Iranian of the Day

Orion Magazine: SEPTEMBER 13, 2006, was Esmaeil Fallahi Day in Idaho. No one told Fallahi in order to surprise him. He spent the day digging holes and picking grapes and apples on his farm, and then he went to a party that he thought was being held for his birthday and was read the governor’s proclamation acknowledging his “career-long dedication to enhancing fruit crop production.” Fallahi is a visionary pomologist, a fruit scientist, a species of practical rapturist whose reputation in tree fruits and stone fruits is international. Since 1989, he has lived in Parma, Idaho, west of Boise, where he is a professor in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Idaho and director of the university’s pomology program—his title is Tree Fruit and Small Fruit Physiologist. With the help of his wife, Bahar, he grows novelty fruits on fifty-nine acres of sloping land near a drive-in—at night he can see the movie from the fields. Under his guidance, farmers in Idaho have begun raising fruits that never grew in Idaho before. His ambition is that the farms around him will one day resemble the orchard he remembers from his grandfather’s ranch in the mountains north of Tehran >>>