Drawing the strip: How graphic novels depict the Arab world today

In recent years, graphic novels have become increasingly popular in Arab countries and among Palestinians. "Once the experience is aesthetic, it's easier to look directly at harsh reality," says researcher Dekel Shay Shory.

An interview by Sheren Falah Saab, Gallery, Haaretz, published (Heb. & En.) August 2025.

At a library at the University of San Diego, there is a shelf labeled as graphic literature from the Middle East. It is full of comics from around the Arab world by authors who are almost unknown in Israel, including Leila Abdul-Razzaq, Iasmin Omar Ata and Joseph Kai.

"When I entered the library, I discovered several that I didn't know. Just like that," said literature researcher Dr. Dekel Shay Schory, who in recent years has been focusing on the field of graphic literature in Israel. But it was actually while she was in the United States, far from her home in Israel, that she first encountered the world of Arabic comics.

"I had to leave Israel to get to know that world at all. From that point, I began ordering books, reading, preparing Excel spreadsheets and via every creator, I became acquainted with other creators."

Comics for children have existed in the Arab world for more than 70 years. In the last decade, there has been a noticeable increase in works aimed at an adult audience, particularly since the start of the uprisings in Arab countries known as the Arab Spring. Comics have become an area where older creators deal with trauma, exile and gender. It is no longer just satirical comic strips in a newspaper, but graphic novels that penetrate the depths of the pent-up soul.

In her lecture entitled "A New Middle East" at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque last week at the Animix Tel Aviv festival, which marked its 25th anniversary, Schory presented the comics scene in the Middle East. "It's a very young field," she says. "It's really blossoming. The creators are looking at what's happening in Belgium, in France and in other places in Europe and want to create something similar but from their local point of view."

"After I discovered that shelf in San Diego, I was curious to discover what I really know about life in Tunis, in Algiers, and how Beirut looks," said Schory, who is also an editor of original literature at Israel's Kinneret Zmora-Bitan Dvir publishing house. "These creations opened an entirely new world for me."

In recent years, Arab comics have closed the gap with the West and have produced more significant works. "You can see graphic novels that, as they do all over the world, deal with complex subjects, some of which are specific to national identity or the local challenges of the writer, but some simply describe adolescence, dealing with illness or a love story."

Egyptian comics creator Magdy El-Shafee is considered a graphic novel pioneer in the Arab world, rising to prominence thanks to "Metro," a graphic novel published in 2008, which reflects the situation in Cairo at the beginning of the 21st century.

The plot follows a father, a young programmer frustrated by the economic and political situation. After he robs a bank, he flees into the Cairo subway system, which becomes a setting for grim observation of social anger, corruption and the younger generation's existential distress. The dynamic and rhythmic illustrations in a black-and-white style take their inspiration from dark films and correspond with the Western comic tradition.

Shortly after "Metro" was published, the Egyptian authorities banned the book, citing that it "harms public morals" and "contains false information." El-Shafee was tried and fined, and all of the copies of the book were confiscated from stores in Egypt. That censorship turned "Metro" into the first Arab graphic novel to gain international prominence, and it was translated into several languages, including English and French.

After the 2011 revolution in Egypt, El-Shafee was one of the founders of the independent comics magazine Tok Tok, which provided a platform for young creators in Cairo and for pointed criticism over the political and social situation. In an interview with the Egyptian daily Al-Ahram that year, El-Shafee said his graphic novel reflected some of the issues that led to the country's popular uprising.

"Consciousness of the government censor, embedded in institutions and people, simply was incapable of being contained," he said. "The legal expression 'harming public morals' served as a kind of cover, a sort of mechanism to calm the public and protect it, allegedly, while it permitted the government system to find constitutional grounds for filing an indictment."

The Arab Spring brought with it a sense of elevation. The public believed that it was creating change. A young generation of creators broke through the traditional boundaries of the media and introduced a fresh artistic style to the discourse that draws its inspiration from street culture.

In Tunisia, artist Othman Selmi produced a graphic novel entitled "Spark," which documents the beginning of the revolution in that country. Through his illustrations, he portrays frustrated young people who took to the streets over rising prices, growing unemployment and the serious economic crisis.

The plot centers around the true story of Mohamed Bouazizi, a young man who was trying to earn a living selling fruits and vegetables at an illegal stand. When he was evicted from the stand by the authorities, he set himself on fire and died of his wounds – an incident that became a symbol of the 2010 uprising.

It is not only demonstrations that provided the trigger in the Arab world for the development of comics. Internet access, smartphones and social media transformed them into a way of bypassing censorship. Instead of waiting for a publisher, artists could post their work online to directly reach a wide audience – while sometimes still maintaining their anonymity.

In Syria, for example, a Facebook page, Comic4Syria, was established to provide a platform for comics in the country. "In 2012, a year into the Syrian uprising and growing violence in their country, a group of young Syrian comic artists decided to gather their voices together. They kept their work anonymous in order to comment on war, politics and society through their comic strips. The result was the online collective Comic4Syria," Syrian journalist Bahija Haddad recounted in a 2021 article in the digital magazine Syria Untold.

Through their comics, they described the force that the government had used against the citizens, the conditions in detention and sometimes small moments in the lives of Syrian families – including parents' concerns for children who had been taken away by the authorities and were deemed missing. The magazine was active for four consecutive years, and all of its content is still available online.

In Lebanon, the comics scene awakened in 2009. A group of Lebanese living inside and outside the country decided to establish Samandal, the first comics magazine there geared for adults, which is available in Arabic, English and French and is still running.

One of the magazine's editors and creators is Lena Merhej, who presented the story "Yoghurt and Jam: Or How My Mother Became Lebanese." In it, she describes the journey that led her German mother to work as a doctor during the Lebanese civil war and to marry a Lebanese man. Throughout the story, Merhej deals with the complexity of a hybrid identity. In 2023, the book was translated into English and won a PEN award.

In an interview with the ArabLit culture magazine, which focuses on Arabic literature in translation, Merhej said, "I was part of the post-war [Lebanese civil war] generation that had to be a pioneering generation for all the things we didn't have during the war."

However, she added, "the activities around comics were still lagging from 2002 to 2007 with no manifestation (workshops or publications) other than in newspapers, while the means and the need to create a community for comics were there. Samandal as a community was made from necessity: first to create a space for comics to thrive in and second to release the author in me and the artists in Samandal."

After October 7, Merhej shared a drawing on her Instagram account in September 2024, showing a child closing his eyes, hugging his legs to his chest with red puddles all around, reminiscing about the First Lebanon War. "I smell blood here, I smell hell, my body remembers 1982 and the stench," she wrote in the drawing.

Palestinian comic books

Schory's main focus is on graphic literature from the Palestinian arena. During the conversation, she recalls the graphic novel "Power Born of Dreams: My Story in Palestine" by Mohammad Sabaaneh, published in English in 2021. Sabaaneh, who spent five months in an Israeli prison in 2013 for conspiring with a hostile organization, is a Ramallah-based Palestinian artist known for his political cartoons and for comic drawings focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As a comics artist, Sabaaneh reacts to the current situation in Gaza by posting illustrations on his Instagram account. Recently, he posted a drawing showing a child holding a pot, addressing the hunger felt by children waiting in line for the Takia (a communal kitchen for displaced persons). The Arabic inscription behind the child says "Aajel" ("urgent").

Another drawing criticizes the media for turning famine cases into a news story, with an illustration showing a father holding his son, saying "Jouaan" ("famine") next to a journalist documenting the scene. Another shows a sack of flour next to a soldier who is boobytrapping the area – a reaction to the chaos around

On her way back from the U.S. to Israel last year, Schory was questioned for having Sabaaneh's book in her possession. "All the books I have at home are books that I brought with me from the U.S., but Sabaaneh's book is the one that drew the attention of security personnel, who detained me for security questioning in New York," she says.

"The security man asked me whether I had visited Ramallah or was acquainted with the author. But then he also asked, and I think he really didn't understand, 'Why are you, as a researcher of Israeli literature, interested in Palestinian literature?' This only brought into focus a sense I had that it's important that this book and others arrive in Israel with me and become part of my lectures and classes."

She stresses that "In comic books, one can show very difficult subject matters, such as famine, genocide and sexual assault, but it's different than seeing things directly on video or in still photographs. Something about comics makes it more distant, perhaps sometimes softer, allowing people to contain the pain."

Sabaaneh's book is a prime example of this, as Schory explains. "Few people, in Israel or abroad, dare to look directly at what has been happening in jails in Israel and the territories. It's a terrible reality, very hard to look at, but it's so important that we know. Once the experience is also aesthetic and indirect, with the illustrations all very impressive linoleum engravings, it's possible to look straight at it, even to identify with someone other than oneself."

In Gaza, many graphic artists focus more on illustration than comics. One such artist was Mahasen al-Khateeb. After October 7, al-Khateeb, an illustrator and animator, tried to continue to create art under fire. On October 18, 2024, she was killed by shelling in Shujaiyeh at the age of 31.

Italian illustrator Gianluca Constantini eulogized her on his Channeldraw website, saying she was "known for her social engagement and her ability to portray through art the suffering and aspirations of the Palestinian people."

On October 17 of last year, one day before she was killed, she posted a video on her social media platform X account, writing: "Difficult nights." There were sounds of shooting and shelling in the background.

She also posted a drawing showing a young man surrounded by burning flames, based on an October 14 incident in which four people were killed, including a woman and a child, as a result of a blaze that broke out in the parking lot of Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. IDF International Spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani explained at the time that the blaze was caused by secondary explosions as a result of an Israeli strike and that the incident was still under investigation.

Schory recalls two additional Palestinian creators who live in the U.S.: Leila Abdelrazaq, author of the 2015 Baddawi comic book, and Marguerite Dabaie, author of the 2018 book The Hookah Girl. "Both are third generation Palestinian-Americans, and they write about their divided identity and about what it is like to be Palestinian in the U.S.

Their social commentary is not directed at the Arab world, but at the way in which American society has been viewing them as members of a public of evil people, crooks and terrorists," she says.

She says Dabaie's work "stands out for its use of humor; for instance, she draws a doll that should be dressed up, according to stereotype, as a Muslim woman, as a terrorist gunwoman or as an exotic woman from the Middle East. So, she has a lot of criticism about the way Americans see her as a foreigner, and in this case, comics allow her to joke about something she feels very deeply about."

These books, Schory emphasizes, "were not meant for audiences in Mideastern countries, but for a wider audience, including me."

Why are you interested mainly in graphic novels from the Palestinian arena?

"I feel it's closest to me, and I'm also interested in how we appear to Palestinian creators. Israelis, especially in the form of the Israeli military, are in almost every book.

This is, of course, true for Sabaaneh, but also for Abdelrazaq when she recounts her family's Nakbah story – her family was expelled from the village of Safsaf to refugee camps in Lebanon. When she illustrates her family, their faces are drawn in loving, detailed lines. The Israeli soldiers, by contrast, will always be a black armed silhouette with a wide evil grin."

In wartime reality, especially in Gaza these days, Palestinian comic artists are hardly known and have little expression in the world.

"It's very hard to create graphic novels in wartime reality because the process requires editing and publishing, you need your own room, you need a desk. In comics, as in any art form, there's some urgency to publish before it's too late, but this also takes time, resources, free time and a connection to the world. I'm sure there is, or at least there has been, illustrated work in Gaza that I wish we would come to know in Israel."