Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Freedom Hospital
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 6/20/1986
WEBSITE:
CITY: Paris
STATE:
COUNTRY: France
NATIONALITY: Syrian
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2016101343
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2016101343
HEADING: Sulaiman, Hamid, 1986-
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100 1_ |a Sulaiman, Hamid, |d 1986-
375 __ |a male
670 __ |a OCLC 948331841: Freedom Hospital, 2016 |b (Sulaiman, Hamid, 1986- usage: Hamid Sulaiman)
PERSONAL
Born June 20, 1986, in Damascus, Syria.
EDUCATION:Studied architecture at the University of Damascus.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, artist, cartoonist, and graphic novelist.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Hamid Sulaiman is a Syrian writer, cartoonist, artist, and graphic novelist. He was born in Damascus in 1986 and lived there until the civil war started in 2011. As a young man who believed in the message of the Arab Spring, and in hopes that the revolution would mean the end of totalitarian regimes in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. He became involved in protesting the policies and actions of the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, publishing drawings critical of the use of torture, noted Hannah Kugel in Nafas Art Magazine. He also worked to organize media coverage of the revolution in hopes of spreading the message throughout the Middle East and to wider audiences around the world.
As a result, Sulaiman was apprehended and imprisoned. Then, he “faced three choices: revoking his revolutionary ideals and pleading allegiance to Bashar al-Assad, being put on trial, or leaving the country,” Kugel reported. Though he had spent only six months in Syria following the beginning of the revolution, he decided that he had to leave. He went to Egypt, then Germany, and finally settled in Paris.
Sulaiman had hoped his exile from Syria would be short-lived, but it turned out that it would be permanent. Returning to Syria would be dangerous, possibly even fatal for him. If he did decide to go back, “For me the best case scenario would be military service. But that would mean death. It is more likely that I would disappear into prison for a long time.”
As a way of dealing with his exile, plus the loss of not just his country but of many friends who perished in Syria during the civil war, Sulaiman started working on a graphic novel. The result, Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story is his “way of imagining where I would be if I had stayed. There is always this question: should I stay, should I leave, what are the dangers? If you believe in something this much, should you leave it? Each scene in the book is a reaction to that question,” Sulaiman stated in an interview with Killian Fox in the London Guardian.
Freedom Hospital tells the story of Yasmin, a bright and determined young Syrian woman who establishes a secret underground hospital to treat victims of violence suffered under the Assad regime. Yasmin, the doctors and the staff of the hospital, and her friends such as Sophie, a French journalist, expect the Arab Spring to lead to results and the downfall of Assad’s presidency. Instead, the violence in the country becomes even more widespread, with no sign that the regime was likely to weaken. The graphic novel documents this violence as Yasmin continues to work to save the wounded and Sophie makes the dangerous trip back into Syria to document the civil war.
The graphic novel provides a clear documentation, in art and story, of the torture, violence, and killings that Sulaiman saw while still in Syria. The volume is dedicated to a childhood friend who was captured by Assad’s forces and tortured to death in prison.
A Kirkus Reviews writer commented, “the conflict is too complex to be fully captured; nevertheless, here is a striking look,” and called Freedom Hospital a “heartbreaking and eye-opening primer to the quagmire of a generation.” Sulaiman’s “heartfelt work puts a harrowingly human face to the relentless headlines and news footage” of the Syrian conflict, noted Gordon Flagg, writing in Booklist. Kugel concluded: “These are images that we see too often and they need the work of artists such as Sulaiman to prevent us becoming too accustomed to them. However, in between those sombre illustrations there are also images of love, hope, tolerance and friendship, as Freedom Hospital and its occupants still stand and fight to free Syria from all forms of despotism.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, March 15, 2018, Gordon Flagg, review of Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story, p. 30.
Exberliner, April 7, 2017, Ruth Schneider, “Drawing War for Peace: Hamid Sulaiman,” interview with Hamid Sulaiman.
Guardian (London, England), November 5, 2017, Killian Fox, “Syrian Graphic Novelist Hamid Sulaiman: ‘I Don’t Present Villains or Heroes,'” interview with Hamid Sulaiman.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2018, review of Freedom Hospital.
Publishers Weekly, February 12, 2018, review of Freedom Hospital, p. 65.
ONLINE
Artitious, http://www.artitious.com/ (June 29, 2018), “Coping with the Daily Violence in Syria,” profile of Hamid Sulaiman.
Keen on Magazine, http://www.keenonmag.com/ (June 29, 2018), Valentina Marterer and Sabrina Moller, interview with Hamid Sulaiman.
Nafas Art Magazine, http://www.universes.art/nafas/ (June 29, 2018), review of Freedom Hospital.
Qantara.de, http://en.qantara.de/ (June 29, 2018), “Syrian Author Hamid Sulaiman: ‘The Hospital Is the True Hero,'” interview with Hamid Sulaiman.
nterview
Syrian graphic novelist Hamid Sulaiman: ‘I don't present villains or heroes’
By Killian Fox
The author of Freedom Hospital on dealing with the trauma of war in exile, the late friend his book is dedicated to, and why he still has hope
Killian Fox
Sun 5 Nov 2017 03.00 EST Last modified on Sat 14 Apr 2018 13.53 EDT
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‘When you lose your home you can never feel at home again’: Hamid Sulaiman.
‘When you lose your home you can never feel at home again’: Hamid Sulaiman. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images/Guardian Design Team
Hamid Sulaiman was born in Damascus in 1986 to a middle-class family and studied architecture before the civil war began in 2011. Having fled the country for Egypt, then Paris, he began working on his first graphic novel, Freedom Hospital, which was published in France last year and has just been translated into English. Strikingly drawn in black and white, it centres on a clandestine hospital set up by a young woman, Yasmin, in the early days of the Arab spring and tells the story of the doctors, patients and revolutionaries who shelter there. Sulaiman now lives in Berlin and is finishing his second book.
How long did you stay in Syria after the conflict began?
Six months. I was one of the young guys who had a lot of hopes for the Arab spring. And even though a lot of people don’t believe in it any more, even though the reality is really shocking, I still hold on to this dream.
What is your dream?
Freedom, peace. I still feel optimistic, despite all the chaos. At the beginning of the Arab spring, people thought totalitarian regimes would just disappear and we would have democracy. Everyone, including the western media, was naive about this. But I think we’re witnessing the final chapter for military dictatorships all over the world – it’s getting written bloodily, with a lot of conflicts, but it’s coming to an end.
What compelled you to leave Syria?
I participated in the movement, I was in prison three times – for a night, two nights, a week. Then I was summoned to court to be judged for helping terrorists, so I had to flee.
The graphic novel is a good way of meeting other cultures and communicating experiences, especially in tough situations
Was it a hard decision?
It was only after I arrived in Egypt that I fully realised, “Oh fuck, I am out already.” Writing Freedom Hospital was a way of imagining where I would be if I had stayed. There is always this question: should I stay, should I leave, what are the dangers? If you believe in something this much, should you leave it? Each scene in the book is a reaction to that question. For example, I drew footage from YouTube. This is because I was outside Syria watching footage of shelling and bombing in neighbourhoods where I had friends I couldn’t contact.
Houria, the fictional town where Freedom Hospital takes place, feels like a microcosm for Syria: it contains idealists and freedom fighters, Assad loyalists and members of Isis. Were you trying to encapsulate the entire conflict in the book?
I was more trying to understand things for myself. When you are inside the conflict, you can’t understand other perspectives. It’s like a football player: he’s on the green square, he doesn’t think of what’s going on, he’s just performing. It’s only after the match is over that he can realise what’s been happening.
But distance doesn’t always help. For the rest of the world, the conflict in Syria can seem incredibly confusing.
Even in Syria, it’s confusing. Each district has a different situation: in one street people are starving to death, in the next people are staying in five-star hotels. I didn’t want to be objective, I just wanted to understand, to speak the tongue of the other. Why this person would believe in this, and why violence is the only tool of communication you have. This is why I didn’t present villains or heroes in the book. The guys of the Islamic State, for example, are just following their circumstances.
Can you genuinely empathise with members of Isis?
Certainly. They are victims. All soldiers who are participating in this war are victims. I am privileged: I studied, I speak languages, I could find my way out. The middle class is a minority in my country; most Syrians didn’t have access to school. Now the only work they can do is war. When the only people who will defend you and give you money are extremist groups, it’s normal to end up with them. These are circumstances that the whole world is responsible for, actually.
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The book is dedicated to your friend Hussam Khayat, who was tortured to death in prison by the Syrian secret police. Could you tell me about him?
He was my closest friend in Syria from 2005 until my last days there. Even after I left Syria I was talking to him on Skype. He was looking forward to reading my book so much. He was a dreamer too: never down, always up. In 2014, he was finishing his studies and had one class left before he could graduate and leave the country. Then he was arrested and a week later they called his mother to collect the body.
Do you still have friends and relatives in Syria?
Fewer and fewer. The guys who stay there, the regime considers that they should be doing their patriotic duty to defend the regime, and the Islamists say they should do their duty to defend Allah, so they’re targeted by everybody. A friend of mine who visited Damascus recently said that the only guys you see in the street are soldiers.
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How carefully do you monitor what’s going on? Are you watching the news every day?
It depends. Recently less and less. It’s the same news, the same misery. I don’t enjoy watching all the horrors coming out of Syria. Like any Syrian, I am suffering trauma from all this huge violence. Writing this book and doing what I do is my way of treating it.
Why did you choose the graphic novel form?
First of all, there’s an economical advantage: you can tell a story by yourself without the huge production team you’d need to make an animation. Also, I find that this medium is a good way of meeting other cultures and communicating experiences, especially in tough situations that are difficult to access.
If the war ended in Syria, would you want to move back? Or do you feel at home now in Europe?
I would like to go back when there is peace, certainly. When you lose your home you can never feel at home again. Still, I was educated in a European way so I don’t suffer being here at all. In fact it’s maybe easier for me to live in Europe than in a conservative society. My motive for participating in the Arab spring was because I felt exiled in my own country – a patriarchal society with religious institutions and a secret police system that go really deep into each citizen’s life.
The 13-year-old Syrian refugee who became a prizewinning poet
Read more
You live in Berlin now. What brought you there?
I loved Paris, but most of my friends from Damascus were moving to Berlin. A lot of Syrian restaurants and shops and events are in Berlin. As a city it is really dynamic and modern. I go a lot to the theatre, to see bands. I play a lot of basketball.
What is your second book about?
It’s about the 1982 massacre in Hama [where the Syrian government cracked down on a Muslim Brotherhood uprising, killing more than 20,000 people]. There are lots of similarities between that and what’s going on now – a lot of the same people are involved, on both sides. At the same time, I’m talking about being an artist haunted by the ghosts of the war. It’s due out in France in March and we’re looking at dates for Germany now.
Have you finished writing it?
Don’t tell my editor, but not yet. I’m procrastinating, playing basketball. This is how my writing gets done. I work better under pressure.
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• Freedom Hospital by Hamid Sulaiman is published by Jonathan Cape (£16.99). To order a copy for £14.44 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
Hamid Sulaiman: Freedom Hospital
Original drawings for the much-noticed graphic novel by the Syrian artist, presented in an exhibition at Crone Gallery Berlin, 9 April - 18 June 2016.
By Hannah Kugel | May 2016
Photos
Hamid Sulaiman is a Syrian artist and cartoonist. Born in 1986, he lived his entire life in Damascus. After studying architecture, he started to work and exhibit as a graphic artist in his home town. When the revolution began in 2011, he immediately became involved, publishing drawings to protest against the use of torture, and trying to organise media coverage of the demonstrations. Officers of the regime quickly arrested him and threw him in prison for a week. There, Sulaiman faced three choices: revoking his revolutionary ideals and pleading allegiance to Bashar al-Assad, being put on trial, or leaving the country. He chose the latter and fled to Egypt, where he started his application procedure to obtain a visa for Germany, which later allowed him to settle in Paris.
At that time, he thought his exile would be brief: "I believed I'd stay away for a few weeks, or maybe a couple of months. All revolutions of the Arab spring had managed to overthrow dictatorships in a relatively short time. I thought it would be the same in Syria." The story of his graphic novel Freedom Hospital begins during the same period and his main character shares the same hope. Her name is Yasmine, she's a student in pharmacology who has set up an underground hospital for wounded revolutionaries to be treated safely. She believes the war will be over within 10 months and is waiting, eagerly, to see the fall of Bashar al-Assad, after which she intends to leave for the United States where she has been accepted for a PhD. This genuine optimism clenches the heart of any reader aware of the incessant atrocities that have been going on in Syria for the past five years.
In Freedom Hospital, those years are translated into five seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter, and spring again, during which the humanitarian crisis worsens as the political situation becomes increasingly intricate. For every narrative ellipsis, Sulaiman writes at the top left corner of the page to indicate the amount of time that has passed and its equivalent in the number of casualties: "two days and 176 victims later, three months and 12,469 victims later …" A terrible countdown that continues unabated.
Yasmine is a strong female character. Coming from a moderate Sunni family, she appreciates the history of Islam but lives her life in a rather secular way. In the Freedom Hospital, however, we encounter Syrians from all ethnicities and faiths: Sunnis, Kurds, Alawites, Assyrians, Christians, Agnostics, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sophie, a journalist who was born in Syria but grew up in France, and with whom Western readers can easily identify. As the story unfolds, we witness the way in which each of these characters comes to grips with the surge of bombings, the divisions within the revolutionary factions, the involvement of foreign powers and the rise of the Islamic State.
The story of Freedom Hospital is fictional. Hamid Sulaiman composed it from scenes he witnessed and people he knows, such as his friend Hussam Khayat, who was tortured to death in a Syrian prison and to whom the book is dedicated. However, the artist has also depicted several images from authentic footage of the war and incorporated them to his narration. As we recognise those horrifying YouTube clips that circulate on our social networks, showing refugee camps, ISIS propaganda or Russian air raids, his narrative gives us the opportunity to see those scenes from the viewpoint of those directly affected and to understand their real impact: "People watch those images on their television or computer screen, but it’s very difficult to make sense of it – to understand how one thing influences another – when there are so many different powers at stake. By associating them to anecdotes and personal stories, I wanted to create a link that binds everything together, that humanises the repercussions of the conflict."
The artist manages to deliver the same intrinsic perspective in his exhibition at the Crone Gallery, which displays some of Freedom Hospital's original sketches. Most have been stripped of their text, leaving the characters of the book speechless, much like the viewers who are confronted with the tragedy of their suffering. This allows us to focus on the work of Sulaiman as a graphic artist and the techniques of drawing he chose to convey his perception of the war. His black-and-white pictures are figurative, but his brush often turns into a game of light and shade where objects become pared-down silhouettes. This style creates utterly poetic images that contrast with the harshness of the topic. "I like to draw in this slightly abstract way to leave space for the viewers’ imaginations," explains the artist. "This war is extremely difficult to describe, especially to those who are not familiar with Syrian culture and history. I find that, sometimes, very realistic images hinder people’s comprehension by imposing a strict vision. I want people to fill the gaps between shadows with their own sensitivity in order to emphasise their empathy."
The pages exhibited are not organised in chronological order. Sulaiman selected them for their ability to provide a direct understanding without the help of narration. Walking around the spacious and luminous room of the Crone Gallery, the viewer is confronted with images of demonstrations, executions, amputations, wounded children, and destroyed neighbourhoods. These are images that we see too often and they need the work of artists such as Sulaiman to prevent us becoming too accustomed to them. However, in between those sombre illustrations there are also images of love, hope, tolerance and friendship, as Freedom Hospital and its occupants still stand and fight to free Syria from all forms of despotism.
Hamid Sulaiman Main Profile ImageHamid Sulaiman
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Coping with the daily violence in Syria
Hamid Sulaiman is a Syrian artist born in 1986. He studied architecture and fine arts in Damascus. In 2011 he got arrested and tortured by the Assad regime, shortly afterwards he fled the country, first to Germany, then to Paris.
Hamid Sulaiman has been working on a comic about the life of people in the Syrian civil war since he left Damascus and fled to Europe. In it he addresses the events in his homeland, the experiences of his friends and personal, autobiographical moments. In this way, he creates a striking picture of the political situation and of everyday life in Syria. Using the mediums of drawing and comics he compresses five years of civil war - the violence, the turmoil, the disasters and the everlasting principle of hope.
On 280 sheets with about 1120 individual drawings, he depicts the everyday life of the Syrian youth in the Civil War, perpetually threatened by the Assad-regime and the IS, coping with the daily violence and searching for normality in utterly abnormal surroundings. His stories are based on his own experiences as well as on You-Tube-footage, personal impressions as well as political propaganda images, individual fates as well as iconographic news feed photos.
Ever since he has been part of several group exhibitions in Germany and France, where he attracted attention especially with his evocative, expressive ink drawings. For the last three years Hamid Sulaiman has been working on a comic, which reflects the life in Syria.
All images are from the show "Freedom Hospital" by Hamid Sulaiman in Galerie Crone, Rudi- Dutschke-Straße 26, 10969 Berlin and are there on view from 9. April until 18. Juni 2016.
Syrian author Hamid Sulaiman
″The hospital is the true hero″
Defiance in the face of the adversity is the main theme of Hamid Sulaiman′s comic novel ″Freedom Hospital″. In interview with Stefan Dege the author talks about the confounding situation in Syria, about torture, destruction and death – yet also about hope
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Mr. Sulaiman, why did you choose the format of a graphic novel to tell the story of the Syrian civil war?
Hamid Sulaiman: I'm a big fan of Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco. Besides, graphic novels lend themselves well to looking at foreign cultures. Films and documentaries are much more elaborate and costly. A graphic novel consists of pictures and texts while enabling the artists to express their own personal style. In this book, I wanted to summarise the experiences I had during the Arab Spring, without knowing how people would react.
Who is your target audience?
Sulaiman: It's not a book for children. When I present the book, I come across many older people and people of my age. Most of them have an interest in the Middle East, geopolitics and Arab culture. Some of them just want to know more about Syria.
Cover of ″Freedom Hospital″ (published by Editions ca et la)
Lest we forget: Hamid Sulaiman fled the Syrian civil war burdened with painful memories. He works through his experience in "Freedom Hospital", relating the story of a peace activist called Yasmin, who runs a small illegal hospital in the Syrian hinterland
Looking at Syria from here, the conflict there seems almost incomprehensible …
Sulaiman: Even for me, it's hard to grasp. There are so many different groups, different conditions and zones of influence in the cities. In some places, radical Muslims have won the upper hand, elsewhere it's the regime or the Free Syrian Army or some other militia. No situation resembles the next. Who can make sense of this? My book reflects that confusion. That's why it doesn't tell the story of a single person, but rather shows what's happening in Syria.
You dedicated your book to a good friend, Hassam Kuhayat. Why?
Sulaiman: Hassam was my very best friend. Like me, he studied architecture. Together, we joined the revolution and participated in demonstrations. Then I had to leave Syria, while he stayed. Just as he was planning to go abroad to continue his studies, he was arrested. One week later, he was tortured to death. I'm not a member of any party. The Arab Spring was a popular movement joined by people like me and you. Most Syrians who placed their hopes in the Arab Spring are now caught between the fronts – on the one side, a terrorist dictator, on the other, Islamists.
Human rights organisations recently reported on torture and assassinations in Syrian jails...
Sulaiman:… Everybody knows what this regime is capable of doing, including people who favour Assad. And everybody knows what's happening in Syrian jails. Of course the regime denies all these charges. But do you remember the photographs by Caesar who took pictures of torture victims in a military hospital and then smuggled them out of the country? After he published them in 2013, many Syrians looked through them in order to identify missing family members and friends. I discovered a good friend. He was arrested one and a half years beforehand and then tortured to death. Western countries look at the Syrian civil war and say: "If we have to choose the lesser of two evils, we'd rather live with Assad."
Berlin is currently hosting an exhibition on Hamid Sulaiman′s comic novel (photo: H. Sulaiman)
Microcosm of co-operation: in "Freedom Hospital" the wounded from all ideological backgrounds and religious contexts are thrown together. They experience their own personal limits and the abysmal loss of war. What cannot be shown of the horrors of war is reflected in the book′s graphic style: when people are the target of torture or bombs, the drawings are flooded with ink or the image is blacked out
Germany wants to send refugees – excepting Syrians – back to their countries of origin much more quickly in the future. How would you feel, if you were faced with the prospect of returning to Syria now?
Sulaiman: Nobody can return there now. For me the best case scenario would be military service. But that would mean death. It is more likely that I would disappear into prison for a long time. At the same time, I am unable to travel to large parts of the Islamic world. I cannot go to Jordan or Lebanon, or Turkey or Egypt. They won't give me a visa. I cannot live and work there. Nobody wants us Syrian refugees. Yet we're people like everyone else! I'm not saying that we're particularly wonderful. There are good and bad people among the Syrians – like everywhere else in the world.
Your book is called "Freedom Hospital." Why?
Sulaiman: The hospital is the true hero. It's not called "Assad Hospital" or "Baath Hospital" like so many official institutions in Syria. It's called "Freedom Hospital." This is a place where people of all kinds meet. They live and work together. That gives us hope.
Interview conducted by Stefan Dege
© Deutsche Welle 2017
Hamid Sulaiman, born in 1986 in Damascus, studied architecture and works as a painter and illustrator. In 2011 he fled from Syria and has lived in Paris since then.
Drawing war for peace: Hamid Sulaiman
BY RUTH SCHNEIDER APRIL 7, 2016
RSS PRINT
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Hamid Sulaiman might have fled his home in Syria, but he’s not done with the war and the revolution.
Briefly jailed by the Assad regime for joining the 2011 freedom protests, the 30-year-old artist escaped his native Damascus (and being drafted into Assad's army) for Paris, where, since 2012, he's been pursuing his nonviolent struggle with hard-hitting canvases, sketches and cartoons documenting the drama unfolding in Syria. Freedom Hospital, launched last month at the Paris Book Fair, is his first foray into the world of graphic novels. From April 9, Berlin's Galerie Crone is showing a selection of the book’s original sheets – high-contrast black and white sequences that read like the Syrian artist's attempt to disentangle the baffling confusion and violence back in his country, evoking the tormented beauty of 1920s German expressionism.
It's your first graphic novel. Why now? Were you inspired by the French comics culture?
Actually, that’s the reason I came to France in the first place – I had started working on this when I was in Cairo and I wanted to learn more about comics in Paris. I've loved comics since I was a child, but this culture doesn’t exist much in Syria and I didn't really know how to do one. It took me four years altogether to complete this...
It's very strong visually. Depicting horror, violence and suffering is often a challenge, but you chose to go head-on in a pretty realistic, graphic way. You even drew screenshots from Youtube videos...
I took the simple, direct way to stand against violence: by really showing it. And what I show is not just images I found on Youtube, and it’s not another planet. It’s happening for real, every day. And in several countries, not only Syria.
For a debut novel, you didn't make it easy for yourself: it’s a polyphonic narrative with a cast of 14 protagonists, each representing one aspect of the hyper-complex Syrian reality. What's the main protagonist of your novel – Syria? The Freedom Hospital?
In Europe in general, and not only in comic books, most stories are about one character who’s leading the whole story. This is also linked to living in Europe, where life is centred around the individual. But in the Arab world, the place is the real hero – so for me, the Freedom Hospital is the real hero. Take Naguib Mahfouz – he’s the first Arab writer to win a Nobel prize, and all of his novels are like this.
One intriguing character is Salem, who starts off as an Assad secret agent, moves on with the Free Syrian Army and ends up with the radical Islamists... Do you feel his personal development is emblematic of Syria's?
Salem is really key to the story because he is always moving with the collective subconscious in his society. He's an agent of Assad during the Assad regime, but when he’s in a society of rebels he becomes a rebel, and in a society with Islamists he becomes an Islamist. I wanted to show the pressure and the confusion and how who you were born, your education and the people around you affect your decisions. Nobody chose to be German or Syrian; Christian or Muslim; Sunni or Shia. It’s all society’s thinking, but these labels will stick to you.
You seem to put a lot of effort into educating the reader – like where the weapons come from...
I draw war to demand peace. And yes, I believe that all this war is related to arms dealing, with some 80 percent of all arms coming from Russia, 16 percent from America and five percent from all over the world. Meanwhile, the West is totally against war. They give people tanks and guns and then call them uncivilised for using them.
You’re a pacifist and an atheist drawing about war and religion. Was that a challenge?
Artists draw their inspiration from what they're living. In my case it's Syria, what I lived through there and what my family and friends still live through. I lost my best friend to torture, and I was in jail – I can't run away from that. But I can find life in art. I lost my country, and now my country is my art. It's somehow where I live.
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Your character Yasmine starts off confident that Assad will be kicked out. By the end, she moves from optimism to what she calls “realism” – the belief she might never see the fall of the regime. Is that something that you share with her?
We people of the Arab Spring, we were dreamers. We went to the streets and asked for freedom and revolution even though we knew we could die. It felt like it wasn’t possible to be born under Assad senior and live all our lives with Assad junior. We had that urge... If you start a rebellion, you have to be a dreamer.
That was 2011; can you, as a Syrian, still dream nowadays?
You can always dream! Nobody can forbid you to dream! Yes, it’s a big war; it started as a revolution and now it’s a crisis that everyone in the world is putting their hands on. But see, after living 40 years in a dictatorship... I don’t want to say it’s normal, but these forms of extremism are in some ways natural reactions. A lot of people have different visions, and some people's dream is to make an Islamic militia. They couldn't express that for decades. Now it's just blowing out... but despite it all, I feel optimistic. It’s not possible that after all of this we don’t reach democracy, we don’t reach freedom. Every war in the world has ended. There is no war that will go on forever!
Okay, but for now people like Yasmine, that idealistic young woman trying to run a clandestine hospital, find themselves stuck between Assad and the Islamists and realise that they cannot remain outside the war...
Right now in Syria, no one has the right to say that they have nothing to do with war. Freedom Hospital is about a little society of civilians engaged in a civil war. They might not want to be involved. But when you are in the war, you are part of the war. There is no way out. In the end, Yasmine understands that.
Can you tell us more about Haval, a young Kurd who finds his way out to Switzerland thanks to a cat. It’s so absurd that it must be a true story, right?
Yes. A close friend of my father always wanted to get a visa to visit his daughter in Switzerland, even before the war, but he never got one. And when the war happened, his daughter said she would try to find any solution to bring him to her. The only way she found was to claim asylum in Switzerland for the dog, and make her father its owner. Because the dog had a Swiss passport, the father finally got a way to get out and see his daughter!
You dedicated the book to your best friend.
We shared a lot of years together and moments in the revolution. I left Syria and he stayed and got imprisoned, and nine days later they called his mother to say he was dead. And on national television, they called him a terrorist who attacked civilians. I lost a lot of friends and I can’t stop thinking about this all the time.
Just after the Paris terrorist attacks, a Facebook pic of you and your French girlfriend kissing topless behind a big sign reading “Love always wins” went viral. Do you really think that?
Yes! In Europe 70 years ago, everyone was traumatised by the war started by the Nazis. And now there’s peace. You can move from Paris to Berlin without stepping over borders. Overall in Syria there are fewer people dying than in the Second World War, and our standards have changed. People’s lives have become more sacred, more respected and now we know that violence is not the solution. You need to continue being optimistic, and like we said in Paris after the attacks, we shouldn't be afraid and we should keep going out!
HAMID SULAIMAN – FREEDOM HOSPITAL Apr 9-Jun 18 | Galerie Crone, Rudi-Dutschke-Str. 26, Kreuzberg, U-Bhf Kochstr., Tue- Sat 11-18
Hamid
Sulaiman
Interview by Valentina Marterer
and Sabrina Möller
It is better to fight for a cause than protest against injustice.
All Images, Courtesy Galerie Crone
© HamidSulaiman
Syrian artist, Hamid Sulaiman, fled his homeland in 2011 due to his fervent protesting against the Assad Regime. Although he had to leave his friends and family behind, first moving to Germany and then France, he took his flight to be a new start in which he could finally establish himself as an artist. His recently published graphic novel, “Freedom Hospital,” provides insight into his experiences in Syria, as well as the people that left an impression on him there.
You were one of the first activists back in 2011 protesting against the Assad Regime. What motivated you to protest against the regime and how important is protest to you?
It was very important to protest in Syria because we lived under a dictatorship before. The country was lead by the Assad family. At the same time, our generation was the first generation with the Internet, which allowed us to protest.
What impressions did you have of your fellow protesters? How important is it that you protested together?
Nobody had imagined that we could really demonstrate against the regime or do anything against it. Between the 1980s and 2011, the movement of Kurdish people in Syria demonstrated just once in 2004. So when we demonstrated for the first time, it was like breaking the wall of fear that we never imagined to be broken. When people demonstrate in Syria, they should be more than just somebody that demonstrates. It is more to organize, to take photographs and videos: to give information and help anybody that is injured. It is more about being a citizen journalist and a citizen doctor than a demonstrator. Me, I was involved in organizing and connecting to the media. We used to take videos, then somebody sent it to somebody else — like a Syrian friend or a Syrian networker that was already out of Syria — so they could upload it on the Internet and contact the press. So this was dangerous and the regime targeted us. People who worked as journalists or with journalists and the media were considered the most in danger.
After having been put in prison and tortured, how did you manage to escape?
I didn’t escape. I made a deal with them. They filmed me saying, “this is not a revolution, it is not a demonstration”, and wanted to put the film on TV. I had to get out of Damascus that same day. A few weeks later, I was out of Syria.
It was not torture in a physical way, but they filmed me saying something against what I believed. I was forced to do it. And I knew if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t get out; this was their proposition. They told us, “You have to say ‘yes’ to whatever we propose to you.” Just a few cells next to us, there were some guys, who had been there since ’82, so like thirty years ago. What helped was that most artists, journalists and intellectuals receive a little bit of a special treatment in the division where I was.
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Is that why you chose the graphic novel as the comic genre of your work?
All my life, I was impressed by animations. I tried to make a comic book in Syria, but there are no productions of comic books. When I studied, there were only two choices for me, one was a little bit too classical for me. Professors sometimes think that art only existed until the 19th century, and that comic and pop art is not “real” art.
So, I chose architecture because for me it was between art and practical work, where I could have a function and stay to do both. But when I left Syria and I couldn’t come back, this was the moment to make my dream come true. When I first started my comics I came to Bielefeld, Germany. I knew in Germany the culture of comics is not as important as in France. In France, there are almost 400 comic editors that edit comics. There are more than 5,000 comic books published every year. Most of them helped me to write my own comic book. It was easier to go to libraries, see interviews with famous comic writers, meet them personally. There are lots of comic festivals in France and a lot of book fairs where comics occupy a big section. It was very interesting when I had my first drawings and stories. I started to contact some of the artists. A lot of them were so welcoming and some contacted me to tell me what they thought about them. So all of those things gave me the right encouragement to work on my comic as well.
What makes Yasmin so important as a main character? In what ways do you relate with her? Do you share any personal traits with Yasmin, and if so, which?
Yasmin is made by most of my friends, my girlfriends and people I really lived with in Syria in my society. But, my comics are edited here in France for the French and European public. When I studied the market of graphic novels, I saw that most graphic novels that speak about women in the Middle East portray women as victims. It is really horrible for women there, but at the same time, there are a lot of feminists who are challenging society everyday. It is more like a revolution for women there. So I wanted to show that that exists as well. It was the example of all of my female friends, like my mother, my family. My mother is a lawyer; she was one of the first of a generation of women who started to work as lawyers. We were living in a micro society during all my life in Syria. My life in Syria is not very different than my life here. The same things I do here I did there: how we drink alcohol; how we don’t practice religion. Nothing’s new! The city center in Damascus was like the city center of most of the big cities.
I have also chosen other characters to show the variation of persons in Syrian society. We have Yasmin, who is a Syrian girl who lived most of her life in Syria in a community of men during the war and she is really controlling and leading every situation. Sophie is a French-Syrian girl. At the same time, there is Zahabiah, who is the real victim as a woman in Syrian society: she can’t choose whom to marry or where to go, she can’t live alone, she had to leave her family to be with the love of her life.
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But wasn't the forced departure from our home city a kind of escape, and a kind of a torture for you as well? It cannot be easy being forced to leave your home.
Exactly. I left five months after the beginning of the revolution. It was the moment when the revolution started to become militarized. At the same time the rebels started to use arms against the regime, the regime started to use the entire army against the revolution. It was a really delicate moment when no one knew what would happen after. Just a few weeks before I left, Obama gave a speech where he said that it is over for Assad. It was a different vision for Syria than the vision today.
For me, when I was out of prison, I had to hide at friends’ apartments to pretend I didn’t exist anymore because they wanted to arrest me again. They didn’t give me my papers and they are still there with them today. I wanted to go out for a while and see how things would develop because it was not clear yet. The same group I was arrested with, were also released but imprisoned again, and most of them never got out. One of them died during this month. I stayed a little bit in Egypt to wait and figure out what to do.
To what degree did these experiences influence your work?
Actually, it influenced my work a lot! I had never imagined becoming a protesting artist because for an artist in Syria you were not allowed to cross lines: to talk about sex, politics or religion. So there were these three subjects that were taboo. Of course, most of the artists all over the world are interested in those three subjects. I didn’t think I would do drawings against torture or comics against the regime one day. It changed my work 100 percent. Personally, it was a hard experience. But, if I had to do it again, I would go back and demonstrate. Even though it was a hard experience. I learned a lot and it was a defining life experience.
The work you produce in Europe is generally inspired by personal experiences – as well as the experiences of your friends and family. For example, Yasmin, the main character of your book, "Freedom Hospital", although a fictional character, her story is based on real events. Yet, comics normally tell fictional stories. Why did you choose the comic to tell your story?
There are different kinds of comics: the American Superhero comics, which are series that release an issue every week and after several issues, they make a book. As well there are Bande Dessiner (B.D.) what is the francophone comic — like TinTin, Asterix, Lucky Luke. They are also series and have a lot of issues. Almost every 6 months there is a 24 pages issue – this is the institutional B.D in France. Then there is the Manga as well. The Manga is the Japanese side, which in contrast has few issues that go out as magazines. These are the three main kinds of comics. But besides that, there is another culture called graphic novels. Graphic novels are mostly not edited by huge editing houses. Graphic novels are mostly autobiographical, and if not autobiographical, then they talk about socially important issues. I always read graphic novels and was inspired by them. Most of those graphic novels help to discover other countries and to discover other experiences. At the same time, writing a graphic novel is more close to writing a film, a socially conscience film.
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Your comics are all drawn in black and white with only contour lines — why is that?
Since a long time, my style has been in black and white. That is me being interested in shadows. A lot of times we see a lot of shadows; so many that all we see is shadow. We can’t realize what is the object. At the same time, I find that black and white for graphic novels and comics is really the middle between a novel and a film. In a novel, you can imagine all what you want. You can imagine how the characters look, how they move. What the writer doesn’t describe, you have to imagine yourself. Reading a book is really about imagination.
Seeing a film, you just see the director’s vision of the story. There are only a few parts you can imagine. Most of the time you have the character, you see how he dresses, how he moves, how he looks. When we communicate for example, 90% of our emotions are not transferred by words. Communicating is how we speak, how we move our hands, our tone of voice, not just talking. In a film, the director chooses those details for you.
In a comic, the author has the right to choose — and must choose — what details to give and what details you let the reader imagine. I found black and white allows more for the imagination of the reader. There is a part where I have just a black page and just one drawing. For example, there is a drawing of a rocket just on a white page and people imagine the white space is the sky: They build an image of a sky in their imagination.
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When we demonstrated for the first time, it was like breaking the wall of fear.
It is your aim to uncover the truth. How does life in Syria looks like right now?
Syria is really fragmented right now. Even in the same village, sometimes each street has a different situation. For example, when we go to the area that is controlled by the regime, there are a lot of checkpoints, everything is very expensive and there is no freedom of expression at all. Everyone is in danger, even if you are pro regime. In cities like Latakia or Tartus — the only two cities controlled by the regime — life is not so difficult. Otherwise, when you speak about the rebels controlled area, it depends on who is controlling which area. There are some cities that have been under siege for four or five years: like the city of my father has been under siege for three years and most of the civilians either starve or flee. So it is really fragmented.
As I mentioned before, the topic of our first issue is protest. Therefore, I wanted to ask specifically what are you protesting against or what are you fighting for?
Now, I learned more to not protest against. I am more fighting for than protesting against. I want peace. Even in “freedom hospital” I was drawing to demand peace. It is better to fight for a cause than protest against an injustice.
In France, for example, there are a lot of strikes today — case and point, the strike of the trains. Everybody should be in support of the people who are on strike because everybody needs those rights. But, at the same time, when they choose to strike on a train, they are stopping others from using the train. People are suffering and unable to go to their work, to travel, to do their life. This is a way of doing a strike against something. Just accepting the law would be easier. But then, there are people that say: Ok, you should not stop trains; you should stop whose controlling, so everybody can get on all the trains for free. In that way, you can get the people to use you and to help you more. So, fighting against is not better than people that are fighting for.
Thank you so much for your time and talking to us.
Print Marked Items
Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story
Publishers Weekly.
265.7 (Feb. 12, 2018): p65.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story
Hamid Sulaiman, trans. from the French by Francesca Barrie. Interlink, $20 trade paper
(288p) ISBN 978-1-62371-995-1
This ambitious but flawed graphic novel, by an author who escaped war-torn Syria, portrays how a group of physicians, patients, and their friends
keep an underground hospital running, evading the Assad-backed army. Resourceful young Yasmin runs the hospital after she and Sophie, a
documentary filmmaker, are shuttled past the militarized Turkish border to undertake their mission. Romance subplots blossom, between Yasmin
and charismatic doctor Fawaz, as well as between army deserter Haval, who assists at the hospital, with Zahabiah, who comes from a
conservative family. After a bombing, former patients rise to tiew roles in the revolution, like taxi driver Walid, who assumes for himself the title
of prince and gains followers, including Salem, who suffers from mysterious memory loss, but takes up arms to follow this new leader. The daily
death toll is an expository device used to haunting effect, but other facts are redundant, like defining in a text box the Russian origin of each
weapon supplied to the army. The apparent heavy reliance on photo and video reference in drawing scenes leads to an awkward art style, and
characters move stiffly, with masklike expressions. A clumsy sense of composition throughout gives the work an unrooted sense of place,
unfortunate for a story about very concrete devastation. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story." Publishers Weekly, 12 Feb. 2018, p. 65. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528615514/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ed06cddf. Accessed 26 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528615514
Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story
Gordon Flagg
Booklist.
114.14 (Mar. 15, 2018): p30.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story.
By Hamid Sulaiman. Illus. by the author. Tr. by Francesca Barrie.
Mar. 2018. 288p. Interlink, $40 (9781623719944); paper, $20 (9781623719951). 741.5.
This graphic-novel debut by an eyewitness to the early days of the Syrian civil war centers on the staff and patients at an underground hospital
treating victims of the Assad regime. Initially, the idealistic supporters of the Arab Spring are confident that Assad's downfall is imminent. But
over the months, the situation deteriorates as the bombings grow more and more devastating. The myriad armed opposition groups adopt
increasingly brutal tactics, and the Islamic extremist factions become an even more immediate threat to the hospital workers than the army.
Sulaiman, who fled Syria in 2011, witnessed the torture and murder of many friends. Although fictional, the story, based on his own experiences,
evokes the urgent graphic journalism of Joe Sacco and Sarah Glidden. The heavily inked, high-contrast black-and-white drawings, occasionally
incorporating inked-over images from YouTube, produce a dramatic effect that sometimes sacrifices clarity for the sake of impact. Sulaiman's
heartfelt work puts a harrowingly human face to the relentless headlines and news footage of the still-ongoing conflict.--Gordon Flagg
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Flagg, Gordon. "Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2018, p. 30. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A533094482/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2de7b42a. Accessed 26 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A533094482
Sulaiman, Hamid: FREEDOM HOSPITAL
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Sulaiman, Hamid FREEDOM HOSPITAL Interlink (Adult Fiction) $20.00 3, 21 ISBN: 978-1-62371-995-1
Syrian cartoonist Sulaiman's debut novel follows the desperate lives, noble struggles, and violent deaths of people tied to an underground hospital
during the Syrian civil war.
The book opens with a dozen headshots and short biographies of characters, including Yasmin, the young woman who founded the eponymous
hospital to help the rebels battling the Syrian government and to fulfill her father's dream of opening a hospital, which had been thwarted by
bureaucracy and corruption; Abu Taysir, a militia leader and former political prisoner in his 60s navigating the web of factions engaged in the
conflict, including the nascent Islamic State; the Colonel, a merciless commander in the Syrian army; Haval, a philosophical army deserter who
hangs around the hospital to be near his girlfriend, Zahabiah, a refugee who works as the cook; and Salem, a patient whose head wound has
dashed his memory, leaving him unsure which side he is on. A throughline involves Yasmin's childhood friend Sophie, a French journalist
Yasmin helps to sneak back into Syria to document the war, but the book ranges far and wide, giving each character at least one solid beat to
dramatize the situation's complexity while also including omniscient sequences crafted from news footage and YouTube videos and even a brief,
psychedelic aside into the historical roots of the Shiite-Sunni divide. The art's flat blacks, stark whites, and heavy lines give the work an almost
impressionistic feel, bringing to the real-world images a rotoscoped look and simplifying both fact and fiction to touchstones (furrowed brows,
falling tears, spattered blood). This notion also encapsulates the work overall--expressive and representative but not necessarily deep or rounded.
As Sulaiman says in his postscript, the conflict is too complex to be fully captured; nevertheless, here is a striking look.
A heartbreaking and eye-opening primer to the quagmire of a generation.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Sulaiman, Hamid: FREEDOM HOSPITAL." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522643128/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d54501b9. Accessed 26 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A522643128