Beirut

September 1, 2024
This collection of Rima's three graphic novels from across two decades rambles through the streets of Lebanon's capital, a city driven by politics, war, and family. An introduction by the translators frames Rima's work in the tradition of the flaneur, a wandering and enraptured observer of a city, and contextualizes Rima's connection to the titular city as a visitor rather than a resident, coming to the bustling metropolis with hungry eyes. The first volume opens with the dialogue of two old intimate acquaintances reuniting after decades of separate lives, reminiscing about a political movement that electrified the moment but has been mostly forgotten as the city weathered decades of war and rapacious commerce, becoming mired in corruption and mountains of literal waste. The opening lines of white text on black give way to rich, expressive patches of ink carved up with stark white forms and fine lines, building a city through its architectural geometry and imperfections and through the body language of a street vendor negotiating his cart against heavy traffic and a young refugee shot dead in the street. The panels click along like a film reel, narrated by a Hakawati, a storyteller who speaks through the entire cast: cab driver, singer, author surrogate, mother and daughter in search of the sea, Greek chorus of trash shovelers questioning the nature of the narrative in which they find themselves. The three volumes grow progressively personal, and the art becomes more representational, stiffening into detailed figures cut out against their backgrounds like a black box stage play, delivering elegiac dialogue that dissects existence. All three volumes favor atmosphere over narrative as they wryly but earnestly ponder the refugee's wandering out of time, a mother's long-ago involvement in a movement, the machinery of political change, and historical amnesia. Opaque but arresting.

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September 30, 2024
Lebanese artist Rima makes her English-language debut with this robust mix of memoir, history, and magical realism, which gathers her graphic novel trilogy into one volume. Rima’s nonlinear narratives zigzag through a period of relative peace and prosperity in the first installment, “Beirut,” which takes place in 1995. In “Beirut Bye Bye,” she captures the scene in 2015, when a waste management crisis overtook the city, igniting protests against an ineffective and corrupt government. In the final section, “Beirut Rewind,” Rima returns to the city in 2017 to publicize her latest book and reunites with the spirit of her mother, who briefly takes her back to 1967, when “socialism, Arab unity, anti-imperialism, and Palestine inflamed passions among Arab youth.” In response to the dizzying swirl of political strife, Rima expresses mostly ambivalence about her troubled hometown, lamenting, “Each time I appear in the story it’s to say, ‘Quick, let’s run away!’ ” Conversely, she also confesses, “I long to look back.” Rima nimbly handles the shifts in time with evocative, gestural drawings that capture how sociopolitical upheavals reverberate across generations. Throughout, her restless blend of the personal and the political thrums with urgency. Readers will have a tough time putting this one down.