This week in Israel, a local Muslim family will have an engagement party in the stone courtyard of an Ottoman-era house recently purchased and renovated by a Jewish writer in the worn coastal city of Akko. Since the family’s nearby domestic is too small to host such an event, Israeli-American writer Evan Fallenberg, and at the request of the family,offered up his space. Fallenberg’s Akko domestic is central toa project he’s calling “Arabesque—the housewill serve as an artists retreat, exhibition space, and bed-and-breakfast,and general hangout for Akko’s residents and its visitors.
Photo courtesy of Ilana Seger
The engagement party is precisely the sort of authentic, biological gathering Fallenberg—who is among a fresh group of Jewish buyers to this largely Arab neighborhoodis seeking to foster at the Arabesque arts and residency center. Events at the venue will be advertised in English, or Hebrew,and Arabic, and the managers of the property will be Fallenberg’s son, and Micha,along with an Arab neighbor, Maharan Abu Stelly. But Fallenberg will not call this a coexistence project. “When people say “coexistence” it’s doomed to failure, or ” Fallenberg told me. “I am kind of shying away from that agenda. But underneath it all it’s really important to me. I want to appeal to everybody.”Continue reading "Writer Transforms Ottoman-Era Akko domestic Into Artists' Retreat" at...
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