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Jonathan Cape (UK), paperback, 9780224096195; Interlink Books (US), paperback, 978156656877 |
BYE BYE BABYLON
Illustrated by the author
Reviewed by Charlotte Simpson
Ziadé's Bye Bye Babylon, an illustrated memoir, takes us back to the spring of 1975, on a day when her family returned from a lunch in the country to find that in the space of a few hours a civil war had begun. Ziadé was just ten years old when Beirut descended into a madness that lasted fifteen years and continues to have repercussions. Lebanon has a prominent place in my memory. When I was growing up in the 1980s the country was always in the news because of the war that had already been going on for a decade and because of the kidnappings of UK citizens such as the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy, Terry Waite. Despite this I actually know very little about the conflict, its origins and the impact on the Lebanese people. Bye Bye Babylon has helped me understand a bit more about how complex the conflict was. Christian factions, Islamic groups, Palestinians and Syrians all fought each other ferociously, reducing many areas of Beirut to rubble. The lasting impression that I have taken from Bye Bye Babylon is of a childhood lost overnight. Ziadé doesn't go into great detail about the hardships she and her family endured but very effectively uses words and pictures to illustrate how life was perverted and distorted. The deaths of friends and relatives, the massacres and mutilations and what must have been fear-filled nights spent listening to the bombs dropping are all recounted in a matter of fact manner that allows readers the space to imagine for themselves the horror of what life must have been like. As I read I kept trying to comprehend what it would mean to have a war being fought on my street while trying to continue with the routines of daily living. In Ziadé's life what should have been a simple visit to the local chocolatier became a dangerous adventure. This idea of chaos and terror intruding brutally into normal life is the central theme of Bye Bye Babylon. Brand names feature prominently in Ziadé's memories of life before and after the start of the war, symbolising what has been lost and corrupted. She notes that as the Beirut shops filled up with the international brands that could be purchased in London and New York, the militia groups were stocking up on their own brands of choice like the Kalashnikov AK-47. She also draws pictures of the food, brand names and landmarks that had marked her life up to that terrible day in 1975, the familiar images of a comfortable, middle class life that came to an abrupt and violent end. The brand identities that multinational companies had spent many years and millions of dollars carefully creating became polluted as there was ‘artillery fire at the Cola and Chevrolet crossroads' and militiamen entrenched themselves in the Holiday Inn and the Hilton.
These messages are thoughtfully delivered, with Zaidé's illustrations complementing her text to give the reader
a strong sense of the horrors of life in Beirut between 1975 and 1979. It's hard to conceive that the war would continue
and worsen for another decade. |