Heartbreak wrapped in cartoon: Kobane Calling

I started this book and put it down, not because I was confused and thought this was going to be about Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. Although that may be why I put it down after all. I put it down because the frenetic narrator who is almost sneaking off to Syria and creating alternative worlds for his mother in order to go to Kobane at first reminded me of the drug addled Hunter S. Thompson from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Even in its graphic form, I am not really a fan. So maybe the whole Cobain, drugs thing got me connecting Zerocalcare with someone whose motives are fueled by paranoia and alcohol. Yes, the character seems addicted to chai, but other than that, once he left for Syria, I was hooked.

Let me back up and let the publishers talk about it. Like the middle east itself, it's complicated. What helps is that the cartoonist is not American so his lens is less, well, American, which right now, is a fabulous thing.

From the publishers:
KOBANE CALLING is the autobiographical memoir of a young Italian cartoonist, writing and drawing under the nom-de-plume Zerocalcare, who volunteers with the Rojava Calling organization and heads into the Middle East to support and observe the Kurdish resistance in Syria as they struggle against the advancing forces of the Islamic State. He winds up in the small town of Mesher, near the Turkish-Syrian border as a journalist and aid worker, and from there he travels into Ayn al-Arab, a majority-Kurd town in the Rojava region of Syria. As he receives an education into the war from the Kurdish perspective, he meets the women fighting in the all-female Kurdish volunteer army (the Yekeineyen Parastina Jin, or Women's Defense Units), struggling to simultaneously fight off the Islamic State even as they take strides for Kurdish independence and attempt a restructuring of traditional patriarchal Kurdish society. In a story and style at once humorous and heartbreaking, Zerocalcare presents clear-eyed reportage of the fight against the Islamic State from the front lines. Originally published in the Italian weekly INTERNATIONAL, and then collected and expanded in an edition by Italian publisher BAO Publishing.

My thoughts:
This feels authentic, unfiltered by censorship and propaganda. Maybe I am naive but I think it just tells his story in panel form without agenda except to tell the truth. I was especially interested in the YPJ, the all-female Kurdish volunteer army. What we would call them in the Pacific are mana wahine which represent those powerful females who can save themselves, and their men too. 

I like how confused the author is when it seems like the enemy is the neighbor is the ally. I also have been shying away from watching and reading too much news, so Kobane is new to me and I just found this story both wrenching and heart affirming at the same time. I started re reading certain passages just to hold onto these people's stories, knowing that many of them will not live to see an end to this battle and will not live to go back to their homes just across the fence. In the end, the dead are still buried together, but in life, it is so very complicated. 

For those students in the middle, this is living history told by the people on the front lines. This is happening now,  not centuries ago. They need to know that people cannot be lumped in together and stereotyped because all we see are certain views from the media. Kobane Calling: Greetings from Northeast Syria is a portal in.