by Azadeh Amirsadri
My sister Leyla and I are walking in New York City, talking about how some people love their dogs almost more than their children. In fact, in a very uncharacteristic moment, Leyla shares that she can’t stand the late night tv ads for abused dogs when there are people who are going hungry and suffering; and not only do I agree with her, but add about dogs’ different odors and that dog people think their dog doesn’t smell even though I can tell a house has dogs the minute I walk into one.
Growing up in Iran, we had two dogs at different times and invariably, something unexpected would happen to them. Shouka, a beautiful black and white hunting dog, lived with us, a large family of two parents, five girls, and two grandmothers. He was quite playful and once he made it all the way upstairs from the yard where he lived, to my sister’s bedroom. My sister woke up startled and Shouka was punished for frightening her. I felt bad for my sister who was getting comforted but felt even worse for Shouka who was all excited to hang out with us upstairs and was re-banished to the yard.
Shouka didn’t last with us very long. He was accompanying my father and his friends on a hunting trip in the mountains outside Tehran, according to the story we were told, and he disappeared. My dad said Shouka was so beautiful that probably a commercial truck driver must have stopped and offered him a piece of meat or other treat and there went this disloyal dog. Maybe he preferred being a dog that lives in a truck and gets to travel around, without the pressures of finding whatever poor bird my dad and his friends had shot. Maybe being in a family of too many females and only one male was too much pressure on him; I will never know because he never came back to us.
A few years after Shouka, we got a German shepherd that came to us as a few weeks-old puppy, all with soft brown fur and big black eyes. He wasn’t allowed inside the house, but it was winter and snowing when we got him, so my sisters and I would play with him outside, and during my mom’s afternoon nap, we’d bring him inside and play with him in a room that was being completed that would eventually become the tv and billiard room. And as soon as we heard Mom waking up upstairs, we’d rush him out of the house and back into the yard, until the next afternoon. As he grew up, Miago became a very strong and fierce dog who was leashed all day and freed in the evening to run around the yard and bark at anything that moved until the next morning where he was leashed again. He lived outside in our big yard all his life, and terrorized anyone who stopped at the front door, from the mailman to the trash collectors, to the poor saps sent by the mayor of Tehran to count trees in the city to protect the limited green areas we had. My dad was planning on building on his land, so every night, he would cut down a tree, chop it up, and hide it in the boiler room, with his daughters helping out, all of us miserable and grumpy. About once a week, the Mayor’s tree counters would come and we would tell them over the front wall of the house that they were welcome to come in and count trees, but we could not control Miago, who was barking his head off. The guys would leave and return a few more times, but eventually gave up their task, as we always had a reason not to let them in, with Miago’s loud barking as a background, we found reasons not to open the door to them. My dad was eventually able to clear the area and build his new house without city hall’s interference.
In the meantime, Miago was living his life scaring strangers and loving us. He would charge people he knew with such insane excitement and joy that in our family, we had a saying that a person is acting like Miago, meaning one is being overexcited and unable to control their actions, running around with abandon and carelessness to get what they want. My parents often used that expression when they told stories of people being too excited and warned us not to act like Miago in public, especially when they unleashed us in a self-service restaurant we used to go to as a special treat, or in a department store.
I left Iran in 1976 and when the rest of my family left Iran for France in 1979 during the Iranian Revolution, Miago went to live with a relative who had a large orchard outside the city limits. My parents told us he would be happy there because he could run around all he wanted and play with other dogs on that farm. And they were planning to return from France after a year and reclaim him anyway.
So back in New York, my sister and I are complaining about people who make eye contact with you on the street while they are walking their dog. There are a series of behaviors that we are familiar with and the signals sent from these dog lovers are: notice my dog, look at them and smile, look at me and make eye contact with me, ask me about my dog, let me indulge you and listen to how good of a dog he/she is, like my dog, look at me and smile again, and then love my particular dog more than other dogs. I tell Leyla that I sometimes pretend I love the dogs because this routine is fascinating in a weird way. I understand when people do the “eye contact; look at my baby, admire my baby, smile at me, and love my baby” routine because I do look at babies in strollers and like babies in general. Dogs though, it depends. Usually, I don’t make eye contact unless I am in a good mood and want to be rewarded for my fake dog-liking smile. I’ll ask about the name and breed unless it’s obvious what kind of dog they have. When I see how excited the owners get to share, I’ll ask basic questions like if the dog sheds or not, how old the dog is, and other questions that give the owners a chance to share with me what I really don’t care to know. I’ll fake and also not fake at the same time. The dogs, I have no real interest in. The connections, I do. These small everyday connections make me happy and seem to make the dog owners happy too, so we all win.
If I am forced to pick a dog breed, I sort of like bigger dogs, like Great Danes or Labs with giant heads, but that doesn’t mean I want to own one. My friend said it’s not politically correct to say I like big dogs and not small ones. She said it is like saying I like people with brown eyes vs blue eyes, or tall vs short people. I am not sure it’s the same thing, but I go along with it because it makes her feel good and I don’t want to argue with her. I did tell her I like her small fluffy dogs after we had a few gin and tonics one afternoon on her deck. She had had wine before I got there and as we were drinking the cocktails, she asked me to like her dogs because they were good pups. So I did, because alcohol does help with liking things in general, people, dogs, and experiences.
One day I am in Paris at the house of Amireh, my younger sister. My mom is there too and has made a wonderful lunch for us that we are eating outside, in the garden. It’s a beautiful sunny day with a nice breeze and we are talking about this and that. My sister has two cats, Lily and Indiana, that come in and out of the garden and rub themselves everywhere. Somehow we end up talking about our dog Miago who ended up with relatives back in Iran and my mom says “I knew he wouldn’t last there long because he was crazy and trained as a guard dog and attacked everyone” and my sister answers “I wonder how many days they kept him before they put him down?” I freeze. “What do you mean put him down? I thought he just died of natural causes, being older and all” and then I add “Why didn’t you tell me when it happened” as I count the years in my head “For 34 years you kept this a secret? 34 years?” My mom then just realizes that I didn’t know he was put down and my sister just looks at me with an incredulous look and says “You really didn’t know? Like you didn’t figure it out? Listen, there was a war between Iran and Iraq and over half a million people died. Thousands of people were executed at the beginning of the revolution, people lost their homes and livelihoods. Are you really going to be this upset over Miago?” She was right my little sister. So many deaths happened in Iran during the war, during the executions, and during an earthquake in the north that killed thousands including one of my school classmates. So much death happens every day in so many unnatural and violent ways. And yet, I do think about Miago and his wild enthusiasm with us that turned to insane fury with strangers.
There is a park by my house and when I am out for a walk, when I see someone walking their German shepherd, if I am in a good mood, I will ask them about their dog, and tell them I had one when I was a child and he was the cutest puppy ever.