When we were all locked down thanks to COVID, I watched a lot of Instagram Live with authors and other interesting people, one of which was Mira Jacob (author of Good Talk - READ IT!). Someone asked her for either her favorite books or her current reading list (I don't remember which) and she brought up The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf. Since I want independent bookstores to survive this dumpster fire of a year, I ordered the book through Bookshop.org. Unfortunately it lingered on my shelves for a bit. Turns out a pandemic and more anxiety than normal isn't conducive for attentive reading.
Once I picked this up, I sped through it. We had some beautiful end of summer days here, so this book was my go to, with a beer, for patio reading. Riad has 4 volumes in this series and volume 2 was just delivered to me the other day. Yay!
This graphic novel leads us through Riad's childhood in the Middle East. He's French and Syrian and spends time in both countries, with both families, and he shows us through a child's eyes how bizarre and complicated adults are. His father feels his destiny is to be President, yet travels abroad to France for school to get out of required military time in Syria. There he meets Riad's mother and, after dad gets his doctorate, they end up in Gaddafi's Libya. From Riad's perspective, we see everything as crumbling, yellow, and confusing. Since private property was abolished, their house had no lock. If they all went out together, other people could take over their house and toss them out, which happened. Food lines were long with a scarcity of food. They only leave when Gaddafi orders everyone to change jobs, forcing teachers to become farmers and vice versa. Since dad was a teacher, he decides now is the time to leave.
They end up in Syria, via France, to his father's home village. One thing to notice, which I didn't realize until the end, is that the places are color coded. Libya is washed in yellow in the graphics, France is blue and Syria is red. Syria is still felt as crumbling, with bribery, segregation of the sexes, bullying cousins and grandmas that lick your eyeballs.
Volume 1 was really good, the drawing could be called cute, but there is a lot of dark humor and just darkness in general (the puppy scenes were disturbing). Well worth the read for graphic novel fans. And if you aren't a fan, try it anyway!
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