Ever wondered what it's like to grow up in a zoo?
If someone asked me even 10 years ago what it means to leave home, I would have given a very candid answer, very expected, very mundane.
Sure I will miss it, I would say.
It's where I grew up, I would lament.
You leave home for higher education. Or when you get married. Or when you leave the country in search of a better life. Or simply because you have outgrown the place or a host of other reasons.
Most don't necessarily get a national count-down to the closing down of what they called home for more than 28 years. Not this home. Not ever.
Well, our count down has begun. Count down to the closing of #DubaiZoo. Yes, you read that right. My family and I moved into a villa inside Dubai Zoo 28 years ago when my dad, prominent wildlife expert and nature lover, Dr Reza khan became Director of Dubai Zoo in 1989. From learning to ride a bike, to late night walks through a quiet, sleeping zoo to my wedding to celebrating my daughter’s first birthday party, Dubai Zoo has been an integral part of my growing up. A unique experience that most had a hard time digesting.
Naturally, you have guessed I did not have an ordinary childhood. When kids of my age were playing with dolls, I was hand rearing a leopard baby that had been abundant by its mother, feeding it every two hours, cleaning after it. When kids of my age were sneaking out at night, attending concerts, I was busy welcoming Syrian bears in the middle of the night, wide-eyed, mesmerized by their sheer sizes, and the mechanics of getting those giant, gentle animals down to their cages. When kids were excitedly attending school dances, I was busy spending time with the mountain gorilla babies that were rescued from traffickers. We were too busy being outraged at the atrocity of entire cheetah families being killed to smuggle a little of cheetah babies whom we would hand rear only to have them die on us because they had lacked mother’s milk which would have given them a vital antibody needed to strengthen their immunity against a genetic disease due to severe inbreeding and ever-reducing population.
From getting to watch the miracle of a giraffe baby born to befriending pigmy hippos, my memories are rich with experiences that can neither be revisited nor recreated. I also learned about people and human nature. As a child I would be hilariously entertained watching grown-ups jump and screech and basically ‘imitate’ the animals they stood in front of, trying to get reactions out of those animals. Rarely were the animals inside the cages amused or enticed to give a performance more entertaining than those of the visitors on the outside of those cages! I also witnessed in horror the ropes, plastic and cigarettes that visitors would so callously throw into the cages of the animals without thinking of the possible detrimental and often heart-breaking consequences that followed.
Living inside the zoo and growing up among animals taught me humbleness, appreciation for nature, understanding of our impact on everything around us, my dad’s struggles and ever-lasting perseverance to enrich lives of the animals that called Dubai Zoo home, to our role in protecting them. Living in Dubai Zoo, I understood the importance of zoos in today’s world, how they can help species from disappearing, how they give people who would otherwise never get a chance to interact with or learn about animals, that chance.
I am thankful my daughter got a glimpse of this childhood – but merely only a glimpse because Dubai Zoo is closing. Dubai Zoo, after decades of serving as a point of family outings, a place where people came to escape the week’s craziness, a place that just charged AED2/-, a place for cheap, clean, educational fun, is now closing.
Living and growing up in Dubai, most of Dubai babies by now have become used to landmarks they grew up around changing, evolving, disappearing only to be replaced by other, more urban and modern landmarks. I am one of those Dubai babies. I witnessed the Diyafah Fountain Roundabout, Falcon Roundabout, Jumeriah Open Beach and so much more disappear. I weathered the change. Learned to let go. Came out stronger, more forward thinking. Or so I thought. Till I saw them begin to take the animals to Dubai Safari. Till I saw the news that Dubai Zoo was closing officially.
This is truly the end of an era, not only for Dubai residents, and the residents of Dubai Zoo, but for me. For my childhood.
I will never be able to take those nightly walks through the Zoo pathways, feeling utterly secure, with animals snoozing, some wearily looking up to stare out at me then going back to sleep, knowing I posed them no threat or disturbance. I will never be awakened to the commotion of a new addition to the giraffe family with a nightlyy birth. I will never know the exhilarating feeling of welcoming a Siberian Tiger, so big and so loved that his passing was marked by Dubai residents, their many letters and flowers and mementoes they left near his once-living quarters.
I will never know a home like the home I had in Dubai Zoo.
Goodbye Home. Goodbye Childhood. Goodbye #DubaiZoo.
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