That Abod Nasser’s Strategies for Survival is presented in an unrefined, uncorrected format makes it all the more important an historical document of the genocide in Gaza. Capturing the artist’s experiences of living through one of history’s greatest atrocities it comes to us as it was created… in the moment, with all the raw authenticity that entails.
We’ve covered a lot of comics, illustrations and cartoons recently at Broken Frontier dealing with events in Palestine via the Cartoonists for Gaza initiative. But this kind of work is the most vital: a cartoonist in Gaza giving us the unfiltered reality of what is happening there. Personal testimony that provides first-hand witness to the horrors being perpetrated.
Nasser is clear in the foreword to Strategies for Survival that his intention is not so much about depicting the crimes being committed, the suffering being endured, and evoking sympathy. It’s more about him documenting “understanding life. When he was forced to reinvent it from scratch.” Simple words that tear at the very soul in regards to the unconscionable indifference that many of the world’s governments have shown to the Gazan people.
Strategies for Survival’s text is obviously handwritten, complete with crossings out and spelling mistakes, which further underline the immediacy of the book’s creation. We observe as Nasser tells us about living with little water and showing through illustrations the complex ways they collect rainwater, dig wells and find other ways to source drinking water. It’s a largely diagrammatic account of reacquiring those very basic amenities we take for granted every day – makeshift toilets and showers constructed with ingenuity, pragmatism and practicality.
This is a heartbreaking read. Life’s basics being rediscovered and reapplied in regards to things like cooking, power, transport, clothing and fuel. Nasser uses sequential illustrations in an almost “how to” instructional manner to explain the processes required, rarely using human figures which allows us to concentrate on the inventiveness and imagination he and his family use just to survive. Sometimes his art is scratchy and unembellished, sometimes it’s more detailed and polished. But it’s always soaked in a powerful humanity. We can never even remotely understand the full terror of what is currently happening in Gaza but work like Strategies for Survival can, at least, give us a far greater appreciation of it.
Strategies for Survival will be on sale in a limited print edition at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival during the last weekend of September. Put it at the top of your buying list for the event and don’t forget that our Broken Frontier Resource List for Palestine can be found here.
Abod Nasser (W/A)
Review by Andy Oliver
