Afghan girl’s pet bird learns to say ‘bonjour’ after its miraculous escape to French embassy

The French ambassador in Abu Dhabi narrated the touching tale of how the pet bird of an Afghan girl fleeing the Taliban found a new home in the French embassy in the United Arab Emirates.

“There is a story I have been meaning to tell for a while,” began ambassador Xavier Chatel, as he recounted the day Alia arrived at the Al Dhafra airbase in Abu Dhabi “with an unusual possession,” a mynah.

“She had fought all the way at Kabul airport, to bring the treasured little thing with her,” he said, referring to her yellow-beaked pet mynah named Juji. The bird could not get on a plane with her from Abu Dhabi to France for sanitary reasons.

“She cried silently. I was moved,” wrote Mr Chatel. “I promised to take care of the bird at the [French embassy], feed him. She could visit him anytime and take him back. I won’t forget her look of desperate gratefulness.”

During the next two weeks of evacuation, the ambassador said he managed to take Juji to the French residence. “This energetic little mynah escaped his box and made a big mess in the car,” he said.

“He hid beneath the seat and wouldn’t budge,” wrote the ambassador sharing a video of the bird trying to bite him before ducking back under a seat. “When I tried to talk him into coming back, the fierce little fellow showed me that if he survived the Kabul airport, I was no match.”

The bird “loosened” a bit after the ambassador “bought him a nice cage, fed him, took him out in the cool morning so he could see other birds.”

“He has a girlfriend now - a dove that visits him every day. So he loosened and started, at night, to say mysterious things, in a language we couldn’t understand. He spoke!”

Juji didn’t like men but giggled at females, the ambassador said, adding that the bird “frowned” at his attempts to teach him a few words starting with the French greeting bonjour.

“I went on trying hopelessly with my daily ‘bonjour’ — but sure enough he wouldn’t listen,” wrote the ambassador. “Or so I thought... Until one day, the (female) manager of the French residence sent me this ‘bonjour’ that went straight to my heart.”

Mr Chatel said that Alia, the Afghan girl, recently found him on Twitter and was happy to see that Juji was being cared for. “She wanted me to teach him [French],” he added.

In a tweet, Mr Chatel told Alia that her bird had become the embassy’s mascot but promised to unite her with her pet one day. “...If I can, I’ll take him personally to you one day,” he wrote.

The Twitter thread was liked over 11,000 times and retweeted more than 3,300 times.

“A little story about a bird...no… a big story about love and belonging,” wrote BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet.

“From the darkness of those desperate days in August, came uplifting stories of simple humanity, like this one,” wrote Sky News’ Middle East Correspondent Alistair Bunkall as he urged Twitter users to read the “beautiful thread”.

“A story of grief, gratitude, and compassion,” wrote Javid Faisal, a former Afghan government spokesperson. “Happy that homeless Alia and her homeless Myna both found a new home.”