Pablito was the first lion I’d ever seen up close. The cub, about four months old, walked toward me from the night room in his enclosure at the New Hope Centre, a wildlife rehabilitation facility in Amman, Jordan. Abruptly, he stopped and stared at me. His eyes looked sad and vulnerable, as if he were trying to tell me something in our common wordless language. I suddenly felt responsible for telling his story.

Before I met Pablito, in 2018, I had been on my way to photograph a little girl named Zahra. She was then a seven-year-old Syrian refugee living in a tented settlement in Jordan. Since 2001 I had used my camera to tell stories of hope, resilience, and survival. Over and over again, I’d visited places shattered by conflict and places where those who had fled disaster were struggling to start new lives.

Then I heard about the New Hope clinic, which offered a second chance for other defenseless souls: traumatized and neglected animals rescued from mismanaged zoos, saved from war zones, or confiscated from smugglers.

New Hope served as a quarantine and rehab facility for animals that eventually would be moved to Al Ma’wa for Nature and Wildlife, a forested refuge about 30 miles away, which sprawls over 274 acres in the Jerash mountains of northwest Jordan. The sanctuary was home to a tortoise that had been paralyzed by a musculoskeletal disease and rescued, in 2016, from what’s been called the worst zoo in the world, in Gaza. Al Ma’wa (Arabic for “the shelter”) also housed African lions and Asiatic black bears from Magic World, a theme park and zoo on the outskirts of Aleppo in war-torn Syria.

I started visiting regularly. Documenting these creatures’ lives was eye-opening. My work had always focused on people caught in the middle of chaos, on human misery and destruction. Now I was facing the animals left behind—victims of conflicts that had nothing to do with them. Had they not been rescued, these animals likely would have been killed in bombings, caught in cross fire, or left to starve.

One time, at New Hope, caretakers and a veterinarian were preparing three striped hyenas, rescued from zoos in Jordan and Gaza, to be released into the wild. The team darted each hyena with a tranquilizer and performed full medical checkups.

Once the hyenas were deemed fit for transport, they were moved by van and released in remote south-central Jordan. These animals were lucky. Most that are rescued from failing zoos or war zones—which often lack power and water, to say nothing of funding or caregivers—have no home to return to. For these stateless animals, the Al Ma’wa sanctuary provides permanent asylum.

Left: Little owl This one-year-old was found in a hotel room after being posted for sale on Facebook. The owl spent about a year at New Hope and was then released into the wild.

Right: Mark, Arabian gray wolf Rescued from a Facebook sale, Mark is now thriving in a pack of five wolves.

Pablito, the little lion cub, would become one of those. Being locked up in a small cage at the zoo had traumatized Pablito, his caretaker told me. The cub had a large scar on his nose from repeatedly trying to force his cage open. But after only a month at New Hope, Pablito was starting to recover. I spent hours watching him play with tree branches and a burlap sack hanging from the ceiling of his 1,600-square-foot enclosure; he scrambled in and out of a kids’ playhouse and roared. At night he’d fall asleep in a bed of hay.

Later, I met Scooter, the tortoise paralyzed by mistreatment. After eight months of intensive hydrotherapy and a diet rich in vitamins to help strengthen his muscles, Scooter had started moving his limbs. He now moved slowly around the grounds atop a skateboard.

Left: Albino Burmese python Seized from a trafficker at an Amman airport, this four-year-old python was very ill. It died two months into its rehabilitation at New Hope.

Right: Raghad, fallow deer When Raghad was six months old, her owner brought her to Al Ma’wa, hoping to give her a better life.

Princess Alia Al Hussein, the eldest daughter of Jordan’s late King Hussein, told me that she began to think about establishing an animal sanctuary in 2009, when a traveling circus stopped in Jordan. Many of its animals were in poor condition. A lion cub had been declawed, and her feet were in pain. Later, Princess Alia discovered that the circus’s permits, from the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture, were forged.

Back then, Princess Alia says, many Jordanians were unaware of animal welfare issues. That’s when she says she recognized the need for an initiative like New Hope.

Through her nonprofit, the Princess Alia Foundation, she partnered with Four Paws, an animal welfare organization based in Vienna. In January 2010 the New Hope Centre welcomed its first patient, a four-year-old striped hyena named Dobbie, rescued from a local zoo. Al Ma’wa opened in 2011.

Sky, Bengal tigerAt one month old, Sky and her brother Tash were confiscated from the trunk of a car by authorities at the Jordan–Saudi Arabia border.

Left: Hamzah, African lionRescued from Syria’s Magic World Zoo in 2017, Hamzah now lives happily with a female lion, Luna.

Right: Loki, Syrian brown bear Loki lives in a sprawling habitat at Al Ma’wa with Jamal and Rumi. The three bears were rescued from a Jordanian zoo.

“We do our best to make visitors understand that the conditions for wild animals in zoos are not proper,” Marek Trela, a veterinarian and the CEO of Al Ma’wa, told me. “The ideal situation would be to release them in nature. However, if they are born in captivity, this is not always possible.” But it is possible, he said, to give these animals improved living conditions.

At Al Ma’wa, which operates mostly on donations, animals are still surrounded by fences, but they have access to the outdoors and enjoy a more natural environment. The sanctuary is in one of the nation’s last remaining expanses of Mediterranean forest, populated by evergreen oak, pine, and strawberry trees. And although the property isn’t particularly large, it comfortably accommodates 70 animals, including 24 African lions, eight Syrian brown bears, two Asiatic black bears, two Bengal tigers, two striped hyenas, one spotted hyena, and eight wolves, one of which was rescued after being listed for sale on Facebook.

Yerga, African lionTen-year-old Yerga has lived with his four siblings at Al Ma’wa for a decade. Police rescued them at four days old when they were listed for sale on Facebook. Lion cubs typically nurse from their mothers for six months, and early separation can lead to illness and psychological trauma.

African lion cubs Veterinarian Abdelrahman Ahmad plays with three-month-old lion cub siblings, rescued in August 2019 after they were posted for sale on social media. The cubs later died of feline leukemia virus, a common and highly contagious disease.