L'Arabe du futur - volume 5 (05): Une jeunesse au Moyen-Orient (1992-1994)

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Dans le deuxième tome, il raconte particulièrement les conditions de sa vie d'écolier dans son village rural syrien Ter Maaleh avec le déroulement des cours, les relations entre les enfants, la place de la religion et de la politique dans le système scolaire ainsi que la pression scolaire exercée par son père. Sattouf is choosing what to tell us about his upbringing with the consciousness of an adult. He shows the peculiarities of early education in France, and Syria. Both have failures, as a system. It’s a wonder we survive at all, but less surprising that we exhibit the flaws we do. He has a finely honed skill for cutting away the extraneous, and revealing the kernel of his experience. He makes it laughable, but at heart, it is also terrifying. Dans le premier tome, Riad décrit la rencontre de ses parents et leur installation en Libye, puis au village de Ter Maaleh en Syrie. Il pose les bases des thématiques principales de la série: l'image du père, le contexte géopolitique au Moyen-Orient de l'époque et le contraste entre les cultures et traditions européennes et orientales. Sattouf's childhood is the stage on which the events of the novel play out. From the nascent regime of Gaddafi to the more insidious, but no less dangerous regime of Assad, Sattouf uses an acerbic humour to explore life in three dictatorships, two political and the third under his increasingly despotic father; whilst the former two are far more dangerous and have a far bigger impact on the wider world, the latter defines the small world which defines Sattouf's childhood. Carmela Ciuraru. "New Novels by Paul Murray, César Aira and Others". The New York Times . Retrieved 2016-11-02.

Smell is also vividly represented throughout the novel. The young Riad associates new places and especially new people with their smells, ranging from perfume and incense to sweat, spoiled food, and flatulence. These odors tend to convey the quality of relationships, with Sattouf explaining, "the people whose odor I preferred were generally the ones who were the kindest to me. I find that’s still true today.” [2] Critical reception [ edit ] a b et c (en) Adam Shatz, « Drawing Blood», sur The New Yorker, 19 octobre 2015 (consulté le 27 décembre 2016) Jean-Pierre Filiu, « L'Arabe du futur: Riad Sattouf raconte la Syrie et la Libye de son enfance», Rue89,‎ 29 mai 2014 ( lire en ligne) The mother, however, is a silent figure - while she protests about the homes they end up living in, she says little about their moving to Syria, or staying there. We don't know about her dreams and desires, nor even about why she married him.This graphic memoir is set in France, Libya and Syria, and we learn about the childhood of the author and his family as they navigate various cultures, religions, and political landscapes. The author's father is a Sunni Arab who married a French woman, and like many immigrants, he is a contradiction that many people find hard to understand. His father is quite Western and modern in some ways, but also retains much of the values and prejudices he acquired as a child, and like all kids born into cultures not of their parents, the author grapples with these contradictions. The child Riad has a spark of intelligence, but is easily impressed by those around him - he can draw decently (no surprise there), he thinks his father is Amazing (even when, as adults, we realize he's definitely not) and tries to fit in with peers. The memoir is terrifying for what it tells us of the consciousness of a Sunni Arab man and his extended family, as well as the conditions in the cities of Tripoli and Homs. Sattouf engages our sympathies immediately by starting out his descriptions from the eyes of a blond two-year-old, who we might expect to be perplexed wherever he was, being new to the world. But this turns out to be the perfect vehicle for presenting the things he sees, hears, smells, and experiences with a disingenuous honesty (though, I must admit, the consciousness of a child). It is as disarming as it is damning. We laugh and cringe at the same time. Julia Dumont, « L’Arabe du futur 2: l’enfance syrienne de Riad Sattouf séduit les lecteurs», sur france24.com, 14 juin 2015 (consulté le 28 septembre 2015).

en) Japan Media Arts Festival Archive, « Manga Division | 2020 [23rd]», sur Japan Media Arts Festival Archive (consulté le 27 mai 2021) Le cinquième tome relate la vie de sa famille après l'enlèvement de Fadi, son plus jeune frère, par son père. Riad raconte le déchirement entre sa vie «d'adolescent» englobant ses questionnements sur son avenir, son cercle social et sa découverte du sentiment amoureux, et sa vie de famille marquée par l'enlèvement de Fadi, les moyens mis en œuvre pour le retrouver et l'image du père salie. Abdul-Razak obtains a teaching job in Syria and the family moves to his hometown Teir Maalah, near Homs. Riad encounters severe bullying, in which two cousins accuse him of being Jewish and mercilessly torment him—seemingly because of his blond hair and foreign mother. The cousins' enmity appears to be entangled with a financial dispute between their father and Riad's father. Riad also witnesses strict segregation of genders and sects, media censorship, animal abuse, corruption, poor sanitation, and crippling poverty. Riad befriends Wael and Mohammad, two other cousins who teach him Syrian Arabic; they try to protect him from the two bullies, who are their uncles though around the same age. Riad observes the cult of personality surrounding Hafez al-Assad, who he sees as more sinister than Libya's Gaddafi. Abdul-Razak wants Riad to begin school, but Clémentine fears he is too young—then forbids it entirely after witnessing a group of boys torture and kill a puppy for sport.The author speaking of his father: "In 1967 he had been devastated by the Six Day War, when Egypt, Jordan and Syria were crushed by the Israelis. Then, in 1973, like all the Syrians of his generation he managed to transform the Arab defeat in the Yom Kippur War into an "almost victory". As you would expect, it’s mostly focused on Riad and his family but we also learn what life was like in these countries at the time as well. For example Libya under Gaddafi where housing was free to all - like a bizarre game of finders keepers, you found somewhere that was empty and moved in! - and the basic foods that were doled out to everyone because supermarkets didn’t exist. It was a third world country and, reading the excerpts from Gaddafi’s Green Book here, it’s easy to see why conditions were so bad when this lunatic was running the show! Frédéric Potet, « «L’Arabe du futur» de Riad Sattouf: autopsie d’un succès», Le Monde, 30 juin 2015 This is the first part of Riad Sattouf’s childhood memoirs, The Arab of the Future, and it is superb! With a Syrian father and French mother, the small family travels across Europe as his father gets work as an associate professor in Tripoli, Libya, during Gaddafi’s reign, before briefly jumping to Brittany, France, and ending up in nightmarish Syria under Hafez al- Assad. Riad Sattouf: «Avec L'Arabe du futur 4, je me suis libéré de mon secret de famille»», sur FIGARO, 27 septembre 2018 (consulté le 28 août 2019)

That being said, this is an account of the very early years spent by the author in Libya, France and Syria - but also the story of his father, an Arab who studied in France to get his ph.D. and who married a French woman. It was strange, later, to read the New Yorker profile of Sattouf from a few years ago, because it contends with all those subjects and issues too. Which makes me feel a) like my smart ladyfriends are right on the pulse of the philosophy and cultural criticism of the moment, but also that b) there is nothing new under the sun, and we are all only ever parroting things we've read and then drawing the same conclusions everyone else does when they digest the same thoughts from the same sources. I dunno.L'Arabe du futur de Riad Sattouf remporte le Los Angeles Times Book Prize», sur L'Obs (consulté le 12 avril 2016) I am reminded of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion in which Dawkins writes of early childhood inculcation into any religion as one of the most damaging things that can happen to the impressionable mind. One cannot help but agree when one sees what it has done in cultures all over the world. In this part of the world hatreds last for millennia, perhaps due largely to childhood inculcation. Riad’s father buys him a plastic revolver as a toy. “All boys like weapons,” he says. Does it follow, I wonder, that all who like weapons are still boys?

In striking, virtuoso graphic style that captures both the immediacy of childhood and the fervor of political idealism, Riad Sattouf recounts his nomadic childhood growing up in rural France, Gaddafi's Libya, and Assad's Syria--but always under the roof of his father, a Syrian Pan-Arabist who drags his family along in his pursuit of grandiose dreams for the Arab nation.

Snaije, Olivia (28 October 2015). "Riad Sattouf draws on multicultural past for The Arab of the Future". The Guardian . Retrieved 4 February 2016. Then as the family finally leaves - solely due to the father's own motivations yet again - the young son who is maybe 5 looks up and sees a woman with bare boobs through a window. Yes, this is considered an important enough life moment to be a highlight of a graphic memoir. JFC. The flood of rich, detailed, authentic, often completely unexpected observations is both disturbing and mesmerizing, thanks in part to the clever narrative strategy of presenting them from a vague through-the-eyes-of-a-child-yet-filtered-through-adult-awareness perspective that does not appear to have any agenda whatsoever: it appears to do little more than taking in all kinds of weirdness with wide-open eyes, though ultimately, of course, it does provide a critique of both Arab-Muslim and Western attitudes and lifestyles. The thing is: the results don't feel pedantic or manipulative in the slightest, and this is crucial to the appeal of the story. Just following the father around is an experience unlike any I’ve ever had: I mean, I never know what this guy is going to do or say next, because his belief system and his values seem so all-over-the-place to me… and yet, somehow, magically, he feels like a perfectly organic human being. Which is what makes all the strangeness and madness and uncertainty so compelling! a et b Cyril Coantiec, « Riad Sattouf remporte le grand prix RTL de la BD 2014», sur lefigaro.fr, 28 novembre 2014 (consulté le 28 septembre 2015). Sonia Déchamp, « La véritable épopée de l' Arabe du futur», Les Cahiers de la bande dessinée, n o5,‎ octobre-décembre 2018, p.126-129