Léna Merhej, who currently resides in Marseille, has written and illustrated more than thirty-five children’s books in Arabic, several of which have received prestigious awards. His animated film Dessiner la guerre won the New York Festival prize and his book Salam won the prize for the best album by Mahmoud Kahil. The author is part of the founding team of the BD Samandal collective; she taught illustration and animation at the American University of Beirut (AUB), where she began her studies in design and technology, before continuing them in New York, at the Parsons School of Design, then in Bremen , to support his thesis on the narration of war in comics.
The new opus of the young artist was produced in collaboration with Inès Khansa who is a historian and specialist in the cultures of Islam. “Inès started from the work of Ibn al-Sa’i on the wives of caliphs, the harem and the women of the court of Baghdad, indicates Léna Merhej. The work is constructed like an anthology, and each chapter, dedicated to a woman, begins with a litany of male references from witnesses who attest to the truthfulness of the facts, transmitted orally. In the end, for each sentence centered on these heroines, there are three paragraphs of guarantors to legitimize the female voice”, notes the illustrator with humor. The two researchers therefore began by dusting off the text of its dross in order to keep only what concerns the ten women chosen in the album. “We wanted to put women at the heart of their own story, and we left the references for the end, whereas traditionally in Arabic literature, they are located at the beginning. In the last pages, the reader discovers the famous “’an”, associated each time with a different hat to represent the male sources”, continues the artist. This reversal invites a change of perspective as you read, since it is usually women who are associated with their clothing accessories. Throughout the pages, Bourane, Mahbouba, Chahane and the others are freed from their spatio-temporal shackles, but also marital, family, social, which highlights their personality and their personal trajectory. “The text of Ibn al-Sa’i has not been modified, Inès Khansaa has added a few elements from other works, but they appear in the images or at the end of the album, in the biographies of each heroines,” says Léna Merhej.
The illustrated story of ten surprising Abbasid heroines of clairvoyance and alacrity. Photo DR
Banfacha, Sitt al-nissa’, Saljouqi et Madonna
In the prologue, the two authors present their characters, who have in common to live in the court of the caliph in Baghdad, between the 7th and 13th centuries. They come from Basra, Ispahan, Samarkand, Mongolia and belong to very diverse social classes, one is a musician or poetess, the other known for her wisdom, for her faith or for her commitment to the most poor… The very modern notion of sorority looms between the destinies of these women who impose their word. The delicate and meaningful spelling of Léna Merhej builds a pleasant aesthetic dynamic that highlights the text while managing to embody living and meaningful characters. Each woman is assigned personalized motifs in the frame that surrounds the plates that concern her, and on the sidelines of the narratological space, a few notes explain certain terms or cultural references, without ever weighing down a dense and accessible text.
Some of these plates, notably those of Mahbouba and Fadl al-Cha’ira, were exhibited in Angoulême this winter, at the Paper Museum. “They have had quite a bit of success, which is very encouraging,” remarks the artist, who considers the Arabic text to be “quite obscure, and the visual references tend to elucidate it.” “In the choice of our heroines, she continues, we bet on variety, there is an entrepreneur who builds schools, another who organizes a union for workers… Some are caliph’s wives or slaves , among them there is Chahane, who leads a troupe of musicians, or the one who enters the running in a poetic competition”, lists the illustrator, who revisits the stereotypical vision that one can have of the harem. Thus, when Buran hears that “the most beautiful pearl is the one that has never been touched”, she claims in suggestive metaphorical language the beauty of a necklace of perforated pearls.
Lena Merhej emphasizes the playful dimension of her approach. “It’s fun to imagine these women in their context, I did a lot of research on their clothing and on different visual data. I found many earthenware patterns, vases, which I used in the borders of my boards. The Abbasid architecture is essentially described, and I had to do a great job of imagination”, specifies the one who associated medieval references with contemporary writing codes. “Our album is full of references to popular culture, especially music, like Paris Hilton or Madonna. In the last scene, Sitt al-Nisa’ has converted to Sufism, she has abandoned material possessions and she is standing in the desert, surrounded by crows; this is a direct reference to Madonna’s Frozen music video. In our preface, we say that we are interested in the story of their souls, we want to underline the transmission that took place between these women of yesterday and those of today. We gave them back their voice to highlight the way in which they seized their freedom to act, even if deep down they were all slaves,” adds Léna Merhej. The collective dimension of this work is essential, it was reviewed by Hala Bizri, Christine Abi Azar, Carine Moukhair and Laila Familiar.
The last plate of the book represents a woman who scans the sky, the different boxes tell the stages of her life. “It’s Buran, we wanted to mention in the appendix her high level of scientific knowledge, because she grew up in a family of astrologers. She made a lot of interesting discoveries, I wanted to emphasize the work that marked her life, in all the research she carried out, which echoes the quotes from other women of the time, reproduced on a half a page, as if to recall all the ones we don’t talk regarding”, specifies the author, who is currently reading nearly a hundred Arabic novels for young people, because she is taking part in a literary jury at the end of September. In November, the illustrator will go to the Cairo Comics comic book festival. “Our book will be released on this occasion and it will be presented through a conference given by Inès and me. We will also make a presentation of our work during a concert in December on the qaynas (that is to say the singers), in Marseille”, concludes the illustrator, whose graphic gesture has created surprising Abbasid heroines of clairvoyance and alacrity.
Léna Merhej, who currently resides in Marseille, has written and illustrated more than thirty-five children’s books in Arabic, several of which have received prestigious awards. His animated film Dessiner la guerre won the New York Festival prize and his book Salam won the prize for the best album by Mahmoud Kahil. The author is part of the founding team of the BD collective…
