One early evening in December, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad run away as the rebel forces approached Damascus. In France, three days later, one of the country's most watched TV news channels turned into a cartoon for expert opinion on the news.
“Did you think it could happen so fast?” Asked a cartoonist, Riad Sattouf, whose smiling face appeared on a giant video wall on a bulletin board for the channel, BFMTV.
In the last ten years, Mr. Sattouf, 46, one of the greatest literary stars of France, thanks mainly to his magistracy, “Arab of the future” series graphic memories. Over six volumes, the series tells the story of Mr. Sattouf's childhood, split between the Middle East and France, and the breakdown of a marriage between his French mother and his Syrian father.
The books – in a genre known as “bands dessinées” in France – have sold more than three million copies and have been translated into some 23 languages. Although said to be shot from a child's perspective and in a deceptively simple style, they touch on some of the questions that arise about the compatibility of the West and the Arab world. They are also subtle, but filled with a shiver of social satire.
For Mr. Sattouf, this posture interprets not only his art, but the world. In his television appearance in December, he told viewers that the fall of Mr al-Assad was a moment of “great hope” for Syria. But when asked to predict what might happen next, he cautioned that he was keen to see things “extremely pessimistically”.
“Fingers are crossed,” he said, “that one terrible dictatorship will not be replaced by another.”
Born in France, Mr. Sattouf grew up enameled by the brutally honest and sometimes offensive work of American cartoons. Robert scrap. His work also offers readers an intimate look at characters living through pivotal historical moments, including in the comic book tradition. “The Mouse” by Art Spiegelman and “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrata.
For years, Mr. Sattouf wrote a cartoon strip for the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. A few months before January 2015, the magazine's offices stopped contributing when it was targeted by a deadly terrorist attack for its depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. Mr. Sattouf did not make Muhammad cartoons; The fun, sometimes depressing, scenes of everyday life encountered on the streets and in the subway in Paris are directed.
In “The Arab of the Future,” Mr. Sattouf, from a small rural village in Syria, earned a doctorate in history from the Sorbonne University, and paints a complex portrait of a woman dating a woman who becomes Mr. Sattouf's mother. The cartoon also traces his father's slide, his constant bitterness toward the West over the years, and anti-democratic Arab strongmen.
Some of the most arresting pages in the series describe Mr. Sattouf's experiences as a child in his father's village of Ter Maaleh. In the 1980s, he moved there, though still in grade school, and lived there during the dictatorial rule of Mr. Al-Assad's father. Hafez al-Assad.
Mr. Sattouf's memories of Ter Maaleh are vivid and daring. The French journalist Stéphane Jarno recently saturated the images of the city with “a few buildings surrounded by emptiness, blind faith and power struggles, probably too violently, too violently.”
His willingness to pull no punches with his experience in Syria puts Mr. Sattouf in a loose but important category of French public figures with roots in the Arab world. This can be a bad position.
Algerian author Kamel Dooud, who now lives in France, recently won France's most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for a novel that deals with the complex history of the Algerian civil war. Mr. Daoud, who has openly discussed sensitive religious issues in the past, was the subject death threat from an Algerian Imam. Recently there is Mr. Daoud doubted Remained with the elements of the French for “Not being a good Arab, the one who is in a constant state of the brave”.
Somehow, Mr. Sattouf endured this fate. He has been a critical darling of the French news media since at least the mid-2000s, when he called his comics “sexual and provocatively funny.” At the same time, he said in a recent interview that he had never faced any pushback from Islamist groups.
“Never,” he said, smiling. “Because my comics are so good.”
His line flourished with humorless banter.
Mr. Sattouf met in an interview in Rennes, the capital of Brittany, at the end of last month. Both impromptu and serious-minded, in an interview between the French and a working Englishman, he said he learned from “Seinfeld”.
Since Mr. Al-Assad's flight, he has insisted in many interviews that he is not a Middle East expert. “It's too complicated for me,” he said. “My books are about Syria, but in my books I tell the stories of my family. I tell my memory, from the point of view of a child.”
Books are a refuge from childhood, like drawings and cartoons, and constantly cartoons.
When he was 12, he left Ter Maaleh, returning to his parents' marriage with his two younger brothers and his mother. Since then, he has not returned to Syria.
In France, he said, he found a freedom of expression very important to the artist. Some French leaders watched with concern as Mr. al-Assad was admitted. In 2008, Nicolas Sarkozy, then President of France, made a decision in 2008 Invite Mr. al-Assad to Paris For Bastille Day celebrations.
As for the verses of the Syrian regime's atrocities, Mr. Sattouf said he felt a sense of validation.
“We see that the story I told in my books was closer to reality than what you can see in the media,” he said.
Mohammed-Nour ot otu, 22, a French-Syrian activist and writer granted asylum in France Civil war in SyriaHe remembers reading “The Arab of the Future” at the age of 15. He said Mr Sattouf's negative portrayal of Syria could reinforce stereotypes among readers who only see a “very closed Syria” as a picture.
But Mr Hayed also praised the series, which he said influenced him when he wrote his first novel set during the war. As “Arab of the Future”, Mr Hayed said it was written from the perspective of a child.
In addition to writing The Arab of the Future, Mr. Sattouf directed two feature films. “Beautiful children“Or 'The French Kissers,'” a comedy of one title, won the César award for best first film. Late last year, “The Arab of the Future” series of “I, Fadi, Stolen Brother, Stolen Brother,” Mr. Sattouf, He said he was taken from France when his brother was a child by his father, Mr. Sattouf described it as a kidnapping.
When asked to fill in the full story of what happened to his brother, Mr. Sattouf said he did not want to give away the rest of the story, not wanting it to be published in a later volume.
The first four volumes of the “Arab” series have been translated into English; A US-based comic book publisher plans to publish the final volume as well as versions of new series. Many French bookstores now feature large cardboard displays of Mr. Sattouf's books, along with a photo of his face. Outside Rennes Train Station recently, a middle-aged man recognized Mr. Sattouf and ran over to shake his hand.
French media continue to turn to him for information about the fall of the Assad regime.
Mr Sattouf told the regional newspaper Ouest-France that the democratic elections had brought “great political will, but also international support, in a country ravaged by 13 years of civil war”.
“A certain paranoia, let's say, a mistrust that became part of my personality,” he told the conservative newspaper Le Figaro of living under Assad in Syria.
He also spoke in the LA Croix about returning to Syria one day.
“But this can only happen in a peaceful and democratic Syria,” he said. “Now it is still a distant and fanciful prospect.”