Walking down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn today we came across a project by a friend of ours who had rented a store for an art project. His grandfather was an Iraqi Jew who later ran a bussiness in New York. This art project was sponsored by Creative Time that also hosts Michael's project blog. Michael Rakowitz resurfaced his ancestor's trade by selling Iraqi dates. For the past month you could come to the store and buy dates or send a shipment to somebody in Iraq for free (be it an American soldier or an Iraqi); paid for by the profits from the sale of Iraqi dates, which interestingly are commonly labelled as products of Syria or Lebanon as Iraqi consumer items are not exactly in demand these days. I really liked the project. Congrats, Michael.

Quotes from Michael's Blog:

* Due to security concerns for their families back in Iraq, the names of the agents working at the Baghdad-based company from which the dates were ordered have recently requested their real names not be used.

Thursday, 8/10/06- I receive an e-mail from Bassam, General Manager of Al Farez Co., in response to an inquiry sent by my assistant, Chat Travieso on behalf of Davisons & Co. seeking information on any companies who may be able to export dates from Iraq to the US. In his response, Bassam says that my fascination with dates must come from my mother’s side of the family, as it is said that every Iraqi has a date in their genes and that it is traditional in the first moments of a newborn baby’s life for the parents to place a date in the infant’s mouth so that its first taste of life is sweet. Bassam goes on to detail about 15 different kinds of dates and tells us the date harvesting season in Iraq happens at the end of September and the beginning of October. This would mean that our shipment of dates would probably not arrive until about the 10th of October.

Tuesday, 8/22/06- At Charlie Sahadi’s suggestion, I make contact with his son-in-law, Pat Whelan at Sahadi Fine Foods to find out if the famed Brooklyn company could help me arrange the import of the dates through their import broker. Pat is wonderful, enthusiastic and encouraging. He says in principle, he’s happy to help make this happen by bringing it in under their account in association with Davisons & Co. He says he will have to check with his import broker to make sure it can be done.

Thursday, 8/24/06- I receive an e-mail from Pat Whelan at Sahadi Fine Foods telling me that we can work together and to go ahead and make the deal with Al Farez Co. in Baghdad to export the dates to my company through Sahadi.

Thursday 9/7/06- Reema, the Sales manager at Al Farez Co. issues Offer No. 113A-06N, effectively putting into motion a deal to import one tone of Iraqi Khestawi dates from the city of Hilla to Davisons & Co. in Brooklyn. The client is listed as Michael Daoud Rakowitz. During telephone and email exchanges, many companies’ representatives would call me Daoud, a reference to my grandfather’s family name, David, as it was when they were still in Baghdad—Daoud.

Sunday, 9/10/06- I send an email to Bassam explaining my plans for September, which includes teaching at Northwestern University. He explains that this is yet another thing we have in common as he was a Professor at the Technical University of Baghdad and that he was pursuing a PhD in Laser Physics. He says that right now, it seems it will be impossible for him to continue his studies, given there is “no light” to see in the “dark tunnel that Iraq has entered into…maybe my son will complete it if I could not do it in my life.”

Monday, 9/11/06- I transfer 1,920 USD to Al Farez Co. as a 30% payment to begin the execution of Offer No. 113A-06N.

Wednesday, 9/13/06- Monday 9/18/06- I receive no emails from Bassam, while the news from Baghdad gets worse and worse, and news reports surface that there is a plan to build a trench around Baghdad to control the entrance and exit of people from the city. I am worried and send several messages to Al Farez asking that they be in touch just to let me know that they are OK.

Friday, 9/15/06- I contact Mansour Tdros, the editor of The Future Times, a free Arabic newspaper distributed in Chicago to find out about advertising Davisons & Co. in the paper to engage the Iraqi community in Chicago. He comments that this is a great effort and goes on to tell me that he is Jordanian and his wife is Iraqi. He spent a lot of time in Iraq and served three different Presidential Administrations in the USA as a liaison to Iraq and later, Jordan (Carter, Reagan, and Clinton.)

Concerning the importation of dates, he says that at one point, while serving under Reagan in the 1980s, Kelloggs commissioned him to investigate the possibility of using Iraqi dates in their new cereal, Müeslix, which was their interpretation of muesli. It seems that the prices for California dates were becoming excessive and the thought was that the Iraqi dates would be cheaper. However, the Iran-Iraq war had started to decimate the date groves in the al-Fao peninsula, so the idea was scrapped.

Mansour comments on how bad the situation had become in Iraq. He says that this is a war where both sides lost. Nobody won. And his family, he says, is the perfect representation of this loss, as some of his wife’s relatives, Iraqi-Americans residing in the US, are serving or have served in the US Army in Iraq. Some came back wounded and traumatized by the experience. And many of his wife’s relatives still in Iraq have also been wounded, have lost their homes, and have lost their lives.

“I was at a function recently where the guest of honor was Colin Powell. He could have stopped all of this from happening. He knew it was wrong, that all the intelligence was questionable or false…I approached him, where he received guests who wanted to shake hands and exchange some friendly words. I went up to him and I refused to shake his hand and I told him, ‘you should be ashamed, you are a coward. You could have changed everything. You knew it was wrong.’”

Mansour says that his blood pressure has now risen and that he is getting upset all over again. He asks me what I do for a living, and I tell him I am an artist and that I teach at Northwestern University in the Department of Art Theory and Practice. He asks if I would be interested in writing art reviews for his newspaper, effectively making me the art critic for the Future Times. The reviews would be translated into Arabic and would also appear in the English section of the newspaper. I accept, and my first review will appear in November or December, once my project with Creative Time comes to a close.

 
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