We are at a moment when putting the words “Arab” and “future” together in the same sentence seems precarious.
Riad Sattouf’s graphic memoir, “The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978–1984,” examines both the author’s childhood in the first six years of life, when he lived in France, Libya and Syria, and the shortcomings of Arab nationalism.
Mr. Sattouf, based in France, is the author of many comic books and series, and is a former cartoonist with Charlie Hebdo magazine. In 2009, Mr. Sattouf directed his first film, “The French Kissers,” which was nominated for three César Awards, the national film award in France. “The Arab of the Future” is his first work to appear in English translation.
Metropolitan Books ($26).
Mr. Sattouf’s father Abdul-Razak is Syrian, his mother French. They met at the Sorbonne; after they married and Riad was born, his father relocated the family to Tripoli, Libya, where he took a position as a university professor. Libya under Gadhafi is Kafkaesque. The government provides free housing to all, but houses have no exterior locks because “[t]he Leader gave all citizens the right to live in unoccupied houses.” The family returns from a walk to find all of their belongings outside. The government provides food to its citizens in odd combinations: grape juice and green beans, or nothing but green bananas for weeks.
Mr. Sattouf draws both himself and his father with puffy hair and outsized noses. His style of drawing seems perfectly matched for the book’s self-deprecating sense of humor. Untranslated Arabic dialogue peppers the text and emphasizes little Riad’s confusion at not being able to understand Arabic.
The further we get into the book, the more problematic a character the father becomes. He accuses others of bigotry but is unable to see the same faults in himself.
The father “believed in pan-Arabism. ... He thought Arab men had to educate themselves to escape from religious dogma.” Despite these goals, Riad notices his father’s inability to find any fault with any Sunni, and his lack of tolerance toward Christians: “Christians? Pfft. What’s the point of being Christian in a Muslim country? It’s just a provocation. ... Just convert to Islam and you’ll be fine,” he claims.
Some memoirs might lampoon such bigotry, but Mr. Sattouf never adjudicates. The father’s narrow-mindedness is met with curious stares by his son, raised eyebrows by the mother, and illustrates the gap between how we imagine ourselves and how others see us.
“The Arab of the Future” pulls readers deep into the sensory experience of childhood. The book’s highest achievement is the ability to portray the tacit power structures that govern family and nation through the eyes of a child, with all of a child’s parental worship and bafflement.
Each place of residence is held up to scrutiny. Mr. Sattouf skewers the unstructured French schools. Rural Syrian children are largely unattended and defecate in public roads. Syria under Hafez al-Assad is corrupt; the public suffer food shortages and rampant poverty.
At the end of the book, Riad and his mother witness a senseless act of violence toward a puppy in Syria. When the author’s mother tries to stop the violence, people laugh at her.
This scene, under any circumstance, would be a difficult pill to swallow, but in light of the Syrian civil war, massive migration, and Islamophobia, I wonder could it actually confirm Western assumptions of Arab barbarism. Could it be read by some as evidence Islam is “incompatible” with the West? That Arabs are fundamentally different (read: less civilized) than Americans?
This is medicine — and a risk — worth taking. “The Arab of the Future” begs for a more complex and compassionate understanding of an area of the world that’s all too often the target of misunderstanding and fear.
Julie Hakim Azzam is currently researching comic-style novels, memoirs, and journalism about the Middle East.
First Published: January 10, 2016, 10:24 p.m.