CAIRO, EGYPT | It's usually a solitary affair, walking Sandy in Zamalek, but this morning we encountered four other dogs with their owners along the way

Each time, one of us, upon spotting a dog on a lease, would stop behind a parked car so our dogs would not see each other.

Zamalek has a very territorial canine population and Sandy, as a newcomer to the neighborhood, is better off not meeting another dog nose to nose. It's apparently the way things are done in the Zamalek doggy walking culture.

Since moving to Zamalek last April, Sandy, my small white Griffon, has loved walking the streets on her twice-a-day outings. She sniffs out everything along the winding streets and has lots of favorite spots.

Sharia Baget Aly runs alongside a mosque and I always wonder if we are defiling the place by walking by it. Lots of Muslims consider dogs dirty and lots of Egyptians are scared of dogs.

Is a dog in search of a pee spot defiling sacred space by walking on the sidewalks surrounding a mosque?

Maybe I should e-mail the Islamic Hotline, also known as El Hatef at Al Azhar, the oldest Islamic university in the world which is located in the downtown. Perhaps the Islamic Hotline can answer my honest query.

It was on the mosque street that I saw our first dog of the walk. Sandy never had a clue but the owner and I locked eyes in understanding and I stopped and waited until he had passed us on the other side of a line of parked carts. The owner was holding on to his yellow Labrador's chain with two hands while they slipped by, both dogs unaware of each other's presence.

We turned left on Sharia Mansour Mohamed, towards the Serbian Embassy, whose sideways are nice and wide though with few patches of dirt. I've found those little patches of dirt around the trees, framed by the sidewalk bricks, the best places for Sandy to investigate.

The Serbian Embassy must know that Zamalek dog walkers instinctively gravitate towards such sidewalks as theirs are bereft of trees. Sandy is only warming up on the Serbian sidewalks though, sniffing her way pass the guardhouses.

Across the street we go to the sidewalks surrounding the grounds of a lovely pre-revolution villa with wrought iron gates and an impressive coat of arms on each. A couple of security guards dressed in galabeyahs sit inside the locked gates. I suspect the villa may be an apartment building these days because there is a carport that holds several cars.

The grounds are well maintained with palm trees while around the back is a small brick guesthouse built in the same fashion as the main house: carved white porticos framed with Doric columns. Today I notice the guesthouse has a sign for a real estate agency on its front door. I wonder if the Nasser government seized the villa and its grounds during the nationalization campaign of the 1960s when many of Zamalek's old villas were simply confiscated -- some say stolen -- by the government for its own nebulous purposes.

In the downtown Cairo, there are old villas once owned by Cairo's wealthy upper class that are now used as public schools. Unfortunately, the government has done a poor job over the years of maintaining the once-beautiful architecture of those French colonial era buildings.

Ahead of us are two other dogs, their owners being pulled along in the street. This time, they stop behind a car and Sandy and I slip by. It appears they have just crossed over from the Chinese Embassy, its sidewalks a favorite of the dog walkers. Though they're dotted every 100 feet with a guard post, no one seems to care what dogs do on them. The Chinese Embassy takes up an entire block and its sidewalks are wide, with lots of trees.

The few times I've taken Sandy over there, I've always been conscious of all the security cameras perched high on the walls. It seems a little too obvious to be walking a dog on those sidewalks though everyone in the neighborhood knows they're one big doggie toilet. Most people know to avoid the Chinese sidewalks in the evening when the shadows from the embassy walls and trees cover the sins of the day's canine visits.

We round the corner to Sharia Abu Feda and stroll along the street as it goes the length of the west side of the island. To our left are villas and apartment buildings and to our right, across Abu Feda, is the Nile River. It's my favorite part of the walk because I can peek in the yards of the boathouses that line the riverbank.

I look past spiky metal fences and onto the docks of the boathouses and watch the rowing shells and rowers getting ready to go out. From my old apartment in the southern part of the city, high up on the seventh floor, I used to see those rowing shells of eight and four rowers, working hard in the light of the early dawn, their coach following close by in his launch. Several times a week they would row down from Zamalek, a distance of eight miles or so round trip.

Our walk down Abu Feda also takes us past the Zamalek Cosmetic Surgery Center that's located in another elegant old villa. The grounds are lush with tropical flowering foliage and a few tall palms. Beautiful sprawling magenta bougainvillea covers the brick walls that separate the sidewalk from the Center's grounds.

Sometimes I fantasize about checking in for some sort of procedure (haven't decided what yet) and then spending my recovery resting, in one of those white wicker lounge chairs I've seen set out on the lawn. I'd be tucked in a fluffy white Egyptian pima cotton blanket, a glass of red wine and a small tray of mezzas nearby, and the lovely scent of Egyptian jasmine in the air around me. I'd look across the river, towards Midan Kit Kat and imagine what went on in those nearby houseboats of Naguib Mahfous fame. I've never seen anyone sitting out on the Center's lawn during our walks, but I like my fantasy image.

The last turn down a small alleyway takes us to the front of the Flamenco Hotel. Before we reach the hotel however, there is another encounter with the same dogs we saw before. Apparently we have all gone around the same block but in different directions. This time one of the dogs, an intense looking Corgi, spots Sandy and gives a menacing deep growl. Its owner tightens his grip on the chain and Sandy and I quickly cross to the other side.

Yet, again, before the Flamenco Hotel, we have to stop and peek into the stinky cat yard filled with young and old felines eating from plastic dishes left out by a cat-loving woman. All of the cats look related and not one of them shows the least bit of interest in Sandy. Once we saw the cat lady standing at her window with several big cats eating on the ledge beside her. She smiled at us while the cats stared blankly as we walked by.

Back at our building on Ibn el Nabih, two feral skinny mother cats and their six kittens occupy the front of our building though I have noticed the kitten numbers dwindling over the past week. The mothers have been aggressive toward Sandy who always tries to sniff out the kittens. Today, the skinny black mother actually leaps from somewhere behind us to land right in front of Sandy as she trots up the building stairs. They engage in a minor dog-cat fight and I kick my left foot out towards the wild cat to keep her from scratching the dog's eyes. In the end, I just pick up Sandy and beat a retreat to the elevator -- another day's walk in Zamalek finished.

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Copyright © 2009 Kathleen Saville/Log Cabin Chronicles/10.09