Infidel Dog
Sometimes it takes a very special terrier to remind us humans that we’re more alike than we may want to think, and to bring out our latent civility.
This poem was written late in 2010.
This morning, with a high of seventy degrees in the forecast, amazing for a November in Chicago, I drove the dog to Warren Park. That’s where we go for a special treat instead of our usual neighborhood walk, because the squirrel chasing is most excellent, and there are never any cops there to harass you, a scofflaw walking his dog off its leash. We like to run up the steps of the sledding hill, which a parks department sign actually proclaims “Sledding Hill,” and then charge down the slope, after which we make our way around the skirt of the hill where the squirrels rummage through the leaves like so many bargain hunters. We crunch crunch crunch across the orange carpet, and if we’re lucky we spot a squirrel far enough out in the open that Ella can chase it full-bore back to its tree. She has never once caught one. Or at any rate never killed one.
Next we like to follow the cinder jogging path all the way around the little nine-hole golf course embedded like an off-center yolk in the albumen of the park, and that’s exactly what we did this morning. I walked in the leaves at the side of the path, trying to encourage Ella to do the same, but unless she has a rodent, lagomorph or marsupial in her sights she prefers to walk on pavement. Go figure. We were on the south side of the golf course, the tall chain-link fence meant to protect us from flying balls off to our left, when I saw two men coming our way along the path, youngish men—younger than I, at any rate— neatly bearded men dressed in long robes the color of wet sand. It was already warm enough out that I was regretting the heavy coat I wore over my hooded sweatshirt. I snapped my fingers imperiously, calling for Ella to return to my side, to leave the path and get out of the way of the two youngish men engaged in animated talk. Ella is a good dog, shaggy-bearded herself, and she mostly listens. But I know that Muslims are afraid of dogs, or wary, or I think I know this, having watched many women in headscarves whisper urgently to their children to stay out of our path. At least, I assumed these men were Muslims. I admit I don’t know the taxonomy of robes and caps and beards. They could have been Coptic Christians or even Jains for all I knew. At any rate, they didn’t have turbans on so I knew they weren’t Sikhs. But despite my commands, Ella didn’t leave the path entirely. She shifted toward me, trotting along the very edge of the pavement, but didn’t leave it altogether. “Ella,” I hissed. “Come.” She spared me only a sidelong glance, certain she had already obeyed me to the extent required. Letter of the law. I only wanted to be a good neighbor. The men were yards away. Dogs are not consistent with Islam. I braced for whatever. It’s not that I thought anything worse than embarrassment might transpire, but my dog does have a history. She grew up in Queens, and she still has some of that attitude. We socialized her with people pretty quickly, my wife and I, but that didn’t prevent her from barking her selectively bred head off at any unfamiliar creatures we encountered on the street, ones with strange colors, shapes or motions. Woman in full burqas, like shambling mounds of midnight. People in big hats. People on crutches or in wheelchairs. Black people—a sad reflection of the diversity of visitors to our apartment. The worst was the time she lost it at an old Black woman in a wheelchair in front of a funeral parlor on Astoria Boulevard near the elevated tracks. As we dragged her in a wide, apologetic berth as far from the frightened woman as possible. As the woman’s decked-out younger companions yelled at us. As if we’d trained our dog to hate old Black women in wheelchairs. That was the worst. But it’s not as if Ella has never met a Muslim man before. We used to walk her up Steinway Street in Queens, right past all the Middle Eastern restaurants and pastry shops and bookstores, and the men’s social clubs with the curvy hookahs, and even past the mosque. Some people avoided us, though we never walked her up the middle of the sidewalk or in such a way as to block anyone’s path. We didn’t mean it as a provocation but more as a statement, an exercise of our rights to free association, an exercise in multiculturalism. And not everyone avoided us. One time a group of three thirtyish Egyptians stopped us as we walked Ella up the far edge of the sidewalk. One of them with a reedy mustache and a look of childlike wonder asked if our dog was friendly. “Yes,” we said. He asked if he could pet her. “Of course,” we said. We made her sit. Ella could care less about most strangers, but she doesn’t like surprises, so we told the man to reach out slowly. His fingertips barely grazed the hair on the top of her head, while Ella sat patiently and yawned. “Good dog,” we said, while the man straightened up with a smile as wide as the world on his face. You could see him already composing the story in his head that he would tell his friends, about how he petted a dog and didn’t even get struck by lightning. He’ll be dining out on that one for years.
We loved that neighborhood for reasons like that meeting on the street. We loved it for our friend Ali, who would never touch Ella because he was cooking in his little restaurant, but who always had a kind word for her, and still asks about her when we visit. I love it for the times I stayed out all night drinking with Ali, who knew everyone, for the times he Virgiled me into the social club across the street from his restaurant, where I smoked shisha with the Egyptian men and listened to monologues on history and hieroglyphics, on all the important things that Egypt invented, or did first. Our travels in Cairo and Luxor and Petra and Amman, talking Islam and politics and Christianity with virtual strangers in coffee shops and cafés, sometimes seemed the inevitable endpoint of our years in that neighborhood, which we loved. What I’m trying to get at is, I don’t hate Muslims, and I especially don’t want any Muslim to think I hate Muslims, or that my dog hates Muslims. Which she doesn’t. The two men on the path had nearly drawn even with us, and Ella still hadn’t moved off the pavement. But there was enough room for her and the nearest man to pass each other without touching, which they did. “Good morning, sir,” he said to me with a cheerful trill, his face like a gibbous moon, beaming. “Good morning, how are you today?” I said with a smile as wide as Lake Michigan, a smile trying a little too hard, wanting to be seen as a friend, not a fraud, and reflect the genuine shiver of camaraderie I felt. “Very well, thank you,” he said, dipping his head. He, the respectful, non-threatening immigrant, me, the welcoming, tolerant native, both playing the part of open-minded, ideal world citizen. Maybe he was born here, I don’t know, and maybe I was not, as far as he knew. No matter. We both still played our proper roles— roles still, even if based on a true story, inspired by real events. I might wish for a deeper connection, a meeting of the minds, but at least we all passed on our leisurely errands without baring our teeth, without drawing our guns, and I can live with that. Ella, more alien than us all, paid none of our human posturing the slightest mind. ∅