“Pride of Baghdad”

Pride of Baghdad is a graphic novel amazingly written by Brian K. Vaughan and marvelous illustrated by the pencils of Niko Henrichon. This is a true story about 4 lions that lived at the zoo in Baghdad and after the U.S. air force blasted the city in 2003 they manage to escape.  As I perceive the novel, I think that the main issue of the novel is the discernment of the meaning of freedom throughout the life experience.

The story is developed around this pride of 4 lions: Zill the head of the pride, Safa the old lioness, Noor the youngest lioness and Ali who is Noor’s cub. Among these characters we can distinguish different perceptions of freedom according to the age, experiences, expectations, knowledge and awareness of our surroundings.

For example in Zill we can see the nostalgic point f view about freedom, as he says that he misses watching the horizons in the wild life. In Safa we can see the experience and the consciousness, because she live terrible issues in the wild life, especially with a lion called Bukk and even got blind from one eye, so she is aware of the dangers in the wild life (represent the experience) and even at the beginning when the animals in the zoo got free her first decision is to stay but finally she change her mind. Noor is the youngest lioness, an all she wants to get of the zoo and be free, but as the story goes forward we can see that, even this desire has been accomplished one way or another, she is scared and shocked by the brutal change of life and the hostile environment. Ali represents the innocence and inexperience, he is astonished by everything that he sees and sometimes he is bump into diverse feelings  from amazement to panic.

Also, one thing that got my attention is the wordplay of the author in the main title; Pride of Baghdad might have lots of meanings. The first is very simple, is the group of lions (pride).

The second is referring to the Iraqi version of a Russian tank; these tanks were called “Lions of Babylon”, and had been a special, unique and representative Iraqi force since the cold war and they we used during in the invasion in 2003. And the third could be referring to the city and the Iraq people to preserve their pride despite the invasion.

About the different meanings of “Pride o f Baghdad”, there exists a statue in Iraq, called the Lion of Babylon (which is in below the heading); this is a statue of a man struggling against a lion to avoid being devoured.  The symbolism is represented in the story of the people; the story says that as the statue remains in place, no foreign government will rule.

Finally, I think that this is a great novel although it is short; the author portrays really well the perception of freedom in a state o f war. To some people freedom is the will of doing whatever you want and sometime it is impeded by the society and our regulations, even the way to accomplish freedom is important as the author say with Safa “Freedom can’t be given, only earned”.

The Bard.