LArabic-language comics are not the best-known sector of the genre. Since 2015, Alifbata editions, based in Marseille, have set themselves the goal of discovering the richness of this artistic production, with real editorial attention, including press kits (downloadable from their site). Considering the current catalog, the richness and quality are in any case there. At the head of the Alifbata association is Simona Gabrielli, linguist and Islamologist passionate about the interactions between Mediterranean imaginations, whose publishing house was the guest of this year 2024 at the Rendez-vous de la bande bande d’Amiens . Encounter.
Simona Gabrieli, do you have a somewhat unusual profile for a comic book publisher?
Indeed, I come from the world of languages, I studied French and Arabic in Bologna, Italy. Then I did a master’s degree in inter-Mediterranean relations and then specialized in Islamology. I was very interested in the place of the Arabic language in France and the media construction of the image of Muslims in France, but that’s another question.
How did you get into publishing and comics?
The comic strip comes after a journey of an intercultural educational project led by the Alifbata association, with the desire to bring the two shores of the Mediterranean into dialogue and the desire to show the links that exist beyond any border and beyond. beyond religious affiliations which are very often exploited. The desire therefore to make the Arab world known differently, beyond stereotypes and better, by leaving room for stories that come from authors who live in the region and who can tell us, through their stories, the issues of their society. But taking a step aside to be able to hear other stories and other points of view.
And how was the first album Alifbata born in 2015?
The editorial project was actually born that year. In 2015, we translated Laban and jam by Lebanese author Lena Merhej. It was one of the rare long-format graphic novels published by Samandal, of which Lena is one of the co-founders. And when I translate Laban in French, we couldn’t find an interested publisher in France, so we published it ourselves.
2015 is also the first Cairo Comix festival in Egypt?
Indeed, at the same time, there was this important event in Cairo, an international festival of comics from the Arab world where, for the first time, authors from different countries were able to meet, debate, exchange around their profession, of their artistic practices which are not recognized. I went there somewhat by chance and met most of the authors. And that’s how our catalog was built, from encounter to encounter…
The desire therefore to make the Arab world known differently, beyond stereotypes and better, by leaving room for stories that come from authors who live in the region.
Aside from perhaps Lebanon – which gave rise to a collective exhibition in Beirut at the Amiens festival in 2019 – Arab comics remain little-known here, to say the least. Has it existed for a long time?
Comics for children have existed for a long time, comics for adults are more recent. It developed especially from the “Arab Spring” in 2011. There was a pioneering collective that was created in Beirut in 2007, Samandal, which was also welcomed at the Rendez-vous de la bande drawn from Amiens.
From 2011, collectives of authors appeared in all Arab capitals. They are self-taught authors, because apart from the Academy of Fine Arts in Beirut, there is no training in comics in the Middle East. There we find authors who want to tell stories in comics and who wanted to found a space for creation, for experimenting with a new language. And a space for self-production too, because there were no publishers publishing comics in the Arab world at the time. It’s only in the last two or three years that general publishers have started publishing comics. And we don’t find any in bookstores, except in Lebanon which has a system quite similar to what we find in Europe or in Egypt which also has large bookstores and publishers who are starting to get into comics a little.
How then did these authors emerge?
They therefore began, around collectives, to publish fanzines in which they wrote short stories, magazines sold very cheaply in a completely underground circuit.
How many albums have you released since 2015?
Today we are at 14 pounds. There will be 16 at the end of 2024. We started with Lebanese authors from the Samandal collective, like Barack Rima. Then we published collective albums co-edited with the American University of Beirut, which created a splendid program for archiving comics in the Arabic language; we also co-edited with them the catalog which accompanied the exhibition New generation, Arab comics todayin Angoulême in 2018.
After Lebanon, we published Algerian authors like Mahmoud Benamar and Soumeya Ouarezki and their Fatma with umbrella ; There should also be the second episode soon! We opened up to Morocco, for example with the adaptation of Pain no by Abdelaziz Mouride based on the novel by Mohamed Choukri or the recent Funny revolutions by Youssouf Amine Elalamy and Yassine Hejjamy. But also to Tunisia – where there are pearls, like A Tunisian revolt, the legend of Chbayah, by Seif Eddine Nechi and Aymen Mbarek. And last year we published the first Palestinian graphic story, I won’t leave, by Mohamad Sabaneeh… We didn’t know that this title would be so topical when we published it.
In this latest album, as in others, we note the presence of an important file, is it an editorial desire?
Yes, very often we publish annexes, to provide better context.
Do you have a new project with Mohamad Sabaneeh?
Yes, we have a new project on Palestine, it will be released in October and will be called “ 30 seconds in Gaza “. Thirty seconds is how long the videos posted on social networks by people in Gaza last. And Mohamad Sabaneeh, who lives in Ramalah, witnesses what is happening and can do nothing other than draw. He is a caricaturist and posts a lot of drawings on the networks, but knowing “ the fragility of social networks » as he explains in his foreword, he wanted to draw what is happening. And we are going to publish this collection of around a hundred drawings that he made on Gaza.
We have a new project on Palestine, it will be released in October and will be called “30 seconds in Gaza”. Thirty seconds is how long the videos posted on social networks by people in Gaza last.
Do you have other editorial projects?
Yes, still in October, we will launch a new collection, with Who killed Asmahan? Asmahan was an immense Syrian-Lebanese Druze singer and this album therefore inaugurates a collection dedicated to the divas of the Arab world. Fairouz, Warda al Djazaïria, etc. will follow.
Browsing through the books in your catalog, we are struck by the great diversity of style and themes…
Our editorial line is really to relay the voices of the authors. So, everyone has their own style, their own graphic universe. But in fact, we cannot speak of a tradition linked to a country, all the authors have a affiliation which is very personal, linked to their personal library, so we indeed have lots of different styles. Afterwards I think that a line is still emerging at the thematic level, over time, with a societal perspective.
On June 22 and 23, we should find the authors of Point Zéro – Abir Gasmi and Kamal Zakour in Amiens if they manage to obtain their visa. What can you tell us about this book?
Point Zero is stunning in terms of graphics. It is the only book that moves away from this societal and political approach that I mentioned. It’s a kind of philosophical, initiatory, existential tale, with something very interesting in the screenwriter’s research through this syncretism, with all the philosophy of the desert brought by this nocturnal spirit who comes to visit the hero, but also quotes from William Blake for example, rather than from poets of the Arab tradition. We even have, at the end of the book, a quote from a song by a contemporary Celtic group. And this mix is, I find, really interesting. While living the adventure of this character who gets lost in the immensity of the desert, it’s so poetic…
Are you devoting yourself entirely to publishing today?
From now on Alifbata is totally dedicated to comic book publishing. But I am asked more and more to lead seminars and give conferences on Arab comics. And I’m very happy because it’s happening in very different places, libraries, but also at the Haute école des arts du Rhin, which shows the interest today in Arab comics today.
