ABSTRACT
Lebanese cartoonist Zeina Abirached’s autobiographical novel A Game for Swallows. To Die, To Leave, To Re- turn (originally published in French in 2007 and then in English in 2012) covers the events from one troubled night during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). At a time when Beirut is divided into two parts (Christian and Muslim) by a so-called ‘green zone’ Zeina Abirached’s parents live in the Christian part, where their apartment is slowly reduced to one room where the neighbours also gather to feel safe during the bombings. On the night in question, Zeina’s parents decide to take a perilous journey only three blocks away, to visit the children’s grandmother. When they do not return on time, the neighbours gather at the apartment to take care of the children, play games, put on mini-performances and tell stories. This pleasant atmosphere is punctured by the noise of bombs and the fear that snipers may have hit yet another friend or family member.
This chapter examines Abirached’s aesthetic and narrative choices when representing not only acts of violence, but also the constant threat of violence and the way it permeates everyday life and transforms the geography of the city and the home. Abirached constructs a graphic narrative where she successfully shows both how the prolonged state of exception that was the Lebanese Civil War fragmented the architecture of the city and the home, and how a community in mourning coalesced against a common threat. The intimacy and warmth of this community—whose members all lost someone they loved during the conflict—shows both the importance of forging bonds of affection during times of crisis, and the frustrating failure of affection to provide actual protection against harm. Abirached’s panels, full of repetitions and dark spaces, characters frozen in tense expectation, show that the indoor space of the community is not ‘safe’ but ‘more or less safe’ as the grandmother puts it. Abirached’s style, strongly influenced by Lebanese calligraphy, contributes greatly to the recreation of the personal space of the home, populated by objects of sentimental value that also need to be protected from destruction, and whose memory she tries to preserve.
