Zahra’s Paradise: Helping Teens Relate to Everyday Iranians?

Regularly updated webcomics with over-arcing storylines have been popular for years. Jorge Cham’s Ph.D was such a hit with the geek set (my grad student husband included) that he’s successfully self-published four collections. Penny Arcade, brain child of  “Gabe” and “Tycho” has become review central for all things video game, and hosts an annual conference (PAX). But where Ph.D and Penny Arcade are inspired by real life, Zahra’s Paradise is real life.

Amir is a human rights activist in Iran. Khalil is a talented illustrator. Together, they’re writing a new kind of fiction, Zahra’s Paradise, a “real-time nonfiction narrative in a fictional setting”. The comic is being published first online with a print edition to follow in 2011. The print edition will be published by First Second Press.

From PW:

Mark Siegel, editorial director of First Second, said the comic is about a blog called Zahra’s Paradise and tells the story of the blogger’s brother, a 19-year-old Iranian political activist who disappears after the political demonstrations in Tehran in June 2009. In their effort to locate the missing activist, the blogger and his mother, Zahra, come face-to-face with the brutality of the Islamic Republic and the fate of other missing Iranian dissidents. While the characters are fictional—the full names of the creators have been left out to protect them—Siegel said the events are real, and he called the comic “a roman à  clef of history as it is happening.”

A Way to Avoid Censorship?

Traditionally, roman à clef novels have been a way for writers to skirt law suits, avoid incrimination, veil personal experiences, and indulge in fantasies about the way “things should have gone”.  And while the creators of Zahra’s Paradise are avoiding possible criminal charges, they’re also avoiding censorship.

Censorship has been a hot button since the dawn of, well, stories. Parents skip over the more difficult periods when discussing their child’s timeline (a fascination with cat food); religious organizations hack away at texts (the Apocrypha); and governments impose filters on ISPs (and we will find a way around them, Stephen Conroy). And while skipping over Baby’s love of Meow Mix in the family newsletter is forgivable, suppression of information and free speech is not.

In years past, censorship has been hard to avoid. Banned books and film were not imported, and retailers were subject to charges for supplying them. But the vastness of the interwebs makes it hard for governments et. al to completely silence anyone with a web connection and a strong enough will. Online formats also encourage readers to talk (tweet), blog, and share the comic, ultimately making it harder to suppress.

Relating to Everyday Iranians

According to Siegel,

The story’s complex loom weaves together many topical threads, from the social media and technology element, to the role of women at the heart of Iran’s freedom movement, the political, legal, and human rights issues. And by returning the focus to human rights, art becomes a player, a participant, a voice adding to the chorus of voices in the streets and on the rooftops of Iran.

But Zahra’s Paradise goes deeper than that. Amir and Khalil’s story presents Iranian news in a teen-accessible format. Reading news articles–even well-written, well-researched material–often smacks of homework and term papers. But Zahra’s Paradise isn’t just easily digested bite-sized news. It does what news articles and television coverage in Iran cannot: it gives readers a true, realistic view of life on the ground in Iran within a context we can understand. Most people, most teens, know there are human rights violations happening in Iran. Most know life is difficult, often oppressive, and that they wouldn’t want to live there. Beyond the usual head shake and tsk tsking, it can be hard to relate to people so far away.

Everyone can relate to fear for a loved one. Everyone can relate to being afraid, or being told they’re not important because they’re the wrong religion, wrong party, wrong color, wrong sex. Although it’s not YA specific, Zahra’s Paradise is a little (or perhaps a lot, I’m not sure yet) like Reading Lolita in Tehran and Three Cups of Tea for teens. (It also shares many elements with Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, though the events in Zahra’s Paradise are more recent.) Amir’s words, strong and simple, move beyond simple description, knocking on the door of the familiar:

A lot of death has gone into Zahra’s Paradise, but there’s still plenty of life in the dead. There’s no destroying their life force.

The dead speak to us, and through us. They can come back as fact, or they can come back as fiction. The trick, I think, is to face them, to channel their force, to write through and with one’s grief. To lend them your pen so that you can let go of their pain.

That’s not always easy. There’s so much grief in Zahra’s Paradise—the cemetery—that sometimes one gets the feeling that there’s no bottom to the abyss. No end to the thousands of boys and girls martyred in the image of the state and buried in the constitution of its founding fathers. But there is. I’m as sure of it as I am of the faith in my grandmother’s voice and the love in her touch. And I’m as sure of it as I am of Iran and Iranians, all the contradiction, hypocrisy, humor and humanity that helps this most improbable and impossible of nations live through tragedy.

The Iran of my childhood was full of joy, love and laughter. It was brimming with plates full of fruits, and the people were every bit as splendid and colorful, generous and abundant as their dishes. They were proud and strong, wild and free, magnificent and majestic.

All that past is not dead. A new generation is opening its wings, and nothing and no one can stop its flight.
That’s why this project speaks to my heart.–Chapter 1, Zahra’s Paradise.

Will you read Zahra’s Paradise? Do you think it will appeal to teens? Did you read Three Cups of Tea or Reading Lolita in Tehran? Did they make it easier for you to get inside what’s happening in Iran?