Jerusalem - Guy Delisle

'with(out) borders'

Guy Delisle's graphic travelogue/memoirs have taken him to the kinds of places that are off limits to even the most seasoned travellers. His wife's work with Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) has enabled him to get access inside regimes like those in North Korea, Burma and China. His is a fairly unique view, not only because he gets the opportunity to see the sorts of things that the ruling parties would rather you didn't, but because he enters each country with a pair of innocent eyes, keen to document what he sees but unafraid also to give his honest reaction to what he sees there. He is also resolutely normal. Most of the time we watch him simply trying to travel about, to do his work and his frustrations in doing those simple things help to show just how different the cultures can be. His last book, Burma Chronicles, was particularly funny in showing this young father trying to cope not only with a new culture but a new baby too and the all the everyday domestic dangers that entails.

It was almost inevitable that he would one day end up in the Holy City and he is the perfect guide to point up not only the absurdities of a city divided amongst several religions who share common points and places of faith and yet who are in constant conflict with each other, but also the more serious impact of constant military intervention and the brutal impact of decades of fighting. Anyone who has read Joe Sacco's work will know how effective a graphic approach can be in illustrating complicated conflicts and personal testimony. Delisle's own work doesn't hit as hard as Sacco's (in fact there is a hilarious panel where he wonders whether the aggressive response he gets from a group of Israeli soldiers might be because they have mistaken him for Sacco), it is far more whimsical and entertaining, but that doesn't take away from its own ability to enlighten a wide range of readers.

A key part of this is Delisle's naïveté (whether real or feigned). He wants things explained to him and in Jerusalem there is a constant stream of people from different viewpoints willing to make things clear, or at least clearer. He also has the genuine enthusiasm of any person who visits the Holy Land, excited by its history, its antiquity; and the slow discovery of how this almost fable-like past has been sullied by modern conflict, development and division is at the heart of the book's impact.

Delisle also employs simple maps to illustrate the points of division or demarcation. These are useful not only because they make light work of the often fiendishly complicated history of occupation and conflict but also because they illustrate clearly what the real effects of that occupation are for the Palestinian population.

The recently erected security wall is one point of focus. There has always been an element of doublespeak about armies called defence forces, rocket attacks used to defend populations, and walls or checkpoints used to ensure security. The restrictions on movement are clear not just from the Palestinian people Delisle interviews but from his own complicated travels about the country and various territories. The personal testimony from those that live there is crucial however in showing just what everyday life is like for those trying to make a living in the shadow of that gigantic concrete wall, for those seeking a semblance of ordinary living amongst such heightened security, in a country populated and influenced by so many diverse interests.

I'm a big fan of Delisle's work. It's accessible, entertaining, informative and touching. In a quirk of book categorisation most graphic works tend to be labelled as graphic 'novels' whether they are fiction or not. It has often been my experience that the most satisfying graphic works have been those, like Delisle's, which are more like memoir or reportage. Jerusalem is just the first of several treats like that to come this year with new works also expected from the likes of David B and Joe Sacco. How lucky we are.

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Round the corner from 'The Lady'

Burma Chronicles
by Guy Delisle

A few years ago I went through a little graphic phase. After being enchanted by Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan, a graphic novel which showed the literary possibilities of the form, I quickly happened upon a very different kind of graphic experience in the political travelogues of Joe Sacco. First published by Fantagraphics his series of strips on Palestine were collected together by Jonathan Cape and led me onto his travels into Bosnia and Sarajevo. I guess part of the appeal was to have an easily accessible format to get some basic education about the politics behind those particular areas of conflict (pictures, and everything), but there was also something I loved about the self-deprecating humour and those moments where the shock of reality cut through the page, literally in black and white.

Following in a similar vein Guy Delisle produced a book called Pyongyang, a unique depiction of life in that most secretive of states, which I picked up in a bookshop, began reading and finished there and then in a single sitting (well, if they will place big comfy armchairs about the place). Again using simple black and white illustrations Delisle employs a similar humorous approach. Sent to North Korea as part of his work with a French animation company he spends lonely nights in a hotel, wishing for better coffee and food, leading a curious existence as he is marshaled around areas that the government deems fit to see. Slowly he is able to see more of the hidden parts of the country, getting a better idea of the life of ordinary Koreans and the realities of being part of the 'Axis-of-Evil'. That work continued with a trip to Shenzhen in China and his latest travelogue comes from Burma (or Myanmar).

The slight difference with his latest book is that it is his partner's work with MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) that has brought them there along with their baby son Louis. For a young father like me there was so much that I found familiar from my own travels with tot that the opening few pages had me grinning in recognition. A simple hotel room becomes a gauntlet of power sockets, taps and sharp corners all of which seem to have been designed to tempt young children and torment their parents. Having finally baby-proofed the room he is able to wander the streets of another dictatorship, slowly adapting to custom and tradition. That wry humour is given ample room to entertain, the baffling nature of life in a foreign country somehow amplified by his duty of care to young Louis. The locals of course are charmed by the baby, totally ignoring his father (something I'm all too familiar with) as they pass the baby around.

Burma is of interest of course because it has been ruled by a military junta since 1962 and the leader of the opposition Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for 13 of the last 19 years. In the sequence below Delisle finds out that the house in which he is staying is literally around the corner from her own, allowing us to see how well he can combine the political and the domestic (click on the panels for a larger view).






The domestic side was of great appeal to me but for a general readership there are clear examples of the oppression which seems to arouse little protest only because that opposition is so effectively silenced. There is also something about the length of time that Delisle spends in each destination and the graphic form itself which makes it perfect for illustrating those simple details which may evade the casual traveller and yet prove to be emblematic of the country and its culture. His frustrating search for ink with which to make his drawings takes us on a wild goose chase through the local bazaars ending in a great panel, smudged and running, where he is forced to use the fountain pen ink he knew wouldn't work. The three days he spends inside a non-touristy Buddhist retreat give him an entirely new perspective (literally) on the buildings he has been looking in on for the preceding months. Through his regular walks through a park he sees a few prayer notes attached to a tree grow into many, and then a fully fledged shrine begins to develop. That public display of faith depicted in three simple panels.

Sometimes a light touch is all that is needed to expose the banality of life under oppression. The combination of the form, the content and the humour makes Delisle's work accessible and enjoyable but that lightness shouldn't mask the potential importance of them as documents. Through his short exchanges with locals and aid workers he often sums up in a few sentences the essence of the problem or hypocrisy. There's no substitute for the testimony of those living and working in any situation and it could be said that through his books Delisle is proving that old adage about the pen and the sword.

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