In his new comic strip, the designer recounts the childhood of his younger brother, kidnapped by their father in the early 1990s and raised in Syria.
Riad Sattouf is back. While all his readers thought his successful series The Arab of the Future (2014-2022) was over, the Franco-Syrian designer is relaunching the saga this Tuesday with Me, Fadi, the Stolen Brother. A book where he recounts the childhood of his younger brother, kidnapped by their father in the early 1990s.
Fadi grew up carefree as a kindergarten student in Rennes. Then one day, his father Abdel-Razak, who feels rejected in France and wants to convince his wife to return to her hometown, Ter Maaleh near Homs in Syria, takes her with him by plane. His mother and two brothers did not see him again for 20 years.
Exceptional memory
The album is based on testimonies from Fadi collected by Riad Sattouf in 2011 and 2012, when they found each other after two decades separated from each other. “This brother that I hadn’t seen for twenty years, when he came back, that’s what triggered the desire in me to make The Arab of the Future,” Riad Sattouf confides to BFMTV.
“All the stories my brother told me revived the memory of my own youth,” adds the designer. “I love stories that explore the different points of view we can have on an event.”
Riad Sattouf was able to rely on his brother’s exceptional memory to tell his story. “His was ten times better than mine. No doubt the trauma he experienced made his neurons very sharp. He doesn’t have this infantile amnesia at all.” His brother’s story, he said, “begged to be told.”
Keep it secret
The designer, crowned Angoulême Grand Prix in 2023, once again surprises his readers with a darker story than the previous ones. The volume transcribes the fears of young Fadi, who arrives in Syria without knowing the language. Certain scenes offer atmospheres worthy of a horror film.
“I had to be 46 years old to be able to tell (this story). For me, as a comic book author, it was a challenge,” underlines Riad Sattouf. “My brother’s story is something untold, untold. It carries within it a drama.”
But Riad Sattouf refuses to say more for the moment. And to reveal if he is still in contact with this long-lost brother. “For a book to work well, you have to keep an element of mystery (…) and I will not answer this question (…) so as not to break the spell. You will find out when you read the rest.” Two other volumes are planned.
While preparing his third film as director, with the Unknowns Didier Bourdon, Pascal Légitimus and Bernard Campan, Riad Sattouf will also tell the story of Fadi’s disappearance from their mother’s point of view. He publishes each month in Notre temps the plates of this book which is entitled The Arab of the future, the mother’s book.
Jérôme Lachasse with Nicolas Behar
