can knock heavy iron window shutters from their hinges. When the rolling thunder stops echoing through the valleys and the skies clear, you can turn east to see the shimmering waters of the Dead Sea and the dull glow of Ammanâs city lights 50 miles away in Jordanâs rolling desert hills.
* * *
It was easy to settle into the cityâs rhythms. I moved into my new home in 2006 and sat for hours drinking coffee on the rooftop, soaking in the sounds and scents of Jerusalem. There was a small dog yapping in the garden right below my living room window, but what neighborhood doesnât have barking dogs? I didnât think too much of it at first. But because I often worked from home, the yappy Chihuahua soon became the bane of my existence. The dog barked day and night. There never seemed to be an hour when he wasnât yapping at something.
I didnât want to be the new foreigner who started complaining about things the minute I arrived. But as the days of relentless barking dragged into weeks, I walked down the concrete stairs next to my building and knocked on a rusting metal gate leading to the garden home right below mine. A small, elderly woman with tangles of dark hair and a thin, flowered dress came out and stood on the porch, giving me the eye. She spoke in a loud, gravelly voice, as if she could hardly hear herself. She didnât know much English. I didnât understand much Hebrew. Her suspicious daughter-in-law finally came out to translate. I had a feeling it wasnât going to end well.
âCan you please keep your dog inside when youâre gone?â I asked the two women in my best friendly-new-neighbor voice. âHe barks all the time.â
âYes, yes,â the daughter-in-law said in a way that made it clear they werenât going to think much about it after they closed the door.
The yappy dog, Timmy the Sixth, became my Telltale Heart, the incessant soundtrack to my life, driving me a little battier every day. I left my neighbors printouts of brochures for gizmos they could buy to train Timmy the Sixth not to bark. One afternoon, when the yapping seemed unbearable, I stormed back down to the house and asked the old woman to do something about her dogâthis time with a bit more Jerusalem anger in my voice.
âItâs the Arabs,â her irritated Filipina daughter-in-law told me as she translated for a mother-in-law she seemed to dislike. âShe says itâs the Arab kids that make her dog bark. She says the Arab kids run up and down the street all day and bang on our fence to make the dog bark and upset her.â
It felt like an argument I wasnât going to win, so I turned to the long arm of the law. The long, legal process of having the woman fined for violating city noise ordinances became a torturous, time-consuming affair that led nowhere. When all hope appeared lost, one longtime Abu Tor resident offered a grim solution: She offered to kill Timmy the Sixth for me.
âIâll just put poison in some meat and throw it over the fence,â she told me matter-of-factly one night after listening, again, to my complaints about the barking. âItâs no problem. Weâve had problems with them for years. â
I didnât think she was serious until she mentioned it again. Like it was a done deal.
âItâs OK,â I told her. âItâs not so bad that you have to do that.â
âOh, donât worry,â she said. âIâll take care of it.â
I wasnât giving her a wink-and-a-nod to go ahead with it. I really didnât want her to poison the dog. But she seemed to think I was giving her an implicit green light.
âReally though,â I said before we hung up. âPlease donât poison the dog.â
âDonât worry about it,â she reassured me in a way that wasnât reassuring at all. âI understand.â
Sure enough, she tried to kill Timmy the Sixth by