Zarafa by Michael Allin: book review

Zarafa (1998) is a beautifully delightful simple, but true, tale of the gift of a precious and exotic animal: a giraffe.

In 1826 Muhammad Ali, the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, presented King Charles X of post-Napoleanic France with a magnificent, unique, and unusual gift in the hope that it would forestall intervention in his war against the Greeks. But his gift, a young Masai giraffe called Zarafa (meaning “charming”), lived in the Ethiopian highlands and King Charles resided in Paris.

It was the idea of Bernardino Drovetti, the French consul general in Egypt and advisor to the Ottoman Vicerory. Drovetti was ambitious and entrepreneurial, dealing in trafficking exotic animals, Egyptian antiquities and mummies to aristocratic Europeans. He tasked fifty-five year old French scientist, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, to get the gift to the king. Etienne was chosen because of his knowledge of animals, having established the Paris zoo. And so began Zarafa’s epic journey of 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometres) to Paris.

After Zarafa was captured as a calf and packed on a camel to Sennar, she was shipped down the Blue Nile to Khartoum. From Khartoum, she travelled nearly 2,000 miles to Cairo in Egypt, then to Alexandria on the coast before she sailed for 32 days across the Mediterranean standing in the hold with her long neck and head protruding through a hole cut specifically in the deck. She was on her way to Marseilles in France. The trip thus far had taken a year. 

The most amazing part of Zarafa’s experience was the journey from Marseilles to Paris over two months in May and June of 1827. The 550 mile (885 kilometres) trek was made on foot. Zarafa had to walk to Paris!

Etienne’s health was fading and the very survival of Zarafa was at stake. But during her walk to her enclosure in le Jardin des Plantes in Paris, she became a crowd attraction—the Child of the Tropics—and ultimately incredibly famous. France’s first living giraffe caused such a sensation that French women imitated her with giraffique hats, ties, and gloves, and all manner of fashion.

Now too fragile to travel, she is an exhibition piece with a simple plaque etched as “Giraffe from Sennar” in the Museum of Natural History in the French city of La Rochelle.

Allin recounts the miraculous and remarkable true journey of the courage of a young giraffe with detail, wit, and fascination, keeping readers enthralled with every page. Although Zarafa's handlers treat her with love and care, it is also the tale of the absurdity of humans and the endurance and humility of a gentle creature.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).