‘Generations’ Graphic Novel Mood Deck II: 1950–2020 in the Middle East.
Part II of the Generations Mood-Deck: 1950–2020.
“I used to be a writer. I wrote fiction, but these my friend are political times, where no one has time to look up at the stars, or countenance the universe. Which is a shame.”
Hakim
Its the 1970s in Beirut, and politics is everywhere. Lebanon is split into a thousand pieces, between leftists and palestinian freedom fighters, christian and muslim, Lenin and Nixon. In the middle of all this, an artist paints. His name is Hakim. Suspicious and exhausted of the world around him, he wants the one thing no one in Lebanan can ever have — to be left alone. When Hakim’s brother knocks on his door asking for a poster, Hakim quickly learns that the only way his art will ever be valued in such an environment is if it serves a political purpose. Hakim makes his brother his poster. Other knocks on his door follow. As a dozen factions begin to fight in a bloody civil-war, Hakim preserves his independence and cynicism by making posters for each of them.”
“We had already lost our home twice. My family had already suffered the indignity and psychological trauma of displacement before. Could it really be happening again, in this cursed corner of Earth?”
Hani
Hani and his family have already fled from war twice; in 1948, and then in 1967. Like so many Palestinians, they arrived in Kuwait to hopes of a new life. For a while, they were living the dream.
On the night of August 2nd 1990 all of that changes. As the clunk of mortar fire sounds and another occupation begins, Hani and his family become prisoners in their own home. Each week, he watches his wife venture out alone to buy food from the corner-shop. A family watch war through the curtains.
“Stuck in the rain waiting for my taxi… late for my Cable News interview. Can’t believe this! #NYC”
@MunaBlogger
The story starts with flashbacks of September 11th, and the global war on Terror. We fast-forward, to 2006.
A diminutive lady in a colorful headscarf hails a cab in the New York rain. Her name is Muna, and she’s a well known Egyptian blogger. She’s late for a big interview, on Cable News.
On the face of it, Muna is blessed. A graduate scholarship at Columbia’s prestigious media department. Appearances on television. A growing love-interest with someone who can relate.
She blogs as President Obama talks in Cairo, as a fruit seller burns himself alive in Tunisia, and as American marines capture Bin Laden in Pakistan. Somewhere, somehow, Muna becomes trapped; trapped between two cultures she equally feels part of, alienated by the political discourse of East and West, in trouble for asking the hard questions. She retreats into a digital world, where people understand her. Her experiences make her numb, but never bitter. She makes the journey back home, to Egypt.
“How can we live like this? Are we always to be ruled by a Pharaoh? Is this truly, all we understand?”
Geeza
A Pharaoh speaks out across television screens in Cairo. In the streets there is violence. Geeza is an activist and graffiti artist who paints what he thinks on the streets. He’s part of an educated, affluent, underground.
Majdy, can’t look at his own children. He wakes up with hot sweats screaming. The Muslim Brotherhood always looked after him and his family. They always will. They know best. Dina is a Coptic Christian girl who knows the world around her is changing. Children always know these things. One night, she steals away to Tahrir Square with Joseph, to be part of something she doesn’t understand, but feels. A man called Sisi appears on a television screen. Joseph finds Dina crying in a corner of the Square. They are both so happy, to make it safely home.
“They can afford to bomb Iraq but can’t afford to help Syria, you get me? It’s crazy.”
Abdullah
Abdullah is an ordinary British-Pakistani teenager messing up his life. His parents are supportive, but not entirely aware of the world he’s growing up in.
‘Kafir’ charts Abdullah’s journey from a ‘typical pak’ and a bad influence, into a disaffected and lonely young man looking for something or someone to believe in. Abdullah finds a sense of belonging in an internet-driven version of Islam, which entices him to catch a plane to Jordan, and a trip across the border into warn-torn Syria.
In the center of the fighting as a foreign fighter, Abdullah watches helplessly as the anti-government forces of Al-Nusra evolve into a perversion of everything he believes in; the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
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