I knew that taking on a leadership role in the Fenway Victory Gardens would impact my ability to garden there.  It's one of the things anyone who's ever done it will warn you about. 

Truth is, while most gardeners are perfectly happy to avoid any unnecessary contact with the leadership, there are a few folks whose philosophy seems to be "you asked for it!"


I was there Sunday for a couple of hours spring cleaning and pruning a bit before Yazid*, who in his short time as a member has established himself as a big presence in the gardens, showed up looking for a way to entice me into battle.

I don't have anything against Yazid. His garden is not in compliance in any way, shape or form, but you choose your battles.  He is under a willow which lost several large limbs last year, but when you suggest he may have to be relocated, he calmly informs you it is not an option.  When you tell him it's up to Parks & Rec he shakes his head calmly and informs you he has friends in high places.

Calm is the rarest emotion in his repertoire, and should you press the point (whatever point) however gently you will soon witness a stunningly rich pageant of emotions — almost like a mix-tape of Emotion's Greatest Hits. The display is so outsize it's reminiscent of the acting style of the great silent stars, though Yazid is anything but silent in his delivery.

The really interesting thing about him is how even the smallest of issues becomes a matter of monumental injustice.  He does not live in a karmic universe.  He lives in a universe where Evil is afoot whenever he doesn't get his wish, a universe rife with wickedness and injustice all aimed at him.  Yazid is at the very center of a cosmic battle between Evil and, well, Yazid.

This is how children think and operate and get what they want, of course (a nine year old boy from Levonia by the name of Nathaniel DeSpirito holds the current world record for insisting "it's not fair!" — 2,897 times in the span of a single hour), but when an adult in late middle-age who seems perfectly capable of attaining his goals by other means resorts to this method it is unsettling.  But, as it turns out, also ultimately effective.

So Sunday I was about to leave the gardens for lunch, and feeling peckish – it was a little after one and like I said I’d been working a couple of hours – and just as I’m about to go Yazid shouts over the fence at me, demanding the handsaw I was at that moment putting into the storage locker.

I suppose I should have readily lent it to him, but wary of losing track of tools that belong to the society — and with a membership of nearly 400 you can easily lose track — I was reluctant to lend it to him when I was heading out.

I asked him if we could arrange a later time.  A proposition that seemed quite reasonable to me.

With an indulgent smile, as if preparing to explain something very elemental to a child, he said, "no."

"I need now."

I still didn't get it.

I didn't understand that trying to arrange a time for him to use a handsaw was not about me wanting to keep tabs on the tools.  It certainly was not about my needing to run off and get lunch.  It was about his childhood in Egypt and his struggles to get to America, his career and family, his friends in high places. It was the latest skirmish in the eternal battle between Evil and Yazid.

And all the while that Hollywood pageant of emotion.  He laughs! He cries! He sputters, criticizes, pleads, chastises and screams “THIS IS MY LIFE!” It’s quite a show.  Even the third and fourth time around.

But for some reason it all just made me want to give him the handsaw less and less. What had been a reasonable reaction to begin with quickly became a battle royale. 

So we spent a good ten, fifteen minutes shouting at each other.

“You must understand me!” he kept shouting.  "Why you want to do bad things toward me?  What do I do to you?”

Over a handsaw.  Generations from now if we had any progeny, they would hate each other and not know that it was all over a rusty handsaw.

Dude was all up in my grill and I finally had to ask him to leave the storage area where I had been working.

“You will give me the handsaw if I leave?”

“You need to leave.”

“You will give me the handsaw.   You give your word.”

“Leave please. Now.”

“But you will give me the handsaw.”

“WALK. AWAY.”

Eventually he left the garden (his abuts it). I was struggling with the lock to the tool locker, which added to my irritation. He stood on the other side of the fence, in his garden, watching me like a hawk. 

Then came another gardener, this one a sad-eyed little Russian tank who had been building what looks like a miniature Tower of Babel on her Allotment since last year.  It was quite an engineering feat, whatever it was. 

She had heard the ruckus and came over to ask about the old wood in an enormous scrap pile left by the boys building the new Special Needs Garden.

“Is free?” she asked gingerly.

I said, "yes, help yourself, but I have to lock up in a minute."

I assured her the scrap pile wasn't going anywhere.  She's smart, though.  God love 'em, our gardeners don't waste any time, and if it was out in the open, it would disappear before you could say "hoarder's delight".  It's impressive, really.

There was hunger in her eyes as she approached the junk pile.  You could tell she was eager to dig through it, and was struggling to curb her enthusiasm.  Listen, I'm a thrift shop whore.  I know the feeling.

But honestly, you didn't have to dig deep to get at the good stuff.  Most of the wood was of uniform size, because it was just the old raised beds that were of uniform size.

Well, she starts digging around gingerly.  If I hadn't been there — she's no dainty flower — she'd have been pulling that wood out, stacking it up, and hauling it out.  She'd have taken it all in twenty minutes.  These women — we called them nénis — "aunties" — in Hungary — they try to look helpless, but they will cut you if you reach for the cabbage they have their eye on.  Their elbows are are sharp as razors.

So after scratching around a bit, she finds the Golden Cabbage.  It's a board like all the others on — yes, you guessed it — the very bottom of the pile.  Only about six inches of its eight feet in length are visible, but she knows its The One.

Lunch time is just not the time for this monkey business.  I have to admit I was a bit gruff with her.  My dander was still up.  Yazid was still shooting me the Evil Eye from over the fence. 

I said, “look, sister, they’re all the same – just take one off the top.”

She did, after asking me for additional assurances that the pile would still be there in the coming days.

It was an eight-foot board like all the others, and while it wasn’t all that heavy, as she scooted away thanking me in her pitty-pat Runglish with one end of the long board hoisted over a shoulder and the other dragging behind, she looked like she was carrying the cross to Golgotha, so I picked up the other end and took it with her to her garden.

She overthanked me, of course, and then it was back to Yazid and the handsaw.  The interlude had got me to thinking his request was not unreasonable, but then when I made to give him the saw he could not repress an enormous smile of triumph and I not once but twice retracted it.

“No!" he shouted over the fence. "You must understand me!  I am smiling because I am happy!”

I finally got hold of myself and just handed over the saw.  We'd been at it about forty-five minutes and the madness might easily have gone on for generations.

On my way out I apologized for the incident, which unleashed a flood of sentiment as violent in its way as what I was just recovering from.  There were more tears, this time of reconciliation, and hugs and... mini-muffins.

"We must break bread!" he shouted. 

He grabbed his bag.

"I have only these mini-muffins!  Take one!  Please, you must!  Understand me!  You must take!" 

Well, I was famished, and he was just launching into his life story again, so I was going to need whatever sustenance I could get to not faint dead away. 

When I was finally able to break away an hour later I left chuckling to myself at how effective in achieving your aims it is to be utterly unreasonable. That seems to be the story of our age.

I was skyping with my aunt last night and told her the tale. 

"You know what the lesson here is, don't you?" she said. 

"Next time you need to pack a lunch."

Indeed.
____________________________________
*Not his real name.