The graphic novel has shown a special sensitivity to recount the lives of those who have left their country of origin. In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi brilliantly evokes her childhood in Iran. In The Arab of the Future, Riad Sattouf finely describes her journey through the Middle East. It is inevitable to keep Satrapi and Sattouf in mind when reading Hakim's Odyssey (Bruguera), the first volume of an ambitious narrative project that should not go unnoticed by anyone looking for a human story that is also an honest and accurate portrait of our weather.
Hakim's Odyssey reconstructs the story of a Syrian refugee from his native country to France. His author, cartoonist and screenwriter Fabien Toulemé, interviewed Hakim over several sessions to reconstruct his story and shape this comic book. Toulemé adopts the same attitude and the same rigor as a journalist before a report, the only difference is that he expresses himself in cartoons. That reporting tone means that, once we start reading the book, the referent that comes to mind is no longer so much Satrapi or Sattouf as Guy Delisle, author of drawn reports like Pyongyang or Jerusalem Chronicles. With his work, Toulemé confirms the good relationship that reporting in the form of comics has in France, where there are magazines dedicated to this type of work.
Seeking a personal approach, but taking advantage of the path opened by these precedents, Toulemé signs in Hakim's Odyssey an emotional comic narrated with great intelligence. A journalistic work that allows us to understand a complex and often ignored reality: that of refugees who must flee their country in search of better living conditions or, simply, in order to preserve their lives. Hakim warns him in the book: “Anyone can become a refugee... All it takes is for your country to fall apart. And either you fall with him, or you leave.
Toulemé uses a clear and kind drawing, refined but not simple, because he shows great skill in the composition of the vignettes when necessary. The line is sweet and rounded. The color is practically reduced to two: blue and an earthy ocher that seems to evoke the arid land where he was born. Red is reserved for the interviewer, as if remarking that it is an element foreign to what is being told. The simplicity of the style makes the story closer and avoids overloading it with drama or truculence that could seem faked. However, despite its kind drawing, the story does not hide the harshness of Hakim's experience or soften it: it simply communicates it in such a direct and frank way that it is impossible not to empathize.
And what Hakim tells is a story that has its roots in a religious conflict between Sunnis, Shiites and Alawites, which erupted with the rise to power of the dictator Hafez el Assad, father of the current Syrian president, and the 2011 revolts against the regime. The book recounts the denunciations of the citizens, the indiscriminate requisitions of the government, the tortures and the summary imprisonments. Also the murders of protesters who ask for more freedom. In a short time, everything falls apart and Hakim understands that the only way out is to flee, even if that means leaving the family and risking an uncertain future.
Fleeing from his country, the odyssey begins: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey... The changes confirm how difficult it is to put down roots outside of one's own country. Forced to accept any job for a paltry salary, Hakim is perceived as a nuisance or even a threat. Every time he changes country, the reason is the same: to work, live with dignity and have a family.
