Only the Animals: Psittacophile: Soul of Parrot Summary & Analysis

The parrot says that 30 years ago, his owner asked her future ex-husband how he felt about their upcoming wedding. She pressed him, and he finally said that before they decided to get married, he used to feel a bit happy passing a beautiful woman on the street. Now, he feels a bit sad. The parrot’s owner then asked her husband to ask her the same question—and her ex-husband seemed surprised that she expected him to reciprocate. The owner said that she believes one commits to a marriage with both eyes open, and then shut an eye forever. Her ex-husband then disappeared behind the newspaper.

The owner continued and suggested that marriage will be like being whipped and pickled, like they used to do to mutinying soldiers: they’d whip them, and then pickle them with salt to prevent infection. It’s “Wonderfully cruel, terribly kind.” When she saw her ex-husband wasn’t listening, she said she thinks marriage will feel like being a platypus. When George Shaw first brought back a platypus, he thought it was a hoax and was half a duck sewn to half an otter. Surprisingly, her husband was still listening and asked which half of the animal the owner was.

The parrot explains that his owner’s ex-husband missed the point: she wasn’t just either half. Marriage would force her to change and become a stranger to herself. Because she was pregnant then, she could get away with strange behavior. She told him she was the bottom half that got the “shit end of the deal.”

A year after 9/11, the parrot’s owner delivers the divorce papers and heads for Damascus. She wants her New York friends to think her courageous and her ex-husband to be impressed. The owner’s daughter insists that Goa, India, would be a better spot for a midlife crisis. The owner ends up in Beirut, teaching English at the American School. She’s disappointed at first, since Lebanon doesn’t seem to actually be part of the Middle East. But four years later, when the Israelis start bombing parts of Lebanon, she feels vindicated—until the parrot starts pulling out his feathers and drawing blood.

The owner’s job at the American School provides her with a furnished apartment and a community of friendly expats. Soon, she develops a routine, and unlike in New York, this one isn’t depressing. Everything is interesting and exhilarating—she drinks Lebanese beer, eats pickles out of the fridge, and buys a hookah. She marvels at the locals’ willingness to ignore the city’s violent past. They all ignore the shrapnel in palm trees or the chunk missing out of the local hotel. She thinks denial is underrated.

The owner decides to get a pet, something exotic enough to match her transformation. The local pet shop stocks everything from crocodiles and monkeys to puppies, but she wants the parrot the instant she walks in. He’s sitting on the storeowner’s shoulder, and for the first time in her life, the owner believes in love at first sight. The parrot can’t talk, the storeowner explains, but he can squawk. When the parrot performs somersaults along the counter, the owner offers to buy him.

The storeowner doesn’t want to sell the parrot, since he’s had him since his birth years before. He was born the same year that the Syrians re-invaded Lebanon and the civil war ended. Finally, after the owner offers more, the storeowner agrees to sell. He explains the parrot could live for another 50 years. When the owner emails her daughter, the owner’s daughter warns that the parrot can’t live longer than the owner does. The owner names the parrot Barnes, after the author of the book Flaubert’s Parrot. She doesn’t know the classic joke about parrots: people don’t own their parrots; parrots own their people.

After a frantic internet search, the owner learns she basically adopted a toddler. She’s delighted that Barnes needs her so much—her ex-husband only tolerated her neediness, and the owner’s daughter has been independent from the moment she learned to walk. But Barnes, if she cares for him right, will learn to love the owner and depend on her as a parent, a partner, and a mate. The owner gazes at Barnes’ green and black feathers happily.

Soon, the owner’s routine revolves around Barnes. She carefully curates a play area with appropriate toys and feeds him a varied diet. She scrubs his perch and bowls, and changes his bathwater daily. She even starts refusing visitors because they stress Barnes out, and she stops going on weekend trips with the other expats. Barnes gets to perch on her arm, even when he bites her. He shreds all her books and flings food onto the walls—and she forgives him. In the mornings, she leaves him squawking. But gradually, he learns to let her go without crying. As the months pass, they become inseparable and do everything together, including eating and showering. Barnes learns to open her beer bottles and stops biting.

At about 7:00 p.m. every night, Barnes gets sleepy and grumpy. He whines and snuggles against his owner until she puts him to bed in his cage, where he sleeps for 12 hours straight. His owner loves that Barnes takes such joy in simple things. He loves baths, sunshine, and he sings with happiness when he’s close to his owner. He grooms her ears and her thin ponytail, hoping she’ll ruffle his feathers or rub his tummy in return. Then, she meets Marty.

The owner attends a rooftop barbecue one Friday with Barnes on her shoulder. Marty has just arrived to teach at the American School. He’s about the same age and came to Beirut for the same reasons. They joke about avoiding the Midwesterners and laugh loudly. They share meaningful looks when a young teacher arrives with an even younger Lebanese girlfriend. She has a plastic nose guard taped to her face and explains flatly that she got a nose job. Her boyfriend says that here, it’s a badge of honor. Barnes’s owner asks the girl if she’s been watching the Olympics. The girl says she watches the only Lebanese team that gets gold: the shooting team.

The owner takes Barnes along when she and Marty go on a date to the National Museum of Beirut. They watch a video of huge concrete blocks exploding. Inside each one is an ancient Roman statue, which was hidden there during the civil war to protect them. Barnes’s owner and Marty find this moving. After this, months pass. Barnes’s owner spends more time with Marty and less with Barnes.

One evening, the owner and Marty take Barnes with them to a cafe. They watch a Saudi woman eat a hamburger through her niqab, her husband and son with her in normal clothes. Beirut, Barnes shares, gives Marty and his owner lots of opportunities to get on their high horse. They share a hookah and ask about their respective divorces. The owner lets Marty spend the night for the first time after this. But later, she watches Marty sleep beside her. Barnes knows his owner wishes she could sleep so easily—her brain usually thinks of all sorts of things when she tries to sleep. She feels abandoned and so takes Barnes with her to the balcony. Barnes crawls up his owner’s arm and tucks hair behind her ear. The next morning, she cuts things off with Marty.

A year passes—and Barnes warns that people should never take life lightly in the Middle East. One afternoon, Barnes and his owner hear a distant boom that shakes the apartment floor. His owner can’t see anything from the balcony, so she turns on the TV and learns that Israel launched its first airstrike. She’s concerned only for Barnes and runs out to buy him a humidifier to protect his lungs from smoke. She puts him in his cage, covers it, and is distraught when she can’t use the humidifier. There’s no power. Four days later, the other Americans in the building leave Beirut. Barnes and his owner sleep by day and then sit up in candlelight at night. He digs his claws into her arm until she bleeds.

Barnes starts screeching and continues for hours without stopping. He stops eating and starts biting his owner. His owner watches as he rips out his feathers. One afternoon, when Barnes is sleeping, she sneaks away to an internet cafe with power. Her inbox is filled with messages from the owner’s daughter, her friends, and her ex-husband, begging her to come home. But she just basks in their anxiety.

Barnes says his owner couldn’t have known that the ceasefire would come within a month when she got one of the last boat jets to Cyprus. She carries Barnes in his cage to the balcony and goes back inside. She tries to pretend she’s not packing up food for Barnes. When she returns to the balcony, she finds Barnes looking at the sky with drooping eyes. She throws a towel over the cage and then carries it down the street, dragging her suitcase. She walks to the pet shop where she bought Barnes, but it’s boarded up and empty. Barnes asks what choice she had but to hang his cage from the awning and leave before he realized he was on his own.