From the vine
Toni Lazov smiles at me as if he knows a secret and wants to
share it. He waves me over with a Balkan overhand double
flick of the wrist. From where he is standing, he points down
at the dry, brown earth around a thick grapevine trunk. Two
small soda bottle caps peek out of the ground and Toni kicks
the earth around them with his shoes, revealing two small
plastic bottles full of a light brown liquid. “Rakija, my rakija,”
he says, beating on his chest with his right hand proudly.
by Sofia Hartwell
one of
Weofare standing invineyard, the rowsa
his family’s
up on
hill situated in the central Vardar Valley in the
Tikves region of Macedonia. This is an area famous for its high quality grapes: just mention that
you have some homemade Tikves rakija to someone
outside the region and their eyes will light up with excitement, eager to sample the 90 proof grape brandy hailing from the promised land.
I had arrived to pick grapes at the Lazov family home early
that morning at six a.m., sleep still hanging heavily on my eyes,
a to-go cup of drip coffee gripped tightly in my hand. Baba Kata
looked skeptically at my silver mug and asked, “What is that
you’re carrying with you?” When I replied that it was coffee,
she scoffed, asking if I thought they didn’t have coffee there. I
quickly said no, explaining my coffee addiction and that I never
went anywhere without my insulated mug. This wasn’t entirely
true: It had been the case in the States, but here, where offers of
coffee were a foregone conclusion, I hardly ever carried my java
with me. I should have known that even on a workday starting as
early as this one, there would be time for Turkish coffee.
10 - pauza
As I sat on the couch waiting to depart for the vineyard, everyone
rushed around preparing for a morning of picking. Toni walked
in and soberly appraised my work clothes: In anticipation of a
dirty day in the fields, I had donned my sad pair of jeans, ripped
in ten different places, and my old Americorps work t-shirt.
“Give her an old shirt!” he bellowed, not addressing anyone in
particular. I protested, awkwardly trying to explain that my shirt
was as old and worn as they come, that I had planted thousands
of trees wearing it, but my words fell on deaf ears. As I took
the shirt and cap they offered, I shook my head and smiled, then
changed into them as I was told. The t-shirt they had given was,
of course, pristine and pure white, cleaner by far than the one I
was wearing.
At the vineyard, we met up with other pickers. Since the harvest
lasts a relatively short period of time every year, close friends
and family often chip in to pick faster and more efficiently. Toni’s
wife Donka opened out a mat on the ground and laid out an impressive breakfast spread for all of us: a pot of pinjur, yogurt,
bread, and banica. Toni offered a couple of swigs of rakija to get
the blood pumping, and maybe to remind us of the main reason
we were there.