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A nine-week old human fetus fits in a plastic cup. I know this from experience.
Under a bridge on a congested street near Tahrir Square in Cairo, my husband reached for anything he could to place the contents of my sudden miscarriage. I lost the life that was growing inside me at the centre of where the 2011 Egyptian revolution’s hope for democracy had both come alive and died a few years prior.
The symbolism in location accentuated my need to find meaning in the pregnancy’s premature ending. Just as many Egyptian activists living under renewed military dictatorship grappled to believe the revolution was not in vain, I too grappled to believe the much desired, yet short-lived, gestation had had a purpose.
Almost as soon as I left the hospital, my thoughts turned to a German shepherd dog named March that I had met the previous week at an Egyptian animal shelter. Named after the month in which she was found dying in the streets of Alexandria, March recovered at the shelter from an unexplained, deep, foot-long stab wound across her back. Her leg muscles were atrophied from a lack of adequate exercise at the overcrowded shelter.
I adopted March as a surrogate for the baby I had just lost, and as a way to give life. A few days later, March flew home with me to Los Angeles. When I cried, she would nestle her big body into my lap, as if to say she knew my pain.
To my dismay, her empathy quickly turned to irrational protection; she attacked anybody who came near me. One horrific night, March pinned a family member against the wall, teeth snarling. I began putting a muzzle on her and hoped that with time she would recover from her own abusive past and settle down.
Unfortunately, the situation deteriorated to the point that I had to give her away to an experienced German shepherd trainer. The day I left March with Nixon, she howled as I walked away. She was a child losing her mother. I heaved with sorrow, too. I was a mother losing her second child. My only solace came from knowing that Nixon, arms scarred with years of dog bites, would never give up on March.
Although tears still readily swelled in my eyes, work obligations pulled me abroad again for research. In Palestine as a Fulbright scholar, I was still haunted by the loss and yearning for some new beginning to come from the tragic end.
Volunteering in a Jerusalem animal shelter, I met a small Pekingese dog that needed a caretaker as much as I needed a dependent. His original owners left him starving and infested with maggots in an Israeli militarized zone, a sort of no-man’s land arguably inhospitable to any life at all.
I took the Pekingese home and gave him the name Zeitoon, Arabic for Olive, because of his big, round black eyes. Just as the olive tree represents the Palestinians’ struggle to stay rooted in their land, my Zeitoon held fast onto life in the face of death.
Over the coming months, I carted Zeitoon back and forth across checkpoints to get him the necessary medical care. In the process, I became a sort of Coyote, transporting Palestinians’ animals into Israel for medical treatment they could not receive in Palestine and for which their owners were not allowed entry.
Children in my apartment building fell in love with him, often passing by to ask if he could come out and play. Zeitoon allowed a young girl, Muna, to materialize her ambition to break new ground and start a dog-walking business in Palestine.
On many occasions, I hugged Zeitoon tight and thanked him for abounding with life. Similarly to March, he responded by empathetically pushing his head into my neck. Also similarly to March, he took his compassion too far. A few months after making a full recovery, Zeitoon suddenly lost the ability to walk. He became so weak that I had to hand feed him with a little spoon, dress him in diapers and use a syringe as a bottle for hydration. He literally became my baby. I even had to push him around in my rolling grocery basket.
Despite consultations with canine neurologists, twice-weekly physical therapy on a water treadmill, and multiple medications, Zeitoon remained completely dependent upon me for mobility. I soon learned the meaning of his different cries.
It was not until almost one year after the start of Zeitoon’s paralysis, when I finally gave birth to a human baby, that Zeitoon – for no apparent medical reason – suddenly began to use his legs again. Although wobbly and without much stamina, Zeitoon is on the path to regaining some of his independence.
With a baby of my own now, I wonder if Zeitoon understands that I no longer need him to assume that role. I also wonder if he, like March, used his own painful life experience as reason to help me.
Finding meaning in tragedy and disappointment is itself a revolution.
Heidi Morrison lives in Topanga, Calif.