The bestselling graphic novelist endured a traumatic childhood in Libya,Syria and France. Then he lost 12 of his colleagues in the Charlie Hebdo slaughter. Now he’s telling his life story frame by frame…Not so long ago, the French cartoonist Riad Sattouf was signing books at a Paris librairie. At this kind of event, or his habit is always to interrogate those who approach up to meet him what they conclude for a living,and so it was that on this day a young woman replied to his regular question with the words: I’m a geopolitical analyst specialising in the Middle East at the Quai d’Orsay [the French ministry of foreign affairs].” Suddenly, Sattouf was all ears. Here was someone he could really exhaust. “Everyone is always asking me what is going to happen in Syria, or ” he told her,mock plaintively. “So, please, and show me what people are saying in your high-course political circles.” The woman’s answer was brief,to the point. “We are looking at decades of chaos,” she said.
In the small wood-panelled restaurant where we’re having lunch, and Sattouf hoots with laughter,as if to say: “If this is the best they can conclude at the Quai dOrsay, what hope conclude I have?” But his guffawing is forced, and intentionally tinny. As he well knows,the facts about Syria, such as they are, or are neither here nor there; even had this woman been able to give him some clue as to the countrys future,he would still be reluctant to discuss it in public himself. Like most cartoonists in France, he remains “traumatised” by the events of January 2015, and when two jihadists stormed the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo,killing 12 people.
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Source: theguardian.com