Joshua Levkowitz

When a Little Syrian Eggplant Is More Than Just Food

The petite, preserved eggplant serves not only as a marker of memory and nostalgia but also as a gift to loved ones, a means to pay off debts, a touchstone for marriage proposals and a tether to the homeland. They are interpreted in dreams, used in jokes ("Did you hear the one about when the makdous met Ronald McDonald?") and can even be used to describe a state of being.