Fabien Toulmé's Hakim's Odyssey, Book 1: A Review

Fabien Toulmé, Hakim's Oddyssey: Book 1: From Syria to Turkey (University Park, PA: Graphic Mundi, 2021). 262 pages. Translated from the French by Hannah Chute. 

The number of Syrian refugees in Turkey is close to 4 million people. The war began in 2011 around the same time as the so-called Arab Spring, now a distant memory of the short-lived push for Western-style democracy in many Arab-speaking countries. Few pundits will currently believe it has any chances of a resurgence.

Hakim is the fictitious name of a Syrian refugee who fled the country. His story is narrated by Fabien Toulmé, a French graphic artist with a cause. In his prologue, underneath the drawing of a plane flying above clouds: “Curiously, the urge to write about the migrants who are crossing the Mediterranean came upon me because of a disaster that had nothing to do with this problem…” (p. 2) The plane was the Germanwings Flight 9525 that left Barcelona but never reached Düsseldorf. Toulmé contrasts this terrifying tragedy with the recurrent tragedies of boats sinking while trying to reach Europe. Why do the deaths of tens of thousands of refugees who try to make it across the Mediterranean (when not a very high fence in Melilla) hardly ever make it to frontpage news? Why are we never told who these persons were or what dreams they had?

Toulmé suggests it is an issue of empathy: we are able to picture ourselves as passengers on a doomed plane, of course. But never would we imagine ourselves as the precarious overload on a leaky boat escaping war or famine or political repression or all three of the above.

The story has been divided into three volumes. The first one introduces us to a young Hakim growing up in a country that has been ruled by one family dynasty, the Assads. He comes from a family of gardeners who have successfully run a plant nursery near Damascus for decades. When the trouble starts, Hakim tries to avoid it as much as possible. But one day, at a military checkpoint, soldiers find a mask in the boot and immediately suspect him of being linked to terrorists.

In a peaceful country you are able to work and smell the roses...until a genocidal dictator decides otherwise. 

He is arrested and tortured. His freedom is attained only because someone in his family circle agrees to pay a hefty amount for his release. The family nursery gets confiscated by the army; so when his brother disappears, Hakim makes up his mind to leave Syria and look for work in Lebanon. He is not alone, of course. Jobs are hard to find in Beirut, so he goes to Amman in Jordan. The same situation confronts him there: badly paid jobs, discrimination, precariousness, the risk of being under surveillance from Assad’s agents…

"Their questions got crazier and crazier..." As if answering any of them would be of any use!

Eventually he arrives in Antalya, southern Turkey. Hakim meets Abderrahim, a wealthier Syrian who has also fled the country. He and his family help him to get jobs and make some headway. So much so that he marries Abderrahim’s daughter Najmeh. Volume 1 ends with their move to Istanbul.

Their wedding reception takes place in a small pizza parlour in Antalya. Unforgettable!

The message about the horrors, the repression and the corruption of the Assad regime comes through loud and clear. The fact that the character is a humble nursery gardener makes it even easier for the reader to make a connection. But he is just one of the hundreds of thousands whose stories deserve to be widely divulged.

Hakim’s Odyssey is composed in very simple artwork, yet it works really well in terms of backing the narrative with few colours and details. Toulmé acknowledges he had to use the services of an interpreter to interview Hakim. He is completely aware that his story is doubly mediated. This is a great story told through very simple yet powerful images.