I was four years old when I met Sultan, the first friend I ever had.
He had eyes as dark as the dead of the night. If you looked into his eyes for a while you could get lost in their darkness.
Standing a little over three-foot tall, Sultan was the friend I needed, a dog with lemon yellow fur and black chops that brought some excitement into my life as an only child.
He was slow because he was very old; he no longer had to hurry up for anything.
Every day after lunch I performed this ritual. I came out of my house on Absalon Rojas St, a pot containing leftovers in my hand, and clanked it off the curb. It was the signal that woke Sultan up from his nap and made him walk out of his owners' house, the Gonzalez family, cross the street and stroll up to me, tail wagging, head up, tongue out. I could swear he smiled at me both before and after eating his food, although my mother, the devoted elementary school teacher, had taught me that only human beings can smile. My father, the devoted government employee, thought otherwise. "Dogs are human beings, too," he once said to me. "They are trapped in a different body, though."
I chose to believe my father's theory every time I fed Sultan, a habit that made the bond between us grow stronger.
My parents and I went to the movies usually once a week, on Fridays or Saturdays. My parents couldn't afford a television. The only TV station was in the capital city of my province, some 40 miles southeast of my town, Las Termas de Rio Hondo, but you couldn't receive the broadcast unless you had an expensive fifteen-story antenna.
The single movie theater in my town had evening double-feature shows, WWII movies made in the USA being quite common. I was so impressed by the action scenes that all I asked of my parents were war toys, helmets and machine guns made entirely of plastic, and a cheap pair of boots. When Sultan and I got together I took my helmet off and strapped it around his head. So he became my war buddy helping me defend our position from enemy assault. Sultan looked so serious with the helmet on, the visor over his worn out dark eyes. I also strapped my machine gun around his neck, and I pictured him as the last standing soldier willing to give up his life for the sake of our squad. He looked quite upset yet he didn't refuse to play my games, like an old man putting up with a whimsical grandkid, although not for long.



My mother told me recently that one day I was playing with toy cars at home under her perfunctory supervision. She was either cooking or preparing her teaching lessons. I snuck out of her sight, opened the front door of the house that my parents rented, came out on to the porch and climbed up the four-foot brick and wooden fence. One or two minutes later I screamed. My mother dashed out and saw me sitting on my butt, in tears. It took her little to figure out I had fallen from the top of the fence in my attempt to climb down it. When she wanted to know why I'd do such thing my babbled answer was that I just wanted to come out to play with Sultan because I was getting bored of playing by myself.
Mrs. Gonzalez, who had been watching the entire scene all along, scolded my mother. "You should watch over your kid," the lady said as she hissed at Sultan to stay inside. My good old friend had intended to come in my help as he heard me cry.


It was 1968, the year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I remember my parents talking about it over dinner, the news so shocking even for a modest, middle-class family living in a small town in Northern Argentina. I remember my father speaking the name, spanishizing it 'Martín Lúter King.

In 1968 I turned five, the age I became familiar with loss.


For my 40th birthday my mother came to visit me. She stayed for two weeks. On one warm night she confessed that she worried about me when I used to hang out with Sultan, and was afraid of my catching a disease from him. "Not only was the dog very old," she said, "he also was pretty much neglected."

It was an unwritten law in my culture, you get yourself a mutt dog because it's cheap. You just want him to somehow watch the house, to bark loudly in case a stranger breaks in. You feed him enough with the leftovers, sometimes a bone will do it. You have him sleep outside, an old blanket as his bed.
"On my way to school in the mornings," my mother told me, "I'd see Sultan next to the Gonzalez' front door, curling up on his tattered blanket'¦ Who knows how many bugs he must have taken in back then, especially during the winter. What if the dog licked off your mouth or eyes? Who knows what he could have given you'¦"


Back then you were not expected to take much care of your mutt dog. If he got sick to the point of being unable to stand on his feet, you waited a while before concluding that the animal was hopeless. Then you just sacrificed him, a neighbor will volunteer to loan you his gun if you didn't have one.
No, there were no pet hospitals back then. It was not until the late 1970s when Jorge Aravena opened up the first veterinarian's office in Las Termas.


I didn't know what to make of it one afternoon I clanked the pot and Sultan didn't show up. I did it many times. He never came out. I stood holding the pot for who knows how long, my little world shaken.
My mother looked away when I asked, why doesn't Sultan come out when I call him? "Maybe he's out of town," she said as she pretended to be busy with her teaching plans.
Sultan didn't show up the next day either. I was disappointed. I was also afraid. What was going on with my old friend?
The morning after my father broke the news as gently as he could. "They are taking Sultan away. He is not coming back."
After hearing this, I ran out of the house, my father doing little to stop me.
From the porch I saw it. The oldest of the Gonzalez children, Rodolfo, popped out from the door walking backwards as he pulled a rope. Three or four seconds later I saw Sultan on his side, the end of the rope around his chest, being dragged down to a blue Chevrolet pick up truck. The man that was sitting at the steering wheel stepped out to help Rodolfo hoist Sultan, as if he was a heavy sack of potatoes, and dropped him on the bed of the vehicle. The driver and Rodolfo hopped in and the pick up went rattling up Absalon Rojas St, made a right turn on Mar Del Plata Ave and drove out of sight.
And I was only five years old, a kid facing the death of his friend.

I remember 'I ran back into my house seeking my mother's arms. She hugged me as I cried my heart out because my friend Sultan had left me.

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...