Lebanon Is Burning And Other Dispatches by Yazan Al-Saadi et. al.

featuring the art of Tracy Chahwan, Ganzeer, Ghadi Ghosn, Omar Khouri, Sirene Moukheiber, Hicham Rahma and Enas Satir.

Hoo boy, readers, what a book. If you’re as unfamiliar with current events in the Middle East and North Africa as I am, then this book is likely to be a jarring experience for you, as Yazan Al-Saadi takes readers on a tour of what’s been happening recently in some of the area’s most politically repressed nations, moving from the better-publicized crises in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, to the ones that receive less coverage in Bahrain, Yemen and Sudan, with other stops along the way. The author himself is Syrian Canadian, and worked as both a journalist and with Medecins Sans Frontieres. There are many rightful targets of his ire who all share this in common: the desire to centralize power in themselves alone, and by doing so strip others of their rights and dignities.

As such, Mr Al-Saadi sets any number of dictators and authoritarian regimes in his sights, as well as the imperialist/settler-colonial powers of the West and Israel. This is, ofc, old hat to anyone with any awareness of the area and even half a heart, but the sheer amount of detail he puts into narrating the crimes against the people of MENA sheds light on some truly awful situations. In doing so, his aim is to raise both awareness and inspire solidarity worldwide. Tyranny and economic exploitation must be fought against by the many below: we cannot expect to be rescued by the (perishingly rare benevolent) few in power above.

Interestingly, he produces some of his freshest arguments when contrasting Fidel Castro’s Cuba with Bashar Assad’s Syria. The choice between dictatorship and imperialism is a false dichotomy put forward and believed by those of limited imagination, of which he himself was admittedly once. In order to build a world that is just towards all its people, power must be devolved, with the state truly representing the will of its citizenry.

If that wasn’t left-wing enough for you, Mr Al-Saadi also decries paternalism, corruption and anti-immigrant attitudes, no matter who expresses them. His chapter on the exploitation of refugees was particularly moving, as was his reminder that statelessness can happen to anyone and that hard borders are nonsense. As someone still trying to grapple with the chaos that was unleashed on January 20th, this book serves as a sobering reminder that dictatorships not only ruin countries but take countless lives: all needlessly, and all to make insecure despots feel better about themselves. It can be a hard lesson to swallow, especially given how naively complicit so many of us can be in the needless torment of others.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is a wordy collection, as each illustrated chapter is preceded by an essay and footnotes. It gets better as the book goes on, but as a graphic novel aficionado, I think the little asides describing the choices made in the art would work better after each comic and not beforehand.

The art itself offers a wide range of styles, from Hicham Rahma’s sarcastic cartoons to Tracy Chahwan’s somber panels. Perhaps my favorite chapter, art-wise, was Omar Khouri’s depiction of the tragedy surrounding the Port of Beirut explosion of 2020. The rough colored pencil art beautifully melded Mr Al-Saadi’s twin stories in a visually arresting manner, taking a very recent horror and translating it almost into a chapter out of myth: doomed to be repeated again and again until humanity finally learns.

This was not an easy book to read — I constantly had to take breaks — but it provides both excellent insight into the area and reminds readers that it’s on all of us to fight back against tyranny, corruption and the festering unkindnesses in our own hearts that seek to separate us spiritually from the rest of humanity.

Lebanon Is Burning And Other Dispatches by Yazan Al-Saadi et. al. was published December 10 2024 by Graphic Mundi and is available from all good booksellers, including