Weaving a descriptive tapestry of war, a language composed of two fragile and precious threads : a review of the works of Zeina Abirached

Abstract

Beirut, an immensely historically and culturally rich city, can be described as a city of birth, destruction, and rebirth. Using comparative literature, I will be discussing how the works of Zeina Abirached use words and images to describe the people, places, and events of the civil war which occurred there in the 1970s and 80s. I will start by briefly describing each book. As this review progresses, I will focus on the individual as well as universal human behavior through graphic narration and storytelling. This is essential to the understanding of the totality of the situation in the text. The question to be analysed is how she—as an author of comic books—writes about the Mediterranean (in particular, Beirut) through the study of its characters as well as their stories and origins. Zeina Abirached was born in Beirut, in 1981, when the civil war had already begun; she was already 10 years old by the time it ended in 1990, and her childhood memories were shaped by living through its horrific events. Going on to study graphic arts and commercial design at the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA), she was awarded the top prize at the International Comic Book Festival in Beirut in 2002 for her first graphic novel Beyrouth-Catharsis. She moved to Paris in 2004, where she attended the National School of Decorative Arts. From among her illustrated books, I chose three: A Game for Swallows: To Die, To Leave, To Return, I Remember Beirut, and Le piano oriental.