A Setback – Art Knows No Borders Blog 3/11

8.22.16

Strange dreams come to me in the night like omens. Memories of a hidden vigor returning to forgotten veins, imbuing dim reserves with fresh light and leavings. An unknown lover dissolves at dusk as I cross a dangerous threshold, their place taken by a protective guide who leads me past strange piles of dismembered limbs demanding favors, where it is unclear whether acquiescence or denial is the damnable outcome. When I wake there is only the soft reality of the hard hostel bed.

There is a bad news today, the organization that we were scheduled to work with in Jordan has withdrawn from the collaboration, specifically citing fear of social ostracization by an anti-normalization group. While frustrating, the setback provides insight into both the depth of cultural opposition to anything, however tenuously, linked to Israel, and paradoxically, also its shallowness.

A conversation with a Taxi driver on the way back from a local ruin elucidates the situation via an anecdote about the normalization of the fruit trade. As one of the closest suppliers of fresh produce, Israeli fruit is ubiquitous in Jordan for reasons of both cost and freshness. The immense social pressure to boycott Israeli products however prevents vendors from selling the fruit openly. This conflict is resolved pragmatically by vendors who remove and laboriously replace Israel destination stickers with fraudulent ones from other neighboring counties such as Egypt or Lebanon. Such acts are common place and an open secret.

Israeli manifests like a specter, or perhaps a contagion, here. A touch is damnation, even when the fruit is not rotten. The intersections of identity, compassion, practicality, and suffering are a labyrinthine causeway over a perilous expanse.

-Alex