Rosie customarily barked at strangers, but perhaps she did not yet consider the hotel room entirely her own. And this child had, after all, uttered a magical word. She looked at him and then up at me, trembling with anticipation. He said ‘walk,’ Agnes.

“How much?” I asked.

We quickly brokered a price and I attached his leash to her collar. Before I even learned the boy’s name, he and Rosie raced down the corridor toward the stairs.

I don’t know what I was thinking. I suppose I simply presumed that the concierge had sent the boy. When he and Rosie failed to reappear by the time I’d washed up and gotten dressed, dreadful possibilities began to occur to me. Was this how poor Egyptians obtained meat— by walking foreigners’ dogs? What if the boy held her hostage and demanded a ransom? What if the doorman of the Semiramis had sent the boy here to execute the offensive animal? That was absurd, but still …

Idiot! I thought. Why didn’t you call the desk clerk before sending her off with some little stranger?

Five more sickening minutes, and I left the room, hoping at every step to hear a child’s pounding footfalls and Rosie’s scrambling scamper up the staircase. With no sign of them three flights down, I was close to frantic as I approached the concierge. “Sir, I’m afraid I’ve made a terrible mistake,” I began, embarrassed at the quaver in my voice.

Just then I heard a deep male voice cry, “Ein Wursthund!” right outside the hotel door. There was a stream of delighted German followed by a question in Arabic that was answered by the boy, who entered the lobby and lifted his chin toward me.

The German gentleman appeared with Rosie draped happily over one strong forearm. He was a rather handsome person, quite tall, and broad in the chest. My age. Perhaps a bit younger. When he saw me, his smile widened beneath a luxuriant mustache, and he leaned over to place Rosie on the floor.