Last week I went back to Indio and found it had become a different place. The date groves are now owned by corporate farms, and the fair’s main sponsors were not a collective of local retailers but an Indian gaming resort and the all-conquering Dole Food Co. This year the camel races don’t feature robed riders in Lawrence of Arabia headdresses but jockeys dressed in U.S. military garb. “Let’s hear it for the Marines, the Navy and the Air Force,” blares the cowboy-hatted announcer. The festival’s one pita stand identifies its sandwiches as Greek.
One vendor booth carries picture frames decorated with tanks and gunboats and bumper stickers that read don’t mess with us. The “Arabian Nights” pageant has dropped every reference to Baghdad, and resurrects lyrics Disney expurgated from “Aladdin”: “They cut off your ear if they don’t like your face/It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” The pageant opens with a brand-new “Salute to America”: a flag is raised in front of the mosque like set while a fresh-faced girl sings “God Bless America” to a skipping CD. It was the only time the crowd leapt to its feet. In the midway’s shooting gallery, teenagers take aim at a sketch of a generic Arab.
Joe Hedrick, the cowboy emcee, says he struggled with how to handle this year’s event. “We want people to come and have fun, and I thought maybe… maybe seeing the Arab dress would make them feel uncomfortable. It’s a strange time. What is appropriate right now?” Many of the vendors, once required to dress up Arab style, wonder the same thing. This year fewer than one in 10 wears a veil or a fez. “They used to really enforce the ‘Arabian Nights’ dress code,” says one veteran retailer, who asked not to be named. “But not this year. People can get in free if they dress up, but even they’re saying, ‘To hell with it, I’ll pay $7 before I’ll put a head scarf on’.” Jamie Ortiz is one of the few attendees wearing a tunic and turban. “Dressing up is not a popular thing since 9-11,” he says. “Let’s face it, it’s kinda weird now, this Arab thing.”
True, all this reflects a nationwide reaction to 9-11 and to President Bush’s incessant calls for war. But I couldn’t help feeling that the fair was apologizing for once having promoted a place and people whose very existence is now viewed as anti-American. (Rumors preceded my arrival that NEWSWEEK might portray the fair as unpatriotic.) My family didn’t trek out from L.A. to the desert in our Country Squire station wagon out of a sense of Arab pride. It was about the dates: date bread, date shakes–an Iraqi kid’s dream. And if my dad were alive today, I wouldn’t recommend that he come back here. The dates just wouldn’t taste as sweet anymore.
