French Diplomat Picks Up Afghan Refugee’s Pet Bird, Now It's Speaking Another Language

Xavier Chatel is a French ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, a job that has increased in complexity as of late. But one thing that he’s now well-known for is something he certainly didn’t expect to be part of the job description: bird caretaker.

It all began on Aug. 26 during the frenzied rush to get around 3,000 Afghan refugees and French nationals out of 🇦🇫Afghanistan. Chatel was approached by someone amid the chaos with an odd find.

“The hangar in which this was happening was pretty much looking like a refugee camp,” Chatel told The Washington Post. “We had kids arriving without parents, and parents without their kids. In the midst of this, this military woman comes to me and she says, ‘Sir, we have a clandestine.’

“I was like, ‘Okay, that’s a problem.’ So I go to see the clandestine, and they bring me this cardboard box in which there was a slit, and in the slit I could see the golden eyes of the myna.”

The bird was named Juji, and he belonged to a young Afghan refugee whom Chatel referred to as “Alia.” The bird was her dear pet, and she’d fought through everything to keep her little feathered friend by her side.

But as she was at the stopover processing point in Abu Dhabi, she got some heartbreaking news: She couldn’t take Juji with her. He had been deemed a hazard, going against the sanitary regulations, and by the time Chatel was alerted to the situation, Alia was in tears.