I went to the Fiumicino airport this weekend to pick up a dog flying in from America. It was a favor like all the others we do for each other in this world. A back and forth and usually balanced flux where at one moment someone needs something, and at another moment you are needing a hand. I feel like if you want to be a good and responsible human being, you help out where you know you can.
The thing too about volunteering to do things is that sometimes it places you in a space that is completely new. I happen to be residing in the same city where a dog was headed, and because I have a reasonable amount of confidence in my stamina to navigate bureaucratic things, I found myself pulling up to Cargo City at Rome’s major international airport.
I’m not going to bore you with a play by play for how the four-hour evolution went; you’ve got enough of this nonsense in your own life. And perhaps if you’re from my generation or older, then you now realize that those ridiculous dotted line Family Circus cartoons were actually oracles telling you on a Sunday morning that this is what your life would wind up being.
What I did find interesting, however, was the overall experience of picking something up from a large cargo hub. Two stops before I got to the platform where *everything* was being loaded onto trucks, I found myself up in the customs office filling out paperwork for the dog. An Italian across the table from me was picking up his cats and was about 30 minutes ahead of me in the entire process. “This whole experience is incredible,” he told me in English, “you’d think we were picking up Uranium.” Indeed, I thought, as I dug out three pieces of ID from my wallet and then proceeded to compose a paragraph in Italian describing the circumstances surrounding the arrival of this dog.
Past the two mark, I was leaving the Customs Office after vigorously promising that the dog was not being imported for sale (indeed, dog, cats and everything at Cargo City are referred to as “i merci” or “the goods”). In my hand I had a stack of medical and import papers that was now topped off with a stamped customs form. “You can go collect the dog,” the lady told me. I half expected him to be rolled out into the hallway in front of me right away. But I was wrong. I’d have him in my possession in just over two hours.
After queuing again with the cast Romper Room shippers, I paid the second and final mystery bill of 15.17 euros and we moved to the mouth of the massive cargo warehouse. I watched forklifts zip around and carry boxes and crates to the trucks backed up to the loading bay. As I stood for over 45 minutes in the Roman summer, I noticed that about 50% of the items being loaded onto trucks were brown boxes that had “Live Lungworms” written in red on the sides. I didn’t have the stomach to make more than a cursory internet search for what they might be for, and even then, my searches brought up diagrams of dogs. And where was the dog that I was waiting for? Apart from the loading bay workers and truck drivers, we were the only “civilians” standing around. Forgive me for being the center of the universe but why couldn’t they temporarily halt their worm transfer and bring us a dog that had been patiently waiting at FCO for nearly five hours?
When I initially arrived at Cargo City, my first stop was right near this loading space to receive the paperwork that accompanied the crate. As I stood in a queue with the half-dozen very loud, very Roman and very used to this process workers, I looked behind me at a forklift passing by. It held a long oblong box that looked like rough mahogany. On the end facing me were words written neatly in black Sharpie “The Late Lorenzo Donatello”. The forklift made its way to a nondescript white van that on any other day could be transporting cornetti from a bakery. For the next few minutes I tried not to glance much at the men trying to lightly jam it into the back.
On any one day we have loads of goods passing through the world’s commercial centers, airports and harbors. You only pay attention to what is important to you at any one given time. For me, after standing around for four hours, I surmised that the order of precedence at least for this day at Cargo City was thus: the dead are moved off first, then the worms, then the breathing mammals. No amount of complaining or worried looks from behind my facemask would change this. Cargo City is one big nexus of “bigger than one single thing” transactions.
All those hardened loading bay workers. The ones that jockeyed in line in front and behind me for the bulk of my time at the airport—they spoke (yelled) to each other in a familiar language that suggested a coarse vocabulary that I’ve not yet studied. One guy conducted business at a window marked “closed” while he simultaneously rolled a cigarette and balanced at least a dozen bills of laden in the other. The phone in his back jeans pocket would loudly ring as if on a timer and he’d keep reaching back to silence it.
The dog finally did arrive after (perhaps) some cajoling from one of the workers who’d overheard hours ago that were there to collect “un cane vivo”—a live dog. He arranged for us to back our car up a ramp that was not intended for vehicles; from there we could load the dog at least more easily A forklift then emerged with merchandise that was at least not a dozen brown boxes of Live Lungworm and was of course a massive animal crate. I could see a big fluffy head bumping around inside as I waited for him to be set down. Vivo indeed. The world traveling dog would be leaving the airport on four legs.
As happy as I was to see this animal blinking from the other side of the metal grate, the unexpected bright moment of this evolution came just next. The zip ties were cut from the metal door and the gate was squeezed open. The dog—a mix of a sheepdog and a standard poodle emerged looking like a fluffy gazelle. All legs and muscle, his graceful entry into Cargo City brought the loading bay to a brief standstill and was accompanied by coos of the entire staff. As the dog walked around and wondered what had just happened with his life, some of the workers came over. They wanted to pet him and say “ciao”. It was fantastic to watch this unfold and remember that these were the same hardened guys cursing and shouting over in the main reception area.
I’m not quite sure why I started recounting this experience. I didn’t do it with some bizarre desire to draw recognition for a simple task. Nor did I want to be totally morbid about watching that casket move about like the piece of cargo that it was at a major airport. This is just how our life works, and it’s just that I don’t usually get to see this aspect of our society’s beating heart. Or, in my line of work I would say, “Today I got to see how the sausage is made.” Which refers to the fact that how we reach a desirable end result often isn’t nice to witness. So this is what holds true here.
The best part is that yesterday I got to drive away from Cargo City with a leggy and top-heavy dog who did not want to sit or lay down. He looked all smiley as his big tongue lolled and he checked out his new surroundings. After all of that loud and mechanical airport movement, I think he will quickly settle down and enjoy it here. Even though he’s just a dog, I’m excited for him to be reunited with his family…and even more, I hope that they all partake in many of the Italian goods that get moved around this country. In my opinion, the pup deserves at least a Neapolitan pizza. Once you’ve made it through the wringer, it’s important to enjoy what awaits on the other side—because you just never know when you’re gonna be heading back to Cargo City.