Avi Mograbi’s Between a River and a Sea tells of dreams and their shattering. Two business directories from worlds that have ceased to exist – one for Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, from 1938, and the other for Gaza, from 2023 – frame the journeys of Ali al-Azhari and Avi Mograbi, a teacher and his student, as they follow the traces of their families through Damascus, Beirut, Safuriyya, Jaffa and Tel Aviv, places that were once part of a single region. Both families were cut off from their homeland with the creation of the State of Israel. While the Mograbi family chose to move to Tel Aviv, the al-Azharis were forced out of the village of Safuriyya, becoming internal refugees in their destroyed homeland.
The directories are projected on two large screens. The 1938 guide offers a vision of Muslims, Christians and Jews listed without hierarchy or national division. On another screen, an online search of the 2023 Gaza directory shows what things were like before the current catastrophe, highlighting our current dystopian reality. We do not know if any of the listed businesses are still operating, but we do know that the area has been completely devastated. In this respect, both directories serve as evidence of the ongoing Nakba that began in 1948.
—Avital Barak
