These books carry the stories of people who have had to make the difficult choice of fleeing their own homes in order to find refuge or asylum. These words, which mean safety and protection, have been used to identify them – as refugees, asylum-seekers – and sadly also to demonise them.
Their journeys are far from safe, their future far from protected, and yet they risk their lives because there is no other option.
No one leaves home, Warsan Shire writes, unless home is the mouth of a shark….
STILL ALIVE by Safdar Ahmed
Published by Twelve Panel Press, 2021
This story starts at the gates of Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, some 27km west of Sydney. If you have never lived in Australia, you may be unfamiliar with names like Villawood or Christmas Island, or Manus and Nauru. But these names – synonymous with the onshore and offshore centres that indefinitely ‘process’ and detain refugees and asylum seekers – crop up every now and again in public discourse. It’s a long-fought debate between the policy-makers who work on a rhetoric of fear, hate and othering,
and the members of the community who believe it’s a pretty messed-up way to treat people who are simply seeking refuge from the un-live-able conditions of their homeland.
Safdar himself is very much a part of this graphic novel. He has drawn his own experiences visiting Villawood as part of the Refugee Art Project, and not only introduces us to the people he befriended, but gets us to understand the twisted system that keeps them there.
I think it’s truly remarkable how he is able to present a storyline that deals with historical facts, evolving government policies and personal reflection, while still maintaining the very human narrative of the detainees.
To me, the story is laid out like a ‘cracked mirror,’ the art moving through different expressive styles :
I pick up a shard and it shows me the bland interiors of Villawood, or the guano-stripped grounds of Nauru,
another teaches me the dangerous weight of words like ‘boat people.’ ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘country hoppers,’
and the policies that cement the dehumanisation of innocent people.
In one, I see the splinters of a life in Afghanistan, Iran, Sri Lanka, etc …
and in another I see the full force of that life, compressed within the walls of a prison they were sentenced to with no crime, and no release date in sight.
The biggest pieces were the stories of the refugees. Safdar mentions all the characters by name and brings us their stories with stark black-and-white illustrations. Each time, I learn of some aspect of the world that I had not thought of 2 seconds before, but will now stay with me for a long time. I learned about the different places to hide in a moving truck, the heart-stopping fear of being caught in a stormy sea, the way that bureaucracy can pummel your spirit with tiny little annoyances that are designed to keep freedom at bay.
Some characters we meet briefly, like Khadija who can’t study for her HSC because her computer access is limited, or Mazhar who ponders upon the untangling and drawing of knots. Some characters we get to know more intimately, like Haider whose journey was so involved, who escaped made so many risky crossings and survived in so many countries it was as if he had lived half a dozen lives by the time he was a young adult.
Other stories, like the one of Ahmad Ali Jafari, who this book is dedicated to, was of a life cut short within the detention centre itself.
By the end of the book, with the pieces of the mirror put together, you get a view of the bigger picture. How lives are precious, intricate things and how a system based on racism and hate can be as crooked and cracked as our newly-assembled looking glass. But perhaps with ourselves reflected in its surface, no matter how shattered it had been in the past, there is a way to pick up the pieces and make things right for the future.
Still Alive has won many accolades and deserves to be read and studied in homes, libraries and schools across the country.
Safdar continues to make black & white comics that portray the fraught, inhumane policies of the politicians engaged in the current genocide, all the while reminding us to keep our sights on the mirror, still human and still alive.
When Still Alive won the CBCA Eve Pownall Award in mid 2022, it immediately sold out from all my local bookshops. I was upset that I hadn’t been able to get a copy before we moved abroad later that year. Recently I went back to Australia and my itinerary included low-key bookshop drop-ins to coincide with my latest picture book. After signing copies at the lovely Readings Kids in Carlton, I went across the road to Readings proper. When I saw Still Alive on its shelves, I grabbed it straightaway, and proudly took it along with a couple of books of poetry to the counter.
I asked the smiling bookseller if there was a bathroom nearby. He said there was one across the street, then exclaimed, ‘I published this book!’ as he held up Still Alive. He said it was a venture with two friends, and when I mentioned who my latest book was published with, he said, ‘Do you know Erica Wagner?’ Yes, I said, bewildered – I was on my way to visit her at the Allen & Unwin offices next. So it was that I later sat with Erica, who published the books I had just signed at Readings Kids, with a box of treats I had bought in the chocolaterie whose bathrooms Bernard, the bookseller, recommended I use, listening to her story of how Twelve Panel Press came to be (made up of herself, Bernard Caleo, and Elizabeth McFarlane), with Safdar’s book as their first, triumphant publication.
I told you this series was about connections.
Still Alive can be purchased in Australia at these bookstores.
THEN AND NOW by Datsun Tran
Published by Slingshot Books, 2024
For the debut release of this ‘tiny radical publishing house,’ Slingshot Books have championed fine artist Datsun Tran to produce a beautiful book about a Vietnamese refugee family, ‘based on many true stories,’ he says, ‘from people … who have had to rebuild entire worlds.’
On the cover, a lantern is passed between the former and present versions of the same child. The rich sepia and electric blue will echo throughout the book, signaling scenes of ‘then’ and ‘now’.
It’s not easy to turn fine art into a picture book narrative, but to me, Datsun nailed it in a very impressive way. His illustrations, done with a mix of inks and hints of gouache, always centres the child characters. How does he make those childlike gestures come alive in a monochrome painting? How do their emotions shine against a background of the same colour? Their expressions – worried, curious, quick – are made out by spare lines and surfaces that catch the light, and in some spreads, a little extra colour draws the eyes to an orange, a candle, an orchid.
The text is sparse and is confined to the upper blank panels of the book, but is so very clever. With the alternating prompts of ‘then’ and ‘now,’ Datsun uses simple language to move through the unsaid.
On the sepia pages – persecution, hunger, violence, escape.
And on the blue pages – friendship, peace, safety, plenty.
Then and Now is trim, even for a picture book, and can be read quite quickly. A slower reading, however, allows you to soak in – as the mulberry paper has – the mix of inks and sacrifice laid down and wiped away, the hints of gouache and courage, the hardships and renewed hope from the point of view of a child. And see, spread by spread, how the world can be coloured so differently, and how it’s so worth seeking that bright electric blue.
This book makes me think of the quote by Arundhati Roy above. If ‘then’ was possible, it was because of a set of systems that crushed and oppressed people’s spirit and joy.
So therefore, ‘now’ can be just as possible, if there is courage enough in the world for those systems to change.
‘On a quiet day,’ she says, ‘I can hear her breathing.’
Stepping back from these pages, and holding this book in my hands, I feel compelled to include the part of publishing that we rarely get to see. The release of ‘Then and Now’ is also, in the most poignant way, the birth of a publishing house. Slingshot Books was formed on a set of revolutionary values, but also from the deep love of children’s books. And because I am lucky enough to have met the wonderful publisher, Tess, I was witness to this love and dedication as she passed me this copy, one of many that she had wrapped herself and delivered to the community on publication day ‘Kiki-style.’
As we poured over it, I saw how so many creative choices were made and nurtured – the challenge of the medium, the narrow format of the book, the well-chosen words. I saw how important it was to honour story and creativity. I saw the need for more books that invited readers to read and think deeply.
And in the glow on Tess’ face, I saw the human joy of book-making.
Then and Now can be purchased in Australia at these bookstores.
AS LONG AS THE LEMON TREES GROW by Zoulfa Katouh
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers 2022
This book was published a few years ago to immediate, widespread and sustained acclaim. I believe this is because of the power of Zoulfa’s storytelling, who takes us into the life and inner thoughts of a Syrian girl named Salama.
Salama is an 18-year-old pharmacy student, or she should be. In the first pages we see grappling with the fresh memory of an operation she was not qualified to do. But Homs is battered by war, and the hospital no longer has the luxury of expert staff.
Salama has lost everything and everyone except her pregnant sister-in-law Layla. She spends exhausting hours at the hospital, reciting mantras of herbal remedies to steady herself through the constant stream of trauma, then scurries back to their abandoned building where Layla hides – after a close call, it is too dangerous for her to be outside where a missile can strike at any minute, especially in her condition. They have to leave – of course, they do – but Salama delays asking the sleazy people smuggler at work. If she leaves, who will help the senior doctors treat the wounded and dying? As she struggles with her conscience, we’re introduced to the spectre of Salama’s mental illness in the form of Khawf, a sneering hallucination who taunts her in her doubts.
Zoulfa’s portrayal of war is stark and haunting. She juxtaposes a real sense of wartime danger with the vibrant dreams and layers of youth. Salama and Layla talk about happier times, about colours, painting and imagination, and centre-stage in this book is Zoulfa’s unabashed appreciation of Studio Ghibli. All of this draws us so deeply into the lives of Syrians living through war in a way that the 2-moinute blips on the news can never do.
Amidst the fighting and shelling, Salama meets Kenan, with whom she shares a surprising past. But what will the future spell for either of them? Will they lead each other into the light, or doom?
While the first 2 titles I shared tell the refugee story from the point of view of ‘after,’ As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow holds its narrative in the moment of war itself. Our characters are still meandering through ways to justify staying or going, still figuring out if there is an option to escape, still bargaining with death every single day. It truly brings home the theme – the anguish of fleeing from a place that you love, for the sake of living beyond the next attack.
I felt this novel is also important for its Muslim representation. Syria is a Muslim country and Salama and the other females characters dress modestly and wear hijab. It is not something that needed to be over-explained, it simply is, and is as natural as the mention of their five prayers a day, and as culturally authentic as the ‘halal’ love story between Salama and Kenan. This budding romance complicates everything, and yet feels like a refuge in the midst of hopelessness.
It’s designation as a young adult novel hasn’t stopped adults like myself from bawling our eyes out while reading this book in public spaces, so … let’s just say you have been warned.
The elements of this story hit hard everyday. Syria is still in the grip of a civil war, and now Palestine is front and centre in our minds. Just yesterday I attended an online session with Australian surgeons who had volunteered in Gaza. The images they shared and the tales they recounted were every bit as harrowing as the ones in this book.
Later that night I watched a news report of a capsized boat carrying asylum seekers off the Italian island of Lampedusa. The seven survivors were Syrian nationals. So I assume that the 21 missing were Syrian, too 💔
As Long As The Lemon Trees Grow can be purchased here.