At first Sankar and I thought the dog was walking with someone. The narrow sidewalk in Bebek had many people on it, walking to and from restaurants, chatting with friends, licking ice cream cones — and quite a number were walking dogs. But then we saw that it had no collar, no leash. It did have a tag through its ear, however. This seems to be Istanbul’s method of keeping track of strays.It was a mongrel, probably part white Labrador, but its fur was longer. Heavy through the shoulders and jowly, it was obviously old, but like other strays here, it appeared healthy. “Of course we feed stray animals,” a taxi driver told me last January. “We all have to share the same earth.”

The dog walked alongside us for a minute and then stopped and turned, facing the busy road. It obviously wanted to cross. Sankar and I kept walking but then looked back, wondering what would happen. How was the dog going to get across the street? There was just one lane in each direction and breaks in traffic were unpredictable. Surely drivers would put on their brakes if they saw a canine in the middle of the road, but would they see it in time?

A uniformed doorman from the Bebek Hotel appeared. A man of perhaps forty, he bent down to pat the dog and then kept his hand on the dogs head and stood beside it, waiting. “C’mon,” he said in Turkish when the cars cleared. But the dog stood, unmoving. “C’mon” again with the same result. It was clear that the dog didn’t see or hear well.

For a few moments the doorman stood patiently with the dog. Finally, the dog put its nose against the stripe on the man’s pant leg and allowed itself to be walked across the street. The doorman held up his arm to warn oncoming cars. Dog and man reached the opposite sidewalk. Gesturing goodbye to the dog’s back, the man re-crossed the road and resumed his position at the door of the hotel.