By FLÁVIO R. KOTHE*

I lie at the feet of my master, an old wanderer who got tired of walking. He stopped where he shouldn't have stopped. He had roots here, the family lands were taken by the Israelites

Enemy tanks roamed and roam our fields and streets, bombed and bombed buildings, schools, hospitals, and thirsted for the blood of children and women. They wanted and want to wipe out our people. I am just a poor dog, I have survived, barely survived.

We had no weapons capable of confronting these monsters of iron and steel, we had no planes that could confront those that cross our skies. They are a crusade of destruction and death, like the Christian crusades. In the morning, there was a silence that was not innocent. It foreshadowed the storm. We are afraid even to breathe.

I lie at the feet of my master, an old wanderer who got tired of walking. He stopped where he shouldn't have. He had roots here; the family lands were taken by the Israelites. He was raised far, far away. He became a good mathematician, but he gave it all up when he saw that he couldn't even calculate what would be best for him. When everything is against us, there's no way to do the math right.

I believe that when my owner adopted me, he calculated that we would have the same number of years left to live. Dogs live less than humans. He picked me up from the street, gave me food and water: he saved me, without needing to. Out of gratitude, I decided to dedicate my life to keeping him company. We adopted each other.

We had a rented room in a Palestinian house. The children played with me. When my owner went out in the morning to work on a vacant lot outside the city to plant vegetables, I went with him. It was a nice walk. As he weeded and turned the soil, he told how, forced to leave the land that had been his family’s for 700 years, he had decided to see the world. He became a homo traveler, to add: “As if man did not have the vocation of a home, a place to build his life. The house ends up being an extension of us.”

I was all he had of a family. We were enough for each other. He wanted to find out what had made him feel so drawn to that place. When he arrived, he had been overcome by the feeling of “this is my place.” It would take him many years to understand what he had felt at that first moment, as if it were an enlightenment.

Yesterday we received orders from the Israeli soldiers that we should leave the house. We came to the land he cultivates. We spent the night in a small tent. A little while ago, my owner put down his hoe, sat on a rock, picked me up and looked me in the eyes: “I don’t like it when they send me away from my place. It’s mine, and I’m his. If I have to leave, I’ll leave you with the family who owns the house. The children will take care of you. Not all humans become pets.”

We were outside the city, on the land that was our vegetable garden. In the distance, we could hear cannon fire, machine gun fire, and the drone of airplanes. They were coming from the direction of our home. I noticed the sadness in my protector's eyes. He was my friend, and friends have no faults. I licked his hands, so that he would know that he could count on me for whatever might come.

I was not a good hunter. I rarely caught a mouse. They were scarce, there was no food for anyone. When my master managed to get a plate of food, I would sit by his side, waiting for him to give me a piece. He was generous. He gave me a share of everything. If we were hungry, we went together. There was no loneliness.

When the sound of gunshots and bombs stopped, it was already getting dark. We slowly made our way back to the house. There were wounded and terrified people on the streets. When we got closer, we realized that there was no longer a house to return to. It had been reduced to rubble. Some neighbors were walking around among them, looking for the residents. They were happy to see us alive.

The father and mother had died. Two children had been taken away, injured, by ambulance. Two others were dead. My master said to me slowly: “Often we cannot decide anything. Life decides for us. I will have to stay to take care of these children until our turn comes.”

I could hear deep sadness in his voice. There wasn't much to say. I just gave a short bark back, as if I understood but couldn't do anything.

* Flavio R. Kothe is a retired full professor of aesthetics at the University of Brasília (UnB). Author, among other books, of Allegory, aura and fetish (Cajuína Publisher). [https://amzn.to/4bw2sGc]

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