Our local guide said, ‘That’s why we don’t like pigeons.’ Simon tried to comfort me, saying, ‘It’s probably mostly mackerel, anyway.’ I still couldn’t finish my fishy snack.
The slick new city tram – notoriously crowded throughout the day – was not jammed after rush hour. So we hopped on and filmed it as we returned to our hotel. We met a beautiful woman in a striking black scarf covered with bangles. I asked her husband where they were from, thinking Oman or Sudan or Timbuktu or someplace really exotic. He said, ‘Istanbul.’ I said, ‘Çok güzel’ (very beautiful) while thinking, ‘Fundamentalism is a growing presence even in modern Istanbul.’
Inspired to learn more about Muslim headwear, we dropped into a nearby scarf shop. All over Istanbul, I spied Muslim Britney Spears wannabes, covered up under scarves. There’s some hypocrisy going on here: you know, they wear high heels and thongs … but their heads are covered. In the fine silk shop, a young woman demonstrated scarf-wrapping techniques. One way looks flirtatious; another is simply demure and conservative. I pressed the saleswoman to show me the fundamentalist Muslim style. She tied it under her chin and around her face with an extra fold across the forehead, and suddenly she became orthodox. It was chilling to watch. I got goose bumps, and she shook it off as if she had ventured into frightening fashion territory.
I have friends in Turkey almost distraught at this country’s movement to the right. Imagine not being fundamentalist and watching your country gradually become so – one universal interpretation of scripture, religious clothing and prayer in schools, women covering up and accepting a scripturally ordained subservient role to men, laws being rewritten. Imagine a ruling class that believes God is on its side – and others are wrong.
That night I went out without our crew for dinner. I felt a need to be alone in Istanbul. On the street level, the restaurant I had chosen was dead – but a TV monitor was showing the action up on the terrace, four flights up. I climbed the steps and sat down to dinner with the domes of the Blue Mosque on one side of me; on the other side, freighters were patiently waiting their turn to slip through the bottleneck of the Bosphorus. My dinner grace was forced on me as calls to prayer rang out from the minarets of neighborhood mosques all around. It was surround-sound: Allahu Akbar – ‘God is great.’
I was gazing at the Christmas-tree lights that draped the minarets spiking into the sky above my dinner table, when suddenly the waiter’s face filled my view, and he plopped down a hot, fresh-out-of-the-oven loaf, a pillow-shaped balloon of bread.
After dinner, I walked home the long way, savoring the Istanbul night. A local couple was sucking on a four-foot-tall hookah while cuddled up on one of the sofas that are so common these days in outdoor lounges. The pair seemed lost in each other’s gaga eyes.
I stepped into the Blue Mosque, as if to give it another chance. Earlier it had been flooded with cruise-ship visitors. Now it was just the neighborhood mosque in action – not a tourist in sight. A window was open for ventilation. I peeked through to find it was the prayer zone for women. I drew back, suddenly feeling a tinge of Peeping Tom guilt.
A family gathered around their little boy in his proud admiral’s outfit. It was his circumcision party – celebrated as Christians would celebrate a baptism, but even more joyously. (Turks call the circumcision party the greatest celebration – like ‘a wedding without the in-laws.’) The boy was all smiles … for now.
Looking up, I enjoyed a treat that sneaks up on me whenever I find myself at mosques after dark: the sight of soaring birds with floodlit undersides, pumping hard in the humid Mediterranean air, swooping past silhouetted minarets.
Leaving the mosque, I came upon a big electronic readerboard. It was evangelizing, constantly spooling out delightful, Mohammad-praising, ‘love-thy-neighbor’ aphorisms in crawling red letters. After a few minutes pondering the verses, I thought, ‘Good religious marketing.’
Just outside the gate, a man was drawing tourists’ names on plates, mesmerizing a small crowd with his gorgeous calligraphy. While Western tourists in Turkey tend to assume that anyone ‘foreign-looking’ is a local, I’ve realized that in Istanbul’s tourist zones, many of the ‘exotic locals’ are actually visitors from other parts of the Islamic world.
My day’s little victory lap was just about done. Tourists filled a big patio, enjoying a single dervish whirling on an elevated platform. I have a bad attitude towards dervishes whirling for Westerners who have no idea what’s going on, because I’ve enjoyed the good fortune of having a dervish actually explain the meaning of this meditational prayer ritual. But I buried my negativity and simply enjoyed the beauty of his performance, there in the Istanbul night.
I headed back to my hotel, climbed into bed, and started reviewing the memories generated by simply spending a few minutes walking around the block after dinner in Istanbul. It affirmed my love of this city, which I rank (along with Paris, Rome, and London) as one of Europe’s greatest.
I thought back to one of my favorite shots from our day of filming. When the sun was low and the chop of the Bosphorus carbonated the scene, I stepped onto a dock. Behind me, a frilly mosque softened the harsh lines created by the mighty Bosphorus Bridge as it connected Asia and Europe. Just as a ship entered the frame, I looked into the lens and said, ‘Like its mighty intercontinental bridge, Istanbul brings East and West together. With a complex weave of modern affluence, Western secularism, and traditional Muslim faith, it’s a dynamic and stimulating city, well worth a visit.’
A Shaggy Dog Tale
EILIS KIRWAN
Eilis Kirwan is an Irish screenwriter and filmmaker. Her first produced screenplay, shot in Romania, is The Whistleblower, starring Rachel Weisz, Vanessa Redgrave, Monica Bellucci, and David Strathairn. She lives in Los Angeles, where she was recently stopped by someone asking if her dog has representation. They are considering their options.
This journey starts and ends in Los Angeles, stopping off in New York, Frankfurt, Bucharest, Geneva, Munich and Paris. It demands intricate strategizing, the implantation of digital microchips, special immunizations, and the procurement of papers for crossing numerous international borders. From a dawn passage through Romanian airport customs to a late-night drive across the French–Swiss border, no effort is spared to overcome the obstacles. Is this the plot of the international political thriller I have written, inspired by true events, which is about to be filmed, after seven years of rewrites and hustle? No. It’s the story of what it took to get myself and my dog to Romania for the duration of the shoot.
Perhaps I should double-back for some context. This is a shaggy dog tale. Not only because the preparations and the journey are more absurd and diverting, like most things in life, than the arrival. But also because it is the tale of a shaggy mutt named Ellie. This is no teacup accessory dog in a Louis Vuitton bag, but a blonde, smiley, Muppet-faced terrier rescued from the mean streets of Los Angeles. She has been with us a year, was clearly abused in her previous life, and is still in the tentative process of trusting her new family. Now we’re off to Romania for two months. I don’t want to break that trust.
It’s worth noting that, up to this point in my life, while I have had the luck to travel widely, I have done so by the seat of my pants: booking at the last minute, packing at two in the morning, running for planes, sitting delirious in the cabin with no itinerary or accommodation arranged at the other end. I have not had to factor in anything beyond my own needs. I would arrive, bleary-eyed, in Sydney, Delhi or Bangkok, greeted by unfamiliar light and a host of unconsidered options. This resulted in a mix of great discoveries, close scrapes, and everything in between. It was part of the adventure. But that was then. Now I have a travel companion who needs special treatment and who can’t just buy a seat. It’s the beginning of a process that will change me from the slapdash flake of yore to an ultra-prepared traveling machine and something of a dog whisperer.
I am determined not to bring the dog if plane travel is going to be more stress than
she can handle. Because of the past abuse, Ellie is still a nervous dog, wary of the unknown. I elicit advice from anyone who’ll listen, waylaying dog owners on the street, in the dog park, the pet store. I trawl the internet for dog travel tales. In the end the vet assures me that the dog will be happier to be with me than to stay with friends who go out to work every day. She’s used to life with a stay-at-home screenwriter. But there’s one last check: is she small enough to be accepted for travel in the cabin? I measure and weigh her. She’s within the regulations of most airlines, but only just. She can’t afford to gain a pound. And she needs to be able to turn around in the carrier. I buy the standard-issue Sherpa dog carrier and take it home to test. I throw treats in. She gets in. She fits. I throw treats in the other end. She turns around. We’re in business. Then she swiftly jumps out. Okay, it’s going to take some practice. But the decision is made and there’s no turning back. I will be the crazy lady who takes her dog to the movie set.
Now to procure the equivalent of a dog passport. Every country has unique regulations involving the ‘importation of animals.’ Most require an implanted microchip, proof of vaccination, and a blood test certificate. The process of chipping Ellie (to make her identifiable by European digital scanners) and blood-testing her (to prove she is vaccinated against rabies) takes a month-and-a-half, including detours. When a microchip implant goes AWOL in her body, literally lost in her ass, we have to redo the whole process. I will need veterinary certificates in different languages. The lab report. Multiple copies of each.
I am suddenly a tenacious, nitpicky stickler for detail and paperwork. Ellie and I become well known to the terrific staff of the Glendale Small Animal Hospital, who, I fear, roll their eyes when I leave. I am on first-name terms with the staff of the Rabies Laboratory at Kansas State University and everyone at the USDA office for animal transport in Hawthorne. I am determined to get this right. The regulations on official websites read tough and uncompromising. I do not want the dog to be detained at customs or taken into quarantine because of any omission on my part. I do not want to make her feel as unsafe as she did in her earlier life. I also have to get to the movie set urgently. Throughout this whole process I am doing production rewrites, double-checking research on the true story our script is inspired by, and communicating with my cowriter, who is also the director. That is my full-time day job. But my personal project, my labor of love, is all dog.
We know she fits in the Sherpa bag. But will she stay in it? Will she bark and whine? Can she sit still for hours on end? The vet tells me that he can give me tranquilizers but doesn’t advise using them unless the dog has a total meltdown because they can result, at best, in the dog getting agitated or, at worst, in … respiratory failure and death. Needless to say, unless Ellie goes so postal that she leaps out of the Sherpa bag with a shoulder-mounted missile launcher aimed at myself and the other passengers, I won’t be using tranquilizers. So we’re going to have to plan.
That means training. Ellie knows how to sit on command. But I want her to learn to get ‘down’ in the carrier bag, and to stay even if it’s open. So we spend time every morning and evening practicing. I tempt her with treats, luring her to the ground, teaching the word ‘down.’ She starts getting it. We repeat it over and over. It’s the training montage from Rocky. I’m hearing those trumpets in my head. Imagining Ellie ascending the iconic steps in Philadelphia.
She’s a fast learner. Soon enough she’s up and down like a champion sheepdog, and it’s time for test runs. My strategy is to exhaust her with fun and frolics, then take her for acclimating trips. We take long hikes, then go on night drives all over Los Angeles. We coast down Sunset, me driving, her in the carrier on the passenger seat, gradually upping each journey’s duration. Ten minutes around the neighborhood and home. Then twenty, thirty, ever increasing … Finally we cruise all the way from Echo Park to Santa Monica, smooth music on the stereo. I chat away in a soothing voice. Yes, I am losing my mind, but we will be ready. And at this point, she’s chilling, lying back in the womb-like comfort of that carrier and settling in for the ride. I’m not sure anymore if these test runs are for her or for me. But it’s working.
The date of our departure arrives. We rise early and go for a long hike. I fine-tune our packing, which was done over a week ago, feed her no later than four hours before the flight, and we take another long walk. I make sure she relieves herself over and over. I have chosen Lufthansa for its generous regulations in terms of dog size and space under the seat for the carrier. Our first stop is New York, where we’ll overnight at a friend’s place. I’m breaking the journey into manageable parts and taking night flights to avoid the wafts of food that a dinner service would bring. The red-eye also mimics the sensation and duration of a night’s sleep. This will apply to the dog but not to me, who will remain wide awake the whole flight, checking on her every five minutes. We are not supposed to open the carrier, but I reach in to keep her calm during take-off and landing. Her brown eyes glint up at me in the darkness, and later when everyone is sleeping, I let her peek out, and stretch her legs. If the flight attendants notice, they pretend not to.
In New York we hang out with friends until our flight that night. Ellie eats early and we go for multiple walks. We play ball in a park by the Hudson as dusk falls and a sharp wind whips in off the river. We are faster pals now than we ever were before. All my neurosis about getting this right has been answered by her cooperation at every turn. She has gone from a scrawny, nervous street dog who would bark at any approaching stranger, to a loyal and sweet travel companion.
That night in security at JFK, Ellie in my arms as we go through the metal detector, we draw the attention of a stern-faced security guard. I’m scared he’s guessed she’s on the cusp of the weight barrier. Or he suspects I’m using her to smuggle some capsule of insidious material. He marches over, then, beaming, launches into questions about her breed, patting her, telling me about his dogs at home. She’s meant to stay in the carrier, but he encourages me to let her out of the bag until the flight and foists ‘supplies’ on me: rubber gloves I presume are meant for more sinister purposes, but in this case to clean up any potential ‘accidents.’ I am taken aback by his warmth. Amid so many rules and regulations, a sympathetic human face is a surprise. When so much of plane travel has become an irritation or worse, a paranoid nightmare, this is a revelation to me, and I have Ellie to thank. Still, I flash her paperwork at anyone who’ll look at it, but so far nobody’s interested. After everything I’ve been through to get this stuff, I feel like Victor Laszlo with the letters of transit, and I plan to use them.
The flight to Frankfurt goes without a hitch. Ellie is completely relaxed. I still watch her like a hawk for the seven-hour flight. We have a short wait in Frankfurt airport, made easier by the Germans’ dog friendliness. Unlike most airports, here dogs are allowed out of the carrier so long as they are on leash. I take the chance to let Ellie stretch her legs and we even manage to have a bite and play. Then it’s the final leg for Bucharest. As we fly the couple of hours left of our long journey, I wonder what will greet us when we get there. I have a lot of work ahead of me. But first, we have to get through customs.
Landing in Bucharest, Romania, I prep all the documentation, sure they’ll give us a run for our money at customs. I have encountered post-Soviet bureaucracy on a research trip for this movie and it ranged from awkward to totally obstructive. It’s early. A gray morning fills up with white light. When we disembark, the airport is empty and quiet. I collect my luggage, then peer into the customs area. I case the space, looking for European-issue animal scanners, hoping Ellie’s microchip has not gone AWOL in her body again. I search for weighing scales, for ex-KGB customs agents who will aggressively inspect our papers. We slowly approach the area, my heart beating, and … breeze through, Ellie’s head sticking up out of the bag. Out in the arrivals area I search for information desks, the ‘animal import’ department, the police … Don’t they need to stamp Ellie’s papers,
validate them … validate me? I don’t want trouble later. Women behind desks shrug as I flash Ellie’s letters of transit. Nobody cares.
A car takes us to the Hilton in the center of Bucharest, just around the corner from Revolution Square, where the 1989 revolution began. Faced with evidence of historic struggles, I fear the Romanian crew will think I’m a frivolous Hollywood tool bringing my dog all the way from LA. I drop my stuff at the hotel and we are taken straight to the set, located at a studio in Buftea, about twelve miles outside Bucharest. Upon arrival in Buftea, my fears are dispelled. The studio grounds teem with tens, perhaps hundreds of dogs – stray but tame, wild but an accepted part of life. Later, when I see more of Bucharest, I will learn this is a citywide phenomenon. So much so that, I am told, when the government moved to round up the stray dogs, not to euthanize but neuter them, uproar among the people put a stop to it. This explains the dogs and puppies at the studio – toddling through the offices, into the art department workshop, hanging around doorways.
Bucharest is dog heaven. Food scraps are thrown onto the street for dogs daily. Ellie meets movie stars, rests in the trailer while I work, and socializes with the local mutts. Standing on a night shoot in the Romanian countryside, mist floating in off the lake onto the set, I eye Ellie curled up in the director’s chair under a warm heat lamp. And I know I made the right decision. She’s having a great time. In a different way, so am I. I’m working hard, rewriting material for the realities of a tightly budgeted indie production. I’m seeing a script I’ve written produced for the first time. In between I take the dog for walks around Bucharest: past Revolution Square, up to Izvor or Cişmigiu Park. We play ball with Ceauşescu’s gargantuan palace looming in the background. When I can’t manage it, a young German woman named Gesa, here to mind the production designer’s toddler and to get some experience on a movie set, takes on the dog. Despite the stress and pressure of the production, there is a shared, passionate drive to get this story told, and an amazing sense of everyone pitching in, even down to the welfare of a shaggy dog. Six weeks later, we’ve got it in the can.
Lights, Camera...Travel! Page 11