Chapter 3
My mind was blank. I don’t remember anything between walking out the door and being on the street. I had a mission. I was completely unconscious, like when you start daydreaming while driving and you suddenly come to and realize you have no memory of how you got there. You only know you’re a little creeped out by how easily autopilot turned on and what may or may not have happened while you were in space.
Every second I was away from the window was too long. I had no idea what was happening on the street anymore. The dog could be dead by the time I got down there. Could have run back into Haram Street and become a smear on the pavement. The kids could have chased it completely away. The kids could be beating it when I arrived. What would I do? Who would argue with the American tourist? Would there be consequences? Would I get into some sort of trouble? I’m positive those things must have went through my head on some subconscious level but none of them would deter me.
I felt the searing heat of the Cairo afternoon on my skin as I exited the hotel and everything came back into focus. My mind began racing. Crossing the little access road, I didn’t see the dog anywhere. I don’t remember even seeing the kids that were chasing it. If they weren’t still abusing the dog then they were completely insignificant to me. Their entire lives were meaningless. Their parents were garbage for letting them behave that way and not teaching them any better. The dog was the only thing that mattered.
I looked all around the sidewalk. No luck. I looked hard into the street to make sure it wasn’t flattened out there. No. I looked across the street to the other side to see if somehow it had made it over, onto the next level of Frogger. Not there either. I looked up and down the sidewalk. It was nowhere to be seen. Where was it? I can only imagine how my face looked. Distraught, angry, on the verge of tears. The dumb tourist.
Continuing to scan the area, I finally saw something move under a car parked against the sidewalk. I knelt to get a look and the concrete scorched my hands. It was the dog in an absolute panic, panting and whimpering with its eyes wide and tongue flopping about. Completely horrified. It was sort of sitting on its side leaning up with its head almost touching the bottom of the car. I had to get it out from under there, but how?
Approaching the car still crouched down, I realized how easily it could all go wrong. A dog that scared was likely to bite. If it didn’t bite it was certainly not going to come out on the same side as me, which would then leave it to escape into the Haram Street traffic. It was suddenly a struggle to think clearly and come up with a plan. What was I even doing?
It didn’t matter. I creeped over to the side of the car and tried to sweet talk the petrified animal. I reached out slowly toward it. What an idiot I must have looked like. It had to be the most naïve, ineffective way of attempting to overcome the predicament we were in.
Out of nowhere feet appeared on the other side of the car for a few seconds. They disappeared, followed by a door slam. Somebody just got in the car.
The engine started. Did he not see me when he was walking up to it? What did he think I was doing? Did he not see the dog?
I stretched upward, looking into his window and yelled loud enough where he could hear me over all of the street noise.
“Hey, there’s a dog under your car! Hey! There’s a dog under here! Let me get it out!”
I could tell by the look on his face he was surprised to see me and didn’t understand anything I had said. I pointed down under his car. He turned the car off, opened his door, and leaned out. The man looked under at the dog that was getting more hysterical by the second. The door shut and he leaned across the passenger seat toward me.
“I will drive over him without drive over him.” It came out so completely serious while sounding like the most asinine thing a person could possibly say. It was at that exact moment the severity of the situation hit me. These people didn’t care. Nobody cared. The dog meant absolutely nothing to them. It wasn’t protected. Its life wasn’t precious. It was just another obstacle and time was of the essence. They had people to scam and I was costing them a chance at some other tourist’s Chapstick the longer I stood there with my jaw dropped open.
“I will drive over him without drive over him?” What in the world did that even mean? Apparently I was supposed to believe he would be able to move the car while the dog freaking out underneath just stayed put so the tires didn’t go over it. That was without a doubt the stupidest thing I’d ever heard an adult human being say.
As I crouched there staring blankly, trying to process everything, the engine started back up and the guy put it in drive. The dog cried out in fear and shifted its weight trying unsuccessfully to get up. Instinctively I just started banging my fist on the passenger door. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until I had already done it. The car went back into park and the driver started to get out. I stood up readying myself for whatever confrontation I had just initiated. In my periphery a figure in all white started to appear. It was a police officer. There was a post of some kind further down the sidewalk where the access drive connected back to Haram Street. Even if the officer sided with the driver, at least I should get out of the situation without anything getting physical. Hopefully, anyway. I’m always painfully unaware of local laws and being in a Middle Eastern country I was officially playing with fire.
The driver was visibly irritated as he came around the back of the car. He started to say something but the officer cut him off. Score one for me, the officer sided with the tourist. I’m not sure every American officer would have done the same if it was an Arabic man banging on the side of a white man’s car, but Egypt doesn’t need a bad reputation when it comes to handling tourists. I had unknowingly gambled on the officer that I didn’t even know was watching and it paid off. The two men exchanged words for a minute then the driver stepped back toward the trunk while the officer motioned for me to lean down with him.
He started making sounds and reaching for the dog from the front of the car while I did it from the passenger side. The dog must have felt even more threatened by being surrounded because it was getting a little snappy and crying out. Eventually it maneuvered out from under the car on the driver’s side, exactly where I didn’t want it to go. The driver was just a spectator at that point, probably humored by the fact that the dog I was desperately trying to save just ran into Haram Street.
I stood up and the dog whizzed past us, hobbling at breakneck speed. The officer had played his role and was done. He motioned for the driver to move along and turned to walk away, heading towards the post he came from. Of course, I made for the dog instantly.
It had run across the sidewalk, across the little access drive, and under another goddamn car that was parked next to an alley running down the side of the hotel. What now?
Crouching down again, I could see the dog wasn’t even slightly calmed down. Sure, I knew it was away from the intense traffic of Haram Street and could rationalize that it was safer, but a dog doesn’t think like that. It felt in just as much danger as ever, as well as being relentlessly pursued by some strange man.
Trying to get the dog out from under that second car was hopeless. I began to put together how futile the whole thing was. I didn’t have the faintest idea what I would do if the dog did crawl out from under there and came up to me. I couldn’t take it up to the room. I didn’t have any food or water with me. I guess I just wanted to comfort it. I don’t know. You don’t think about those things in the heat of the moment, but after a few minutes of scrambling around I was developing a little more mental clarity.
A little boy came over and looked at me, smiling. He had a stick in his hands. At maybe 5-years-old, he was too small to be one of the kids I saw chasing the dog so I smiled back at him. He said something in Arabic to me and I just shrugged.
“I’m trying to get this dog. Dog? Dog?” I said pointing under the car.
The boy got low to the car and made this “psh psh psh” sound at the dog. He was clearly amused by me. Judging by the kids chasing the dog, the people around doing nothing, the man wanting to drive over it, I suppose I had to be pretty amusing to everyone that saw anything that had transpired in the past five to ten minutes.
“Look at the dumb foreigner. What a fool he is for giving a shit! We don’t have time for that! Now is time for giving me tips if you like!” Sometimes I have really detailed scenarios playing out in my head during times like that. Once the smoke clears from the initial rush of a hectic situation, it’s like the brain starts overloading and trying to make up for everything it blocked out during tense moments when the autopilot switch got flipped. I start coming up with things people must be thinking and saying, how they would retell it to somebody else later. What I would say to each one of them as they came up to me. It’s ridiculous, I know. Something about it is calming and helps me step back into the present. I could see beyond my little bubble once I acknowledged there were other people around.
Making no progress on getting the dog out from under the car, the boy decided to throw his stick under the car. Of course, he hit it. The dog howled out in a combination of pain and fear, and instantly squirmed to get out from under the car.
I just glared at the kid in complete bewilderment as he smiled and ran off. What kind of problem solving was that? I shouldn’t have been surprised but everything had happened in such a short time and it’s not first nature for me to just assume the worst of people. I see a kid with a stick I don’t think he’s going to ultimately throw it at a dog. Sack on me, I’m in Cairo now. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. And now the dog had run right past me for the second time. Thanks, little buddy. Psh psh psh yourself off now.
As I stood up I heard laughter from down the alley. There was an older man carrying what looked like rolls of carpet.
“Welcome to Egypt!” he yelled to me.
That was the second time I had heard that phrase in the last few hours and it certainly wouldn’t be the last time I would hear it. It was belittling, each time more so than the last. I came all the way to Egypt to be mocked because I don’t think animal abuse is acceptable. Amazing.
I turned to the right just in time to see the dog run into the mosque next door. A smile, maybe more of a smirk, came across my face. The dog had sought refuge in the mosque. I wondered how long it would last. I briefly contemplated going in after it. My smirk disappeared as I thought more about it. If those kids were just casually beating a dog, an adult was going to just casually “drive over him without drive over him”, carpet-man was going to just welcome me to Egypt for my troubles, how would somebody in the mosque react? The last thing I wanted to do was get involved with a person whose religion I didn’t understand that maybe just had their prayers interrupted.
Before I made any sort of decision I would possibly regret, the dog came running like mad out of the mosque with a voice shouting behind it. I didn’t need to understand Arabic to know that person was highly upset. The dog took off away from me as fast as it could on that little bum leg. A brief jog after it was all I had in me. Even injured, the dog was too fast for me and already too far away. I lost it. The dog had proven to be an expert at fleeing. I had proven to be a novice at dog collecting. Psh psh psh.
Standing there staring aimlessly at where the dog used to be I finally started to put everything together in my head. The whole scene replayed itself. Maybe it was a defense mechanism because I had all those emotions that I didn’t know what to do with and my subconscious wanted an explanation. Rage. Sadness. Despair. Hopelessness. What seemed like an infinite number of feelings all fighting for space right up front. I had no past experiences to compare to.
I slowly made my way back into the hotel, not making eye contact with anyone at the desk. I was curious if they saw any of what happened and, if I had looked their way, would they have hit me with another “Welcome to Egypt.” I shuttered to think about it.
On my way up to the room, I started thinking about David and Megan. I had just left them up there. They hadn’t even crossed my mind while I was down on the street. How much time had passed?