Khodahafez

Excerpt: "Diary of an Unknown Winemaker"

The extended interview as Vineyard Manager in Sedona was one of those agreements that was better in planning than execution, but went well until the final leg of the return trip.

On the one hand, it offered the opportunity for extended observation on both sides, of a situation that might have significant impact on both parties. Along with winemakers who render fruit into wine, those who tend the vineyards are tasked with providing fruit, the quality of which to large extent, limits how good the resulting vintage will be, but not how bad.

From the first, he was treated with deference and very soon after arrival, all traces of formality melted in the excited discussion of wines and winemaking, of business and the famous personalities who often skirt the margins of the technical trade of winemaking.

It was all good during the time on the ground, but after twelve days’ labor with very little rest, the home bound trip was an onerous challenge.

First, on the outbound leg, his physical and emotional resources were stretched almost to breaking.

It took days before the photo period and physiological rhythms catch up, and synchronize with the scheduled demands of agricultural work: the tractors; learning the excavation and heavy earth moving equipment; gaining more than a passing glance at the multitude of wells, springs, plumbing, backflow preventers, valves of a spectrum of types and sizes, pressure or storage tanks and reducers that make up the modern irrigation system.

This didn’t begin to factor in the injectors, ports, and Mazzis by which nutrients and some biocides are spread throughout eight vineyards during the nine or ten months of the growing season in the high deserts of Arizona.

There were six or eight separately managed departments of a winery operation, and half dozen employees in each whose names flew by in a flurry of novel information.

This storm of information was leavened by viticulture practice, of about fifteen grape varietals most of which he had not worked with, and was too copious for panic. There was an awareness that each varietal was trellised on a different hillside, some with more than one vine configuration.

It wasn’t until half through the visit that visual map plots of the rows superimposed by Google Earth, that he began to absorb some of it. By the end of almost two weeks, he had just begun to transpose the maps into a writable graphics format and had progressed to adding symbols in each different vineyard to indicate where the wells, pumps and values were located.

The first tours of vineyard blocks of vines from the right seat of the Ford F150 pick-up bucking down a steep, heavily stoned trough that marginally qualified as a road, and then only in a generous imagination, slowly simmered in perception with the maps.

He had arrived, pruned and left before the whole picture began to form a coherent image of the job he might be expected to perform.

Of course, six years’ experience in classroom, and in annual grape harvests, had provided a solid background for this deluge of information.

The only novel parts were the technical details of irrigation, and its use to feed and maintain the vines. When the water was supplemented with fertilizers, it was called called fertigation.

It was complemented by Virginia work where it was far too wet for irrigation or fertigation for the most part.

The last leg of the trip home, emphasized what a poor option Spirit Airlines was, and might be, if he found himself commuting between Loudoun County, Virginia and Yavapai County, Arizona where vineyards clustered on the mountain sides of the Verde Valley south of the tourist and new Age Mecca of Sedona.

* * *

The flight landed at BWI after what seemed interminable hours’ turbulence and the cumulative discomfort of sleepless travel, forced him to sit upright in what must be the least comfortable A320 Airbus seating in the entire U. S. commercial fleet.

The clientele was almost uniformly non-Caucasian, non-English speaking, and Spirit Airlines based at BWI apparently has a moratorium on hiring any but minority cabin crews, runway flight, mechanics or flight clerks ensconced behind the podia at the frequent stopover airports.

“You may approach the podium,” boomed over loudspeakers as if the unwashed masses were finally deigned by some higher class of humanity, to argue about the ticketing and baggage policies of Spirit Airlines. Those doling out concessions, must have been Northern African, all of them, and clearly enjoyed their status and authority to harass the few angry Caucasian travelers.

Sitting at the Dallas Fort Worth layover, CNN News on the wide screen above seating, was teeming with several angry talking heads, women of color and otherwise angry feminists it appeared, hashing over the latest Trump outrage.

It felt much like a personal assault between Spirit’s unadvertised policy of upcharging for each item of luggage in excess of one, by at least fifty dollars. The maddening thing was that the promised and advertised reduction in extra baggage assessments, made online compared with at the airport, was not available for any would-be traveler through clever placement of digital buttons needed to avoid entering a passcode which, of course, had never been issued and was never available.

Bad enough to tack another fifty dollars on the admittedly low initial ticket cost, but the return leg, unlike the flight out West, assessed the fifty dollar at each and every connecting leg of the trip without advising travelers of the coming assessment until it was impossible to do anything but to submit to the outrage without missing a flight.

The discomfort of a two o’clock A.M. Flight, cramped quarters and extra hundred fifty dollars fee, did much to make the hours of airtime far less agreeable than any flight he’d ever taken. Although he did not mind flying on nearly minority-exclusive flights, the arrogance, haughtiness and maddeningly superior tone of the ticketing and cabin staff would be exacerbating conditions that would make the flight memorable.

Thing was, with the added fees, a ticket out of a convenient airport would have been both less expensive and during daylight hours. As it was, it took half a day and more, with various waits for infrequent MARC service out to BWI, via DC Union Station. The trip from Dulles to his home farm is less than half an hour.

Privileged?

Who, him?

The news media was out of control in a perpetual state of high dudgeon, insulted by Presidential tweets, or so the CNN or Fox News viewers were led to believe. The National Crisis of Presidential Impoliteness seemed to pass the boiling point when Trump suggested restraint before condemning White House staffers whose wives had circulated black eye portraits on social media that had gone viral.

The speed of condemnation of any and all accused males without due process, seemed farcical, as did the exclusive coverage of presidential tweets as if each where a direct nuclear assault on dignity, diversity, race, motherhood and Apple Pie.

It felt as if he were treading water in a cesspool of political nonsense, as if it were being demanded that he too, since he shared gender and skin color with the First Tweeter, should recant, apologize, and renounce his heresy against the Progressive agenda.

He looked around him to see if others shared his outrage.

Some focused intently on cell phone screens; other dozed waiting for the next flight.

He was too annoyed with the clerk’s attitude and choose a seat between two black men.

One looked over at him with a reserved, knowing cool glance.

“I know what you mean, man,” he confided in low tones from the corner of his mouth. “I’ll never fly with these people again.”

“You are a remarkably intelligent and perceptive man,” he confided, simmering down when he observed his nonchalance and Black cool...

A lesson in oppression, he thought.

Later, he remembered the Chief Flight Attendant’s remarks as they taxiied up to the BWI Jetway. She was slender, tall and busty with an elegant accent. Some black women are like that.

“Anyone here know the difference between school and life?” she crooned. He loved her sexy snarl, but maybe it was his hormonal status after a sleepless night in cramped, non-private accommodations.

“In school, you get the lesson, then the test. And in Life, the test is first, then you get the lesson.”

The cabin was stunned into silence. Or perhaps like him, they were all asleep, cranky, angry and unrepentant.

Her joke bombed.

As they waited to deplane for correction of a “jetway malfunction”, passengers stood up uneasily and tottered forward unbalanced by heavy luggage between the closely spaced seats separated by an impossible aisle.

The pilots were white.

He was gathering steam for the load of vituperation he would unleash when he got his chance to respond to their polite “Thanks for flying Spirit!”

As he edged closer to the front, his grammar softened.

“I hope that Spirit Airlines doesn’t abuse their flight crew the way they abuse their one flight/never return passenger” lingered in mind, but he was content to return the polite farewell greeting with an exhausted, red eyed glare of deeply felt intensity.

It was as if being reborn into the daylight, although the long cramped flight had caused a lameness to settle into limbs and joints such that my gait wobbled as the heavy luggage tugged arms to full extension on either side with each step.

His progress was slowed when he realized he needed a restroom before the long train ride back to Virginia.

The MARC local train running BWI to Union station DC, could be reached by shuttle that arrived outside the doors between entrances Fourteen and Fifteen.

He happened to spy a short woman looking around uncertainly who grabbed his attention as she passed.

“When do I get the train to Union station?” she implored with Middle Eastern accents.

He smiled and suggested she join him as he happened to be going just that way.

There was the Amtrak/MARC Shuttle bus driven by a sullen, haughty black man. His attitude seemed to imply he was doing passengers a massive and, for him, excruciatingly polite favor by shuttling them on his bus. The attitude irked him after his experience with Spirit.

He slammed on the breaks and caught him standing next to the luggage cage on the bus with a hand in his flight jacket pocket. He was unable to get his hand out in time to catch a rail on the way down and ended up awkwardly bent over his luggage, hand still stuck in a pocket as the others fumbled with something to grasp while he straightened up.

It was later that he recalled they had just missed the MARC departure with the shuttle bus, and that gave an annoying hour to wait until the next train.

In the meanwhile, it transpired that he had offered to guide a delightful Iranian woman, a dentist from Michigan, on her first DC visit. The conversation waiting for MARC skipped gaily along, often drawing in passersby.

He stood next to a bank of coffee dispenser carafes, and eventually succumbed to the aroma. The concession was staffed by its owner who intoned with singsong accents of Indian or Pakistani dialect.

He, too, had witnessed the delight they had taken in chatting about a thousand different things, and stepped out from behind his cash register to engage to woman.

“By your accent, we are neighbors,” he smiled. He voiced the word Pakistan, which the winemaker heard as “Pock-eees-tawn”, named all the bordering countries, seeming to imply that by accent and racial coloration, he was more entitled to her attention that he was.

“We have a regular United Nations going, my friends,” he offered expansively, palms upward in gesture.

He kept trying to engage her and she glanced toward him with looks of supplication as to how she could continue with the Pakistani concessioneer forcing opinions and compelling her agreement. Pakistanis and Iranians may not immediately find common ground even when facing an Anglo.

Fortunately, the MARC arrived, the train he and his new Iranian friend would both board, was loudly announced, offered both of them both a graceful exit, thanking the shopkeeper as they backed away.

When she mentioned her being Iranian, he felt at first compelled to cross arms in front of his flight heavy jacket, but began to like her and eventually let that go as an unintended gesture of disapproval.

By the time they walked out of the ticket office toward the tracks, there were four trailing the conversation, a well-dressed, distinguished gentlemen in an elegant gray three-piece suit and professorial white hair, and a sweet eyed young lady who seemed to be grinning for having joined the safety of their little gabfest.

What had been two-way became an animated four-way chat, all huddling closer on the siding as an icy wind blew leaves across the tracks.

In a few minutes, the four had boarded, taken the upper seating deck where visibility was good and his new Iranian friend who, it turned out, was a dentist and businesswoman of substance, with several thriving practices, engaged about biology, about government, and winemaking and ceramics and metals used in modern dentistry.

It was one of the more amusing happenstances of the entire trip, and wonderful good luck to come across her. She had a fistful of uncrumpled maps and printed brochures about navigating the DC Metro which, on joining him, were rendered completely unnecessary.

Her breadth of knowledge was impressive, she was as good as a listener as she was conversationalist.

Our white haired friend sat across the aisle in a seat behind and joined in: his daughter was a cereal crop geneticist who had trained at...and he suggested he guess.

“...Cornell...?” he injected when prompted.

“No, West Coast, West Coast...”

“Berkeley?” the sole UC campus he had attended briefly.

“No-no. Agriculture...” he prompted.

Of course I knew.

“Davis!” he finally exulted. “She hates human genetics...”

“What’s that, eh?” he said. “It’s a good field and I could say a little about human as well as grape DNA...”

“No: Davis!”

“Riiiight,” he agreed. Of course, the best viticulture program in the country was at Davis. “My grandfather taught agronomy and plant breeding at Cornell. Ask your daughter if she recognizes the name George Schull. He worked with Schulz in 1911 at Cold Spring Harbor...on the technology for hybrid corn. Monsanto made a fortune...”

“Schultz, the Secretary of State?”

“Probably more than one,” they chatted walking along the siding at Union Station.

After parting, he remembered the name was Professor William J. Schull, not George Schultz, but it didn’t matter. Both were long dead. Schull, of Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, afterwards of Princeton where during a visit in 1917, his grandmother had passed Albert Einstein eating an ice cream on the sidewalk.

It took a moment or two to realize that my Iranian dentist’s attempt to buy a Metro card was frustrated no by their collective ineptitude but by the increasingly frequent malfunction and failure to repair the card vending machines in DC.

They had a further session of nonstop gab on social issues and the danger to some people in some areas of DC. He did not have to elaborate as she by then, had picked up on the DC minority hostility toward any others of different diversity to themselves.

“Teach me a little Farsi?” he asked as they drew nearer Metro Center where he would change Red Line for the Silver Line out to Virginia as she continued to her destination at Dupont Circle.

He could not grasp and remember the Farsi expression that sounded much like “!Vaya con Dios!”, and meant the same in Spanish and Farsi.

In his befuddlement as he awaited the opening of the car doors as Metro Center slowly slid by, he turned toward her.

“Hey, thanks for the gum,” he grinned to the dentist.

Trudging along the terra cotta siding at Metro, he looked up as her train slowly pulled away, but could not see her in the window.

Khodahafez, the term he later learned, also meant “Go with God” in Farsi, and he just hoped he would not lose her business card so he could email her his after his supply had been exhausted by the hordes of new friends he met on his Arizona interview.

Dorood, hello.

Khodahafez, goodbye.

It was a start.

***