The ghostly memory of lions in Iraq

?Al, ex-British army and our security advisor, spread a map out on the hood of our vehicle.

‘We’ll take the Amarah road,’ he said.? ‘The other road through Nasiriyah is not too good.? Bandits are operating on that route.’

He paused.? ‘I must make one thing clear.? There are no weapons on this convoy.? If bandits pull us over, we comply 100%.? There must be no threatening gestures.’

‘If you don’t want to wear your body armour then I suggest you place it between you and the door.? That way, if anybody fires at us, it will give you some protection.’

??????????? We were leaving Baghdad, and heading south for the marshlands of southern Iraq.? The marshes were once an ecological and wildlife paradise the size of the Kruger Park that was destroyed when Saddam Hussein drained them in the early 1990s.? Now, though, they were slowly being reflooded and parts of the wetland paradise were coming back.? We were going to film a documentary on the return of the marshes.

??????????? We set off through the dry desert scrubland following the ancient watercourse of the Tigris River southwards.? Our nerves were on edge thinking of the dangers that might lie on the road ahead, but I was elated to be getting out of Baghdad.? I had had enough of bombs and military press conferences.? It felt good to be out on the open road, moving through the countryside of Iraq.? And, in addition to filming our documentary, it was in the marshlands that I hoped to find the answer to a question that had absorbed me for years.

For a long time now, I have been searching for the stories of an ancient country, an empire that has largely faded from our world, a kingdom whose ancient boundaries have been lost, erased by cities, roads and farms.? A realm whose memory outside of Africa exists only in fragmented remnants of history, folklore and myth.

It is the country of the lion.? Not many people today know that up until only about seventy years ago, the range of the lion extended across the whole of Africa through the Middle East, Iran, Greece, Turkey and India.

Iraq was part of the old country of the lion.? The historical and archaeological record there is full of lions.? From the story of Gilgamesh – the world’s earliest literature - to Daniel in the lions den in Babylon, and the magnificent stone lion hunt carvings?of the Assyrian kings, Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal.? The last reported lions were shot in Iraq at the end of WWI, but I had read some accounts that made me think that it was just possible that a tiny number might have survived in the remote marshlands of southern Iraq for much longer.

Wilfred Thesiger, the famous explorer, writing about the Marsh Arabs in the 1960s, heard people talk of lions found in the marshes in the 1920s.? Another lion expert, Charles Guggisberg, wrote in his book,? Simba, published in 1961, that some scientists believed that a few lions might yet?exist in the remote marshlands of Iraq and Iran.?

I was intrigued to see what evidence of the existence of lions in the marshes might have survived the decades of war between then and now.? So I was lucky to meet Saduna Khalaf in the mud and salt-encrusted slums of Suq ash Shuyukh, a town that once lay in the centre of the marshlands.? She is now in her fifties and lives in a squalid mud house with her extended family.? Her sons Fadhel and Tha’er joined the struggle against Saddam in the 1990s.? Fadhel was killed, but Tha’er still kept his AK-47 and fighting headband embroidered with verses from the Koran. ?Despite our fears, everyone we met was friendly.? Still, the local sheik had assigned Tha’er and two other men to guard us.? They had pistols in their belts and AK-47s discretely stowed in the front seat of our vehicles.

Saduna’s youngest son, Mohammed, had no job.? He, too, lived in the crowded mud house with his wife Layla. ?Samir, my translator, and I stood with Saduna and Mohammed in their tiny, dusty courtyard, next to the pit outhouse with its rusting tin door.?

It was hard to imagine the natural paradise that once surrounded these war-stricken people.? For thousands of years, they shared their lives with the birds and animals in the tall green reeds of the marshes.? Now, for most of them, those days were gone forever.

But Saduna and Mohammed were excited to talk about lions.? They interrupted one another constantly as they spoke.? The stories seemed to lift them out of their suffering, and remind them of the beauty of their old home.?

‘We used to have lions in the marshes,’ Saduna said.? ‘My grandfather fought with one.? He was taking buffaloes to graze and a lion attacked him.? It grabbed my grandfather’s shoulders with his claws and tried to eat his face.? But he fought the lion off.’

‘I can’t believe her,’ Samir muttered.? ‘She says he didn’t have a knife or anything with him.? He killed it with his bare hands, taking the lion’s jaw in his hands and pulling it apart until the lion died.’

‘Ask her again,’ I said.? ‘Is she certain that’s how her grandfather killed the lion?’

‘She’s sure,’ Samir replied. ‘Men were bigger and stronger in those days she says.’

I was disappointed.? I had come all this way just to hear an exaggerated yarn.? But then I realized that her grandfather had very likely seen, and perhaps even killed, real lions, probably with a gun, or trapped them in a pit.? Saduna’s childhood story had allowed us to witness the fascinating transformation of history into myth.? Her account was flawed, but it was further evidence that lions had existed here for longer than the experts believed.

Mohammed had something extraordinary to add. ?‘In 1994 my brother saw a lion between Chubaish and Al Hamaar marsh.’

‘When he says brother,’ Samir said quietly, ‘he means Fadhel, the one who was killed.’

‘After the water was gone,’ Mohammed went on. ‘We were able to see lions and jackals.? Fadhel used to go fishing.? When he was fishing he heard a lion’s roar – it was not a wolf or a jackal.? Then he saw the lion coming toward him to the water to drink.? He was very scared of that animal.? The lion roared at them and chased them away.’

I looked at Samir.? His brother saw a lion in 1994?? Is he sure?’

Samir shrugged.? ‘That’s what he says.’

??????????? I was fascinated.? It was a startling story, confirming what I had long hoped, that a few lions had survived in Iraq beyond the 1920s.? Of course, the chief eyewitness, Fadhel, is dead, and we have only the second-hand story of his brother and his mother to go by.

But we should never forget that the oral history of local people has often turned up unexpected truths.?Mohammed’s story remains a compelling, tangible possibility.? If anyone was likely to have seen lions in the marshlands of Iraq, it would have been men like his brother Fadhel, on the run, knowing the marshes well, forced into the hidden depths of the reeds and island sanctuaries while fleeing from Saddam’s troops.

‘I’ve never seen a lion myself,’ Saduna said quietly. ‘My son [Fadhel] told me this story – but now, after the marshes completely dried up, I don’t think there are any more lions.’

??????????? That is the sad fate of so much of the wilderness in our modern world.? But the stories of people like Saduna and Mohammed are a tantalizing glimpse of the lions who once roamed the marshlands, and who still haunt the last frontiers of living memory.

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