The Zoo on the Road to Nablus: a story of survival from the West Bank by Amelia Thomas

Here is Ralph Vaughn Williams' In the Fen Country.  Williams is one of my favorite composers.  His music makes me think of lush landscape paintings.

The Zoo on the Road to Nablus: A Story of Survival from the West Bank by Amelia Thomas

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


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.



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