, accustomed to living in the local environment. He admits that, under his care, these snakes never survive long because they don't seem to like the food the zoo offers them. Does he let them go back into the nearby bushes where they would thrive? No, he puts them in aquariums, not expecting them to survive. There's a conversation between him and another man where it's suggested that one or two of their bears be sent to another zoo where they can live in better habitats, in a zoo which is better equipped to care for them and which has the room and the proper facilities. He laughs, thinking the idea absurd. Similarly, it was suggested that his giraffe be sent elsewhere to breed, and he scoffed at the proposition, though the other zoo clearly had better facilities--even temporarily, it was out of the question. His giraffe, lonely and alone, eventually died after having ingested some cleaner. This is a zoo where a snake was killed by the cold because a keeper forgot to turn on a heater, and where patrons through rocks at the bears, and where even the veterinarian who likely does care more for the animals than anyone else on the premises, admits that the facilities are not satisfactory. And yeah, he asks for more. This is His story, not the zoo's.

Now, here's the thing: I can admire a love of animals, and the desire to have an international zoo. I love visiting zoos, truth be told, and I admire all they do for conservation and for education--that is, I admire the good ones. It's true that a small zoo has to be built up to become an international one, a truly great one, but this isn't the way that happens. I can admire, in some ways, that Dr. Sami seems to have good intentions, if unreasonable ones. That's not enough.

As an animal lover, I have to compare the man at the center of this narrative--and those who support him--to a woman who loves dogs, and wants to take home a lot of them, but she has a very small apartment in a city, and doesn't have the money to pay for adequate food or veterinary care. But, because she wants to help dogs in the shelter and because she loves dogs, she adopts twenty of them, not understanding that she's truly ill-equipped to care for them, and that they'd be better off taking their chances at a shelter, rather than in a too small space without room or resources for even basic health and contentment. Every time Dr. Sami, in this book, asked for more animals, the truth is that I shuddered at the thought of him getting them. By the end of the book, I'd just as soon he be eaten by a lion.

Now, you want me to get back to the book. Sorry for the rant. Here's the other problem, though: I'm not even sure the writer of this book cares about animals or understands the cruelty element involved in some of what's being reported. The author, like Dr. Sami, is ever condescending, ever wry, and real compassion for the animals rarely comes through. In my humble opinion, I rather believe that this was a book about animals written for people who don't particularly like or care for animals.

Simply, I had a hard time reading this book. I was disgusted by what I read, and even in relation to the people at the center of the book working in and around the zoo. I've read other books about the survival of zoos, about people struggling to maintain the status quo in regard to a zoo, and the health and welfare of its animals, even in the middle east. This isn't a book like that. This is a book that suggests that a badly run zoo, which is ill equipped and ill staffed, is far, far, far worse than no zoo at all.

So, no, I don't recommend this book--the best thing about it is the cover, which breaks my heart now when I look at it.