Street Dogs

A man sits on the hood of a blue Volkswagen Polo and drinks a can of Efes. He is parked in a clearing on a corner on a road way up high. He looks at water and mountains. Mountains, the closer ones blue in fog, the further ones grey, and the ones behind the grey ones aren’t mountains so much as silhouettes. They hide on all sides where the strait comes from and where it’s going. The sun is setting and leaves yellows and oranges in the west which turn to purple straight above which gives way to greens and blues so dark as to be black in the east, and the black is creeping and will win in an hour. The border between the hues is smudged as if by a sponge and so the colors cannot be distinguished. The air is busy with seagulls down low and falcons above those. Gliding in three dimensions. The whole thing is filled with mist.

Cars swerve to avoid the Polo and honk. The delivery drivers on scooters don’t care. Their hands are in oven mitts wrapped in stretch film duct taped to the handle bars, because it’s winter.

A man walking a light tan dog with a dark snout and white feet and a blue clip in its ear on a rope leash is rounding this same corner. The dog is not small, maybe 14 kilos, but moves like a puppy, bouncing, quick jerks, like it doesn’t know the edge of its body, baby fat rolls in the neck and feet bigger than the legs imply. The walker and the dog get close to the car and the man.

“Walk around, I’m scared of dogs.”

“It’s a nice night. Take it easy. She’s a puppy.”

“It’s not a dog park. Keep walking.”

The man with the dog looks at the man on the car because he doesn’t know what to sa, the man on the car looks at the dog because he is afraid of it, and the dog is looking back because she is a dog. She drops her front legs into a prayer stance and her mouth opens and her tail and butt wag. She darts a bit, side to side. She smiles, she wants to play. She barks and rises and moves toward the sitting man. The dog walker tries to stop her but the rope is long and she gets too close. The man half jumps and half falls off the hood, stumbles, catches his feet. He has not dropped, but has spilled a bit of, his beer.

“Keep walking.”

“Keep drinking.”

“I will.”

The man clicks his tongue in disapproval, turns away, leans on the car door, looks to the water. The mountains across are dense with flickering lights and for a moment he imagines them as torches, many small fires, and he’s in an old war, soldiers warming livers jabbed with sticks and crunched forward because it’s cold, and they’re too scared to sleep, they don’t want to fight again tomorrow but they know they will, there are so many of them, and he’s one of them, and it’s a big war with high stakes, world historical in scope and form. The moon is big and red and moving fast, a heavenly body in the color of blood and now it lends red to the rest of the sky, overwhelming the remnants of blue, very fitting, the man thinks, for a war.

In the morning he joins the brothers and they retake the bend from the barbarians. They’ve come from the north and have a queer language and are bearded with dry and light hairs. Rapists and cannibals, he’s heard. Uncivilized, yes, and possessed by animal gods. Goats and owls. Their hand skin has cracks and their fingers are thicker than docking rope but they don’t bend. Their shoes are skins. The women, the children, the old, the young, the crippled. Not there. Only the men left, and the dogs, all fed on livers and inspired by the sky, storming down, for their land, for this strait and these mountains.

The battle is fierce and loud and quick but feels long because of the crying and the flesh smell. The brothers know the land and funnel the barbarians onto cliffs. And on the cliffs the barbarians are incapable of regret or surrender but they know their time is up. Their mistake was recklessness but the land is fertile and they were hungry and they came because they had to. Now they look from the cliffs, at the sky’s colors, at the bend of the water, and they’re scared of the dogs.

A tanker appears from the Black Sea side and the war is over and it’s Wednesday again. That was a different life, someone else’s, the man thinks, and he yearns for it, is jealous of it. The dog walker spools the rope so the leash is short and he tugs the dog’s neck but she is sitting now and she will not budge.

“I thought you were leaving.”

“I thought so too.”

The walker pulls some hazelnuts from his pocket and cracks them in his palm and puts them in front of the dog’s nose. She sniffs and tries to bite but he pulls them away. She turns her head but her legs don’t move. He grabs the rope hard now with both hands and jerks it and the dog, she squeals.

A cargo truck is coming and coming fast. It sees the men and the car and the dog. It knows its width and knows its space and clearance. It doesn’t veer into the far lane as it passes close and honks hard. The men and the dog jump and the men cuss and she barks and keeps barking and spit flies from her jowls, wild, and the truck keeps on the horn and drives away.

It’s hard to yell or bark at a truck that isn’t there, and her anger recedes with the men’s and she lets out a final grumble then a snort, which declares victory. She begins to turn back to the walker but her nose is caught by some bones, a bird’s, a squirrel’s, in the bushes. She breaks a hollow rib with ease and swallows its two pieces in one gulp. The bone left a whisper of a scent on a fallen log, and it’s enough for her. She lays down with the log between her front paws and chews it with her back teeth. Spits out splinters when she makes them. She gets comfortable and falls onto her shoulder and hip, gnawing. Her ears have relaxed, tilted back, and her body seems to have shrunk.

Between spits, her eyes catch the drinker’s and she sits up. Raises her paw, hits the ground. He doesn’t do anything. She raises it again and holds it elevated, higher this time, a slight tremble in the shoulder because it’s hard, and she pulls back her ears and looks at the man. Come, pet me, scratch my ear with your knuckle, my stomach with your fingers, she says. But he doesn’t know this language, can’t read her motions as words, and so he sighs or shrugs, a hint of a smile tinged with pity, he finds her funny and strange now, not so scary, allies against the truck as they were, and he looks away. Her eyes stay fixed on the side of his face before deciding he isn’t looking back. She returns to the chewing.

“Stubborn.”

“She’s not used to the leash.”

“Name?”

“We call her Girl.”

At the beginning, Girl’s life was simple and same, anchored by her mother’s milk. Nudging and pushing her brothers and sisters out of the way, latching on, sometimes with too much of a bite with her sharp puppy teeth, causing mom to yelp or, twice, growl, a canine’s pedagogy. But normally feeding without incident, drinking, lapping, tired from the milk, from all the milk did, all it did to fill the empty bellies, to encourage the young immune systems, to teach safety and packness and home, home, which was a burrow under an overhanging halfwall of the fishermen’s marina, which was also something of a boat graveyard and also a home to those few who lived in their boats what with the economy what it is, home, nestling up in her mother’s lap, siblings marshmallowed together. Such was Girl’s first weeks in the world.

Early, mom’s milk ran dry and she would leave the pups to find scraps. At first Girl followed, not scared, but unaware that she could be alone. Mom would pick her by the scruff and carry her back to the others, who had stayed because they were unaware they could leave. Bones from something. The odd fish head cut by a monger. Bream roe that couldn’t be sold. Some packaged cheese given by passersby. Old bread from the bakery’s dumpster if scavenging was hard, or if one of the fishermen had kicked her away. Whatever she had, she would fill her cheeks and jog home, tail wagging with pride, where she would drop the food for her waiting pups. They’d devour and chew and swallow, sometimes too early, not yet experienced to know when a piece of cartilage was small enough to slide down the throat. Mom would sit with her back to them, looking at the latch gate entrance at the top of the steps at the front of the marina, barking at cats if they came close, tilting her head at people if they were unfamiliar.

One morning mom left. The sun rose high and the day grew warm then it set low and the evening got cold and the pups’ stomachs grumbled. Their young bodies, growing fast and accustomed to daily consumption, longed for bread and fish. Girl’s brother coughed up some bile and licked it up because it tasted like food. They grew agitated and barked. Dogs walked by and they sniffed, but the scent was not hers.

When night came mom didn’t. The pups hadn’t left their spot under the overhang all day and they would not leave now. They pushed into the corner as normal but mom’s body was not around to take the night’s wind and they were cold. They shivered and snuggled looking for warmth that wasn’t there. Fidget and get up, spin around, lay back down. Sit up, look, eyes slowly closing with tired then bouncing open, dirt caked into baby fat neck rolls, snouts a little wet. Lay back down. Sigh. Try to sleep with head on a paw for a pillow and a tail over a nose for warmth. With an ear covering an eye to block the marina lights’ glow. But sounds would come, and ears would jerk back, and pups would sit or stand and listen, but again she did not come, and again they would lay back down. Curl into a ball for a moment, some sleep, arms moving as if running, lips pulling back, some teeth appear, a dog’s scared dream, a puppy’s long night.

They awoke with the sun and learned of a deep hunger. Girl’s brother had peed himself, afraid to leave the pack without mom’s oversight.

Girl, always less attached to home and more attached to mom, was the first to leave. At first with spurts and half movements, recalls and hesitations. New steps to climb, cracks to feel under her still pink paws. The smell of fish at the water’s edge strong from the daybreak fishermen’s first catch. And the first feeling of no one at her side. Her introduction to being alone. Sounds sounding louder, smells smelling more. The light itself and the mist through which it cuts revealing new things.

She follows the remnants of mom’s scent to the steps at the far entrance of the dock. A hesitation at the bottom of the steps, and a turn back to the siblings, a look that learns that none had followed. She looks up the steps and her tag wails. First one paw then another, and she stays like this for some while, her mind content with standing perched, two legs high and two legs low. She looks at the step in front of her, her mouth opens and she pants. She sits like this, butt down a step.

Her stomach growls and her butt raises and she ventures up the staircase. Scared the whole while by the gap between the steps in front of her eyes. Step by step, and panting nonstop, she reaches the top and shakes, first at the head with her ears flopping and then her body with the puppy rolls rolling and her back legs alternating leaving the ground, her hips not yet learned in how to best handle a shake, and finally her tail, the white tip of the tail last to gyrate.

The staircase opens onto a gravel path that leads to a large paved pedestrian walkway and bike path. There are people up here, more than Girl has ever seen. There are fields and courts and people selling cups of corn freshly knifed off the cob in paper cups and tea also in paper cups. Her eyes, used to the den, knowing only a few meters of world, the distance between her and mom at most, strain to see the open. Focusing, she sees shapes of dogs, some small like her, but with people, others big like mom, laying in the grass, running sometimes, barking sometimes.

Her empty stomach tells her nose to smell for food and her legs to take her to it. A monger has set up a table where he’s frying and selling hamsi whole. She approaches and waits for him to drop some flesh and bones from his mouth. Nothing happens. She walks closer behind him and sits and nothing happens. She paws him and boops his calf with her snout. And then a force in the side and a squeal escapes and she’s pushed back and falls down and bounces up and the hurt and a flash of light and her head contorts and her body freezes. She tries to sit. A throbbing in the rib. Another squeal. She stands and looks. Her eyes are big circles and her mouth is shut tight and her ears are up. A new thing. And she sees the monger lift his foot again but this time he stops short when she flinches.

“Get! Get!”

“Bark! Bark!”

He takes a paper plate and rolls it up and feigns a swing at her. “Get! Get!” He takes a heavy step in her direction and she lurches to the side and she wants to bite him but just looks. He jerks around and she moves away some more. He returns to the frying pan and she does not ask for more food. Sore, she leaves, stopping to look back at this man, hoping he will not follow.

She wanders the road, occasionally hopping onto the rock barrier that separates pavement from sea. A cat. Some glass. Makeshift animal homes. Music. “Chestnuts! Chestnuts! Fresh! Fresh!” Children and men with odd gaits shooting balloons with pellet guns for a lira. Loud Turkic instrumentals overlaid on a house beat, danced traditionally. Soccer balls, some coming her way, more than half her size. And some people scratch her head. “Ah! How cute! Who are you?! Where’d you come from!” And some people give some food.

The sun is setting and people set up towels in the grass and lay on them and take out beers and drink them and cigarettes and smoke them and look at the sea. Girl’s nose fills with smoke and she sneezes. The big red sun is setting and its light leaves horizontal lines of grapefruit colors in the clouds. The herons are dark but glowing. The tap tap tap tap of their wings on the water as they glide straight hunting fish makes Girl tilt her head left. A woman brings down a bag of kibble for some cats and they fight over it and they emit screams that make Girl tilt her head right.

When the darkness and coldness of night win over the remnants of sun, Girl ventures home. Back through the walkway, past the courts and the diminishing numbers of people. Past the newly sleeping dogs that wake with one eye but otherwise don’t respond. Down the steps, with some but fewer hesitations, toward the den. One of the brothers smells her then looks and barks when he sees her and a couple others are awoken and stand with wagging tails. Girl quickens her pace and trots to them. A lick from one, another rolling to its back. All the siblings are still here. Someone had given them some meat, there were bones with some cartilage still attached. The excitement of her return passes quickly from their tired minds and the siblings fall back asleep on top of one another. Girl’s sleep comes harder. She watches them. Lifts her paw at them. Nudges them with her head. Waits for them. Remembers the fısherman’s foot. Hears echoes of the cats’ screams. Still hungry, she lays down with one of the bones between her front paws and chews it with her back teeth, spits out splinters when she makes them. She gets comfortable and falls onto her shoulder and hip, gnawing. And eventually her chewing slows and the bone slips out of her mouth and she gets up and spins and lays down smushed to a sister, and sighs and exhales, then joins in sleep.

A day turns to days and days turn to weeks and mom doesn’t come. Other siblings start to venture. Some don’t return. One day a man and a woman from a van stab the remainers in the shoulders and they fall asleep and wake up in a white room sore on the inside and they see peripherally things on their heads and feel directly things in their ears that feel new and cold and they paw at the things but soon they stop noticing them and soon the head cones are gone and they get put back in the van and they get driven and they get dropped back in the den and they smell different now, and now most of them leave and find boxes and parks and benches and bushes in which to sleep. There is fighting and eating, intestinal distress, new faces, cats, rain, sun, windy days and calm ones too, panting, smiles, barks, humps.

In other words, dogs’ lives are lived.

A woman, thirties, beautiful, green wool coat with dark brown stars, and yellow beanie bought cheap from the Tuesday pazar, beginning her morning walk from a bus stop to a metro stop, on the sidewalk above, sees Girl on the steps, sees her still sitting wrong like she did the first time, with two paws on one step and two paws and a butt on the step below. Why, the woman wonders, is she sitting like this? She walks to the top of the stairs, crouches, Girl stands back up, her legs still split on two levels.

“Here girl, here!”

Girl is timid at first, having learned that some people are nice and some are not.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, come here girl!”

The woman reaches into her treat containing pocket, pulls out a biscuit, and offers it. Girl reaches her head forward and sniffs, snout moving side to side. The woman notices that the nose is wet and wonders if, if she was closer, if she could see her reflection in it.

Girl sits back and looks into the woman’s face. She raises her paw.

“No, you come!”

Another raise of the paw.

She breaks the biscuit, puts a half in each hand, and offers one to Girl. The breaking releases more scent and Girl relents. She approaches with her head low, sits, takes the treat in her front teeth, turns a bit, takes a couple of steps, back to the woman, crunches the biscuit, lays down, and eats the bits and licks the crumbs from the ground. The squatted woman duckwalks over and gives Girl the second half and scratches her shoulder as Girl eats. The treat gets finished and the scratches move to the ear and the fingertips turn into knuckles and Girl closes her eyes and scoots closer. The knuckles slow then stop then Girl licks them. The woman notices that the dog’s ears smell like tortillas.

The woman gives what is intended to be a last couple of pats on the head, sneaks in a scratch, and gets up to leave.

Girl follows.

“No no, you can’t come!”, she says as she squats back down and rubs Girl’s face with two hands, thumbs massaging the temples.

She reaches for another biscuit and offers it to Girl, who takes it without doubt and starts eating in the same crumb-producing way.

The woman gets up and looks at Girl and walks away. Girl’s eyes raise and she watches the woman walk away as she eats. The woman returns to the sidewalk and heads toward the metro stop. She looks back and sees that Girl has finished the biscuit and is sitting and is also looking. She waves.

That night she reports the event to her husband. She tells him about the dog she saw in the morning who sits in two levels and makes crumbs and smells strange and licks your knuckle after you scratch her ear.

“Did she have a collar?”

“No, but she was tagged. She was great.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll see her again.”

In the morning she wakes before him. Gets out of bed, goes into the kitchen, grinds 50 grams of beans, fills the pot from the filter, puts the beans in the basket, puts the basket in the machine, puts the water in the reservoir, and flips the switch. Opens the curtains. Cloudy, with clouds producing a darkness that makes it look earlier than it is, except that it usually looks like this at this time, and so, she thinks, it doesn’t look earlier at all, it looks the way it looks, and it’s just that days start later here, with cafes opening at ten or eleven in the morning and closing at midnight or later, and people say goodmorning until afternoon and good day until evening and good evening almost all night long, and the sun seems to have noticed all this and doesn’t bother rising early on a resting city. Two pigeons still roosting in the tree, and the gulls loud but hidden somewhere out of sight. Goes to the bathroom. Washes her hands with soap and her face with water and clean hands. Waits for the coffee to finish. It finishes. Pours it into a mug. Sits on the couch, wraps in the wool blanket with the red herringbone, leaving the blue folded on the arm of the couch. Turns on the television and scrolls Youtube before picking a leftwing American news clip about interest rate hikes harming the middle class. She thinks the interpretation is misguided.

She has chosen the Beauty’s mug from Montreal, which she misses, one of the few things, and then she thinks of the snow which she also misses, because it’s been cold and rainy here but cold and snowy feels less cold and she’s been here before when it snowed, when they visited in the winter, and the city is beautiful in snow. Last time they were in Istanbul it was winter and his parents had been watching their dog, Poca, who was wild and shouldn’t have been a pet, and had trust issues and could only stay with them. Poca liked to pee far away and off leash. His mom let her out one morning and Poca saw something and ran into the road and was hit by a truck and was killed and the truck driver cried. His mom called her own mom first and explained that she didn’t know what to do because she didn’t know what to do. Her mom reminded her that their dog had also been hit by a truck. She remembered. The woman thought about all this on the couch. About how his dad picked them up from the airport and said he was sorry after asking how their trip was. About her parents and parents and kids. About her mom. About how it had snowed that trip and about they watched cars slide down a hill. About how life is a short thing but a long one too.

He woke up. Got a cup of coffee, sat next to her on the couch.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

“How’d you sleep?”

“Not bad, woke up around three for a bit but fell back. You?”

“Yeah, pretty good, thanks for the coffee.”

“Of course. Hey. I was thinking.”

“About coffee?”

“No no, about that dog.”

“Thinking what?”

“I think maybe we should take her in.”

“You want to take her in?”

“I was thinking.”

“We said we wouldn’t get another.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know. Why not?”

“I don’t even know how to take one in. Let’s give it a couple of days?”

“You just  take it. She wanted to follow me anyway.”

“How?”

“We can use Sevgi’s car.”

“I don’t know. No collar?”

“No collar.”

“Nobody’s taking care of her?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“It has been cold.”

“I know.”

“We could bring her and leave it up to her.”

“See if she likes it or not.”

“Right, see if she likes it. Some don’t want to be inside.”

“I know.”

“What would we name her?”

“I think she thinks her name is Girl.”

That evening they borrow Sevgi’s car and drive to the marina and park and find a fisherman and describe Girl to him and he knows her and where she sleeps and they go there and there she is, laying.

Girl sees the woman and remembers the treats and gets up in a stretch, first front legs straight in a prayer posture and then back legs extended, a downward dog. A little shake and she walks over. The woman squats and the man does too. Girl sits between the woman’s  knees and leans on her. The woman scratches her ear.

“I think she wants to come with us,” he says.

“I think I want her to come with us,” she says.

“Me too.”

Girl knows nothing of house life and becoming a pet takes time. Her stomach struggles to adjust to kibble food, she doesn’t understand doors, she pees inside and licks it up, and walking on a leash is hard. But it comes, slowly, but all of it. She adapts and grows, learns to sleep on the couch instead of the floor, learns the sound of the cracking shell of a soft boiled  egg and learns that the sound means a treat is coming her way and so she comes and sits in the kitchen when she hears it. Snuggles with them like she did with her siblings. Looks into their eyes and asks for pets and scratches and usually receives them. And it’s warm and dry inside. She is never kicked. They are a pack and she misses them when they leave, raising eyebrows and moping when they put shoes on their feet without putting a leash on her neck.

They learn too. They learn that the language they had with Poca–she was smart, too smart they sometimes thought–did not yet exist and might not ever exist with Girl. Girl cannot “find it” when a toy is hidden. She does not know to follow “this way” on walks. She cannot yet sit, stay, come, or give a paw. She does not look at them in the same way, and her tail does not always wag in the morning when they wake up. She often cries at night, gets up and looks at them and sits and cries. For a moment, he wants to give her back to the street. Convinces himself that she has come to belong there. But she insists and he relents and Girl stays.

Time passes and a new language, a private language, a language for just the three of them, develops. New routines form. She cries at night and they hold her and she exhales. She walks to the door they put on her collar and attach the long leash and take her out. Morning walks and evening walks.

She wants to go out and he takes her and lets her decide the path. Usually, she wants to go down, down to the town, where she tries to pick up bone scraps and trash from outside the butcher, from gutters, from under bushes and benches. But today, up, she wants to go up, up the road toward the wooded parts of the hills. It’s late evening and the sky is remarkable and he follows.

Except for the occasional passing truck or delivery scooter, the gulls coo’ing and ha-ha-ha’ing are the most persistent sounds. The buzz of the city and its electronics and frequencies and waves and radiation aren’t there. The air is light and he breathes it in easily, the cold in his nose a feeling unchanged since childhood.

Girl walks ahead. She looks back every now and then to make sure he’s still there. He is.

The whites of her paws and the tip of her tail glow in the lavender hour light.

How could he have wanted to send her away?

She picks up a stick and turns quick to face him, crouches, spiderlike. Bounces side to side. He grabs one end and pulls and she pulls back and they tug and tug and she lets go and he tosses it a couple of feet into the bushes and she grabs it and high steps back to him and they play again before she decides to leave the stick in the bushes and they walk ahead.

He sees bits of water through the trees and wonders how the anhingas don’t get cold sitting in it.

There’s a clearing ahead, around the corner. He sometimes likes to stop there at sunset and look and feel. The beauty of the chilled evening air smoothing the static of the day, a calm quiet air bathed in purples and reds, colored air, and sky and cold water and grey mountain silhouettes dotted with incandescent lights, before people and people and memories and dreams of war, and after people, timeless, in a sense, he thinks, a flat circle, the whole thing filled with mist, him and her and this place. A world and what it is.