“So the dogs roam the streets. They can sometimes be dangerous, so people kill them. That’s what we’re trying to change. We want to look after the strays, but we also want to show people that they don’t need to be scared of dogs and they should look after them too.”
I was sure that Nurali was a Uighur, and I didn’t quite know how to take Lu Xin’s news.
“Do you think Nurali would have looked after Gobi well?”
Lu Xin looked awkward.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We’ve been talking to people, and we think Gobi might have gone missing before Nurali thinks she did. We think Gobi may have escaped earlier.”
“How much earlier?”
She shrugged. “Maybe one week. Maybe ten days.”
I’d suspected as much all along, but it was still painful to hear. If Gobi really had been missing for so long, the distance she could have covered was vast. She could be far, far away from the city by now. And if she was, I’d never find her.
All throughout the afternoon we saw strays, but they were always alone. They avoided the main roads and trotted down the side of the quieter ones. It was like they were trying to keep themselves out of sight.
It was only after a few hours that we saw our first pack of strays. They were sniffing around a patch of bare earth a few hundred feet away, and because I was tired of walking and wanted to cut loose and run for a while, I told my fellow searchers that I was going to head off and quickly check them out.
It felt good to run.
When I reached the place where the pack of dogs had been, they’d already scattered. The patch of land wasn’t totally empty, and in one corner there was a half-finished cinder-block structure. Instead of turning around and going back to rejoin the others, I decided to poke around.
The weather was so much hotter in August than it had been at the end of June, and the sun was fierce that afternoon. I guess that was why there weren’t any other people around and the noise of the traffic had subsided. I stood in the shade of the half-built building, enjoying the stillness.
Something caught my attention. It was a familiar sound, one that took me back to the day when Lucja and I went to retrieve Curtly, our Saint Bernard.
I went around the back of the building in search of the source.
I found it soon enough.
Puppies. A litter of two, maybe four or five weeks old. I watched for a while. There was no sign of their mum, but they looked well enough. Even though Urumqi was clearly not a haven for pets, the dense housing meant that there must have been plenty of opportunities for a dog to scavenge food.
With their big eyes and clumsy paws, the puppies weren’t just cute; they were adorable. But as with all mammals, that helpless, cuddly phase would pass. I wondered how long they’d have before they would be forced to fend for themselves. I wondered whether they’d both make it.
I heard the others calling my name as I approached them. They were clearly agitated, and the doctor ran out to grab my hand and hurry me back to Lil.
“Someone has seen a dog they think is Gobi. We need to go.”
I didn’t know what to think, but there was a buzz in the air. Even Lu Xin was looking hopeful, and as we drove the half mile to the location, the chatter in the car became increasingly animated.
By the time we got there, I was starting to believe it too. Then again, I probably would have believed anything; I hadn’t slept properly in thirty-six hours, and I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten.
An old man holding one of our posters introduced himself to Lil as we parked. The two talked for a while, the old guy pointing to the picture of Gobi on the poster and indicating that he’d seen her some way down a track that ran around the back of a block of flats.
We went where he suggested. I tried to tell people that their habit of calling out “Gobi! Gobi!” as we walked was pointless, given that Gobi had been known by that name for only a few days. She was smart but not that smart.
Nobody took my advice, and the cries of “Go-bi! Gooooo-bi!” continued. After thirty minutes of wandering, I was beginning to tire. The surge of adrenaline I’d experienced when the news of the sighting first came in had long gone, and I was ready to call it a day and get to the hotel.
The flash of brown fur a few hundred feet ahead stopped us all in our tracks. There was a moment of collective silence. Then chaos erupted.
I ran hard towards the dog, leaving the sound of the others calling out far behind me. Could it really be Gobi? The colour was right, and it looked like the same size as well. But it couldn’t be her, could it? Surely it couldn’t be this easy?
The dog was nowhere to be seen when I got there. I carried on searching, running down the network of alleys and dirt paths that connected the blocks of flats.
“Gobi? Gobi! Dion! Dion!”
The shouting came from behind me, somewhere back near the main path.
I raced back.
The searchers were gathered in a knot, crowding around. They parted as I approached, revealing a tan-coloured terrier. Black eyes. Bushy tail. Everything was a match. But it wasn’t Gobi. I knew it from ten feet away. The legs were too long and the tail too short, and I knew from looking at the dog that it had none of Gobi’s spirit. It was sniffing around people’s feet as if their legs were tree trunks. Gobi would have been looking up, her eyes digging deep into whatever human happened to be close at hand.
The others took some convincing, but eventually they accepted it.
The search would have to continue.
Back in the hotel, in the minutes before my body gave in to the deep tiredness that had been growing all day, I thought back on the afternoon.
The members of the search team were wonderful people—dedicated and enthusiastic and giving up their time for no financial reward whatsoever—but they didn’t have a clue about Gobi. They were searching a whole city that was full of strays for a single dog, and all they had to go on was a home-printed poster with a couple of low-quality images.
They’d never seen her in person, never even heard her bark or watched the way her tail bobbed about when she ran. What chance did they have of recognizing her in a city like this?
Finding Gobi was going to be like finding a needle in a haystack—maybe an even greater challenge than that. I was an idiot for ever thinking that I’d be able to do it.
15
You could say I’m an addict. the feeling I get when I’m in a race, when I’m right at the very front, is a powerful drug. At some races, like the Marathon des Sables, if you’re the guy at the head of the pack, you’ll have a car ahead of you, helicopters tracking you from the air, and a whole load of drones and film crews capturing your moment in full high-definition glory. It’s fun, but the real buzz doesn’t come from all that horsepower and technology. What gets me fired up is the knowledge that behind me is a herd of one thousand runners—all running a little bit slower than me.