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I

The day the nation was reborn as a republic, Habib Nasser sought the protection of a dog. For months he had been listening to the Sawt al-Arab radio station, and to subdue his fright from what the radio announcers prophesied as the dawn of a disgraced age, he began stashing his spare earnings as an egg collector in a frayed pillowcase. Once it grew heavy enough to club a person’s skull, he set out to haggle with a paysan who owned the derelict shop down the recently tarmacked road. The paysan, an elderly jiddo missing a great deal of teeth and frontal hair, was sitting awkwardly on an overturned crate, unsteadily scooping yogurt from a plastic cup. Surrounding him were cages burdened with howling mutts and meowing felines. After the obligatory salaams and how are yous were traded, they conferred over the cost of a dog. The paysan would offer that A feral méchant is one worth having, no? A dog’s theatrics do well scaring off haramis. while Habib countered that An untrained dog could leave me with an open throat for the gravedigger’s collection. For the sake of ‘amana, a final price was agreed upon, and the first dog—a Basenji with a dirty coat the shade of crushed chestnuts—was brought to the veranda overlooking the chain-link fence of the Nasser Garden. The dog was a slobbering container of fury and rage. In those early days, it did well touring around the Nasser premises, snarling away any poor cyclists and sprinters who drew near the front entrance. For those who bravely flung stones and sticks as it slept on a dry bed of grass, it hurled its body recklessly at the metal gate, desperate for a bite. Some mornings, Habib would even discover the tiny carcass of a bird or lizard, still fresh, limply hanging from its jaw. It was this anger, this primal tear-and-shred mentality, that made Habib proud of his purchase. He believed that the guardianship of his new canine—with its rotten teeth and powerful growl—had given an intrinsic value to his precious house, his blooming greenery, his quiet life. Yes, he was confident this dog could shepherd around twelve more years of security if fed the right meats and given the cleanest water. That beautiful and delicate number, twelve, felt like an unspoken promise. A promise that was undone seven years later. Habib had become wedded, and a son was born. One day while playing in the Garden, his son had gotten too close to the dog, and being unfamiliar with the boy’s presence, his foreign odor, it snapped at his hand. Blood streamed to the ground, moistening it into dark mud. Habib, hearing his son’s cry, retrieved his pistol and took aim at the dog’s heart. He hesitated before trusting himself to pull the trigger. A shot echoed, and the next day, a sign scrawled in Arabic that read !اﻟﻜﻠﺐ ﻣﻦ اﺣﺘﺮس was plucked from the earth and thrown away in the neighborhood dumpster.

II

Decades later, the second dog—a stray Baladi who wobbled with a lame hind leg—relocated itself to the L-shaped hallway of a modest apartment building. Omar Nasser first encountered the dog when he moved to the City of All Cities with his fiance, Khadija. One afternoon the dog had stumbled upon the couple at their regular ahwa, where they sat outdoors dipping kahk in warm cups of hibiscus tea. In the background, a news station droned on about the recent assassination of the Supreme Commander, and tired of hearing the broadcast, Khadija searched the palm-lined street for a distraction. Noticing the dog ambling its way toward their table, panting and dazed, she lowered her glass of water and it breathlessly lapped all it could. Someone should put the damn beast out of its misery, Omar thought, absentmindedly caressing his scarred hand. After finishing their drinks and desserts, they headed down the three blocks to their apartment, where unbeknownst to them the dog had followed, making quick residence of the hallway corner littered with empty chip bags, sunflower shells, and cigarette butts. It didn’t take long for Omar to feel vexed by the dog. Every morning, he skittered along the corridor, instinctively clutching away his hand from it as he hurried to work. At dusk, the dog eagerly awaited his return, panting loudly for his leftover lunches, which he threw towards it as he rushed to safety. I need to get away from that filthy animal, Omar told Khadija one evening. Then find a way for us to get visas, ya ruhi, she said, full of kind laughter. Years went by of this back and forth before the eventual day Omar and Khadija left their apartment with suitcases. As they exited to a black-and-white checkered taxicab, Omar bent to his knees and nervously petted the dog’s flea-invaded fur. It delighted in his calming strokes, licked his damaged hand, and peacefully fell asleep. The dog never realized that Omar’s touch, soft and fleeting, was trying to say, farewell.

III

On the eve of the U.S. 2016 Presidential Election, Sarah Nasser visited the Paradise Animal Care and Rescue Center and fostered the third dog—a Basset Hound who was prone to long and languorous sprawls. She had read online that dogs can facially detect and respond to loneliness, and convinced by this, the dog was brought home to a rent-stabilized studio flat. The dog had come from a cyclical history of maltreatment—from emaciating hunger to ladle beatings to overnight desertion—and with its arrival to this small flat, it impulsively scurried beneath the living room couch in cold terror of the new setting. The first month had been brutal. A period of stained Berber carpets, clawed-upon snake plants, defecated resting chairs, and zero-hour barkings. Sarah, untrained and frustrated with her predicament, slowly became an indignant person. Didn’t Kundera say that dogs are supposed to be our link to Eden? Yet this kalb, I don’t know, Baba… she once told her father over the phone, vaping and delighting in the intermittent wind on the fire escape. Ya Sarah, I understand […] you need to think about […] buy a leash […] you’ll both need the joy […] we’re becoming fragments in this dishonest country of satirs, he said, his voice a heated series of disconnections. She bought a leash at the nearby PetSmart the following day, and after bribing the dog with strips of chicken jerky, brought it out for their first walk throughout the locality. It had been calming, beautiful even. It flashed Sarah back to the homesick stories her father always recounted to her, of the rivers of broken dogs that surged the alleyways of Cairo. They traversed Paradise Heights—from forested parks to hyper-gentrified avenues to lakeside benches—before returning back to the flat exhausted, but marginally bonded. Evening was settling in, the sky a gallery of bruised purples. Instead of Sarah showering her sweat and the dog feasting on a bowl of dry kibble, they sat on the cracked stoop together, watching pedestrians amble and cars hum until the sun descended to bring light elsewhere in the greater world.