The last time I cried while reading a book was a decade ago when the final Harry Potter book was released and the words, ‘Here lies Dobby, a Free Elf’ were carved on stone atop a child sized burial mound. Ten years later, I found a work that moved me to tears through a non-fiction that only aims to narrate the staggeringly grim world we live in.
Joe Sacco brings out every little detail in one epic of his work, Palestine: every face, every word and every emotion detailed in the book is so well expressed and so well disguised as a passer by, a passing remark and a motion to be forgotten about. Yet they stay on- haunting the readers, ringing in our ears and singing their despair for us to hear over and over again.
I’d picked up this book a couple of months earlier, intending to finish it. But my lack of knowledge about the Palestine-Israel conflict screamed out to me at every page, every tile. It made me so uncomfortable that I dropped it altogether, deciding that I’d read an Introduction to Palestine- Israel Conflict by Gregory Harms to educate myself first. That… never happened. I read a few pages, skimmed through a few chapters and read up on Wikipedia to satisfy the mood-swings of my curiosity and calm my ignorance induced panic.
I picked this book up again this week and found it to be a work of art that stands easily alongside the titanic shadows of Maus and Persepolis- both books I had thoroughly enjoyed earlier. You don’t need a lot of prior knowledge to venture into this one, the author clearly knows the ignorance of his readers and has handled it here kindly, politely.
The story- if we could call it that- is a loose narration of the events and scenes as experienced by the author in Palestine and they paint a dramatic picture. We notice ourselves (alongside the author) first struggling to accept the pain Palestinians suffer through everyday. Later, just as the author does- we settle to accept it. It still aches, it still pains when an old orphaned mother talks about her son jailed and her daughter-in-law deported, but we’re too broken to feel the crushing blow again. That’s what I felt, exactly mimicking Sacco’s crude character.
By drawing himself to be a story-thirsty, fame-craving journalist, Joe Sacco does us a favour of allowing us to feel like the better human being every now and then. It allows us the cruel, tiny satisfaction of not being as bad, as being the bigger person. This realization hit me only towards the end of the book, and once again I gaped at the intricacy and planning this book would have taken to complete.
There are a few pages and a few panels that I know I will carry with me forever, ones that left an impact I haven’t yet entirely dealt with and I couldn’t help but share just a few here.
A panel that left me as bewildered as the author himself is made, right here:
A page that made me panic more about being unaware, and resolve to never relate to the apathy the speaker here boasts from with her all her gloried privilege and unmentioned ignorance.
One of the many many pages that took me to the brink of tears.
I would share a lot more but I’d end up stealing from your experience of reading the book if you haven’t already. It is a magnificent, devastating read, and one that I know I’d carry with me forever.
– Swathi Chandrasekaran
Here’s the book on Goodreads
Also- I’m always on the look-out for readers on Goodreads so if you’re on the site and you update regularly please do add me so we can mutually follow each other’s reads. Here’s my profile.
Perplexed Potatoes 