WELCOME TO HELL as Envisioned by MOHAMMAD SABAANEH
- Andrew Irvin
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
Interviews Editor, Andrew Irvin, is joined today by Mohammad Sabaaneh, author and illustrator of Welcome to Hell, available now through Street Noise Books.
Before proceeding please see our content warning, noting Mohammad's graphic novel includes depictions of various fundamental rights violations and crimes against humanity.
COMIC BOOK YETI: Mohammad, we are grateful to have you here in the Yeti Cave today. Thank you for sharing this absolutely heartbreaking piece of work. Since I received your graphic novel, the conflict has only escalated, with the attacks on Gaza now coupled with unchecked aggression by Israel on civilian targets in Lebanon. I know communications have been locked down and incredibly limited both within and beyond the region. Where are you currently located while undertaking promotional efforts for Welcome to Hell? Have you been able to get in touch with family, and is there anything you’d like to share about what these atrocities have meant in terms of staying connected?
MOHAMMAD SABAANEH: I live in the West Bank, not the Gaza Strip. I lived in Ramallah. I used to live in Jenin and that’s where my parents and siblings still live. And sometimes it's true, we can't travel or connect with my family in Jenin. Sometimes it's very difficult to travel from Jenin to Ramallah or from Ramallah to Jenin. The distance is less than 140 kilometers, and yet sometimes this journey, which should take an hour and a quarter or an hour and twenty minutes, takes more than three or four hours.
You can imagine that we spend three to four hours sometimes at Israeli checkpoints just to cross from Ramallah to Jenin. This difficulty in the West Bank is not as it is in the Gaza Strip. But still, treating Palestinians in this horrible way and turning our cities and villages into large prisons is a means used by the Israelis in order to oppress the native people, to suppress the Palestinians, and fracture the Palestinian geographic unity, the unity of the Palestinian people on our own land.
This is a form of collective punishment practiced by the state of Israel, via checkpoints and gates. Can you imagine that a city like Ramallah, a city of more than 300,000 citizens, can be turned instantly into a large prison by closing a series of gates and checkpoints? Other Palestinian cities are the same. The Israelis can turn any city into a large prison in the blink of an eye. Even in times when there is no escalation—we pass at least three checkpoints to get from Ramallah to Jenin. And recently, Israel established or re-established illegal settlements in Jenin, so reaching Jenin has become much more difficult.
While I'm talking to you, just yesterday, some settlers tried to prevent one of the Palestinian villages in Jenin from burying one of their dead in the village cemetery, because the grave was near an illegal settlement. After the Palestinians buried him, the army demanded that they remove the body of this Palestinian and move it elsewhere. Palestinians, whether alive or dead, inside the occupied territory or outside, are pursued by this radical, killer, and criminal Israeli system? This is what's happening in the West Bank, and this is what's happening in my cities.
CBY: It's alarming to know systematic security bottlenecks can infringe on freedom of movement, partitioning and isolating domestic spaces, and no space is free from the threat of violence or detainment. As difficult as the subject matter of Welcome to Hell was to confront, your illustrations were arresting and engrossing, with George Herriman’s Krazy Kat and Cliff Sterrett’s Polly and her Pals coming to mind as cartoons contemporary to the Cubist movement that drew upon the form in their strips. Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Gris are immediately evoked by your work, but I’m curious; can you share a bit about any other artistic influences that have fed into your artistic practice?
MS: Cubism for me is the most effective means of depicting the reality of Palestinians and the circumstances we suffer today. Many artists used Cubism in World War I and World War II to illustrate and to talk about collective tragedies, because it is so effective at depicting humans as machines, and how humans can be used as a tool for killing. Palestinians are surrounded by walls, checkpoints, Israeli tanks, Israeli military vehicles, and other mechanisms that the occupation uses to besiege Palestinians and kill them.
Thus, we are surrounded by Cubism, we are surrounded by geometric shapes and geometric forms created by the occupation. And those forces repress everything real and everything organic Palestinian. The tree is demolished by an Israeli bulldozer. Our cities and Palestinian lands and Palestinians themselves are surrounded by the Israeli concrete wall – the cube. Cubes surround us, surround our schools, surround our cities, surround our villages. All these geometric shapes have crushed these organic forms existing within Palestine and turned us into humans surrounded by these unnatural shapes. Shapes created by the occupation. I find the Cubism school is the most effective way to talk about Palestinians—the bodies of Palestinians under demolished houses, the bodies of children under demolished houses in Gaza—turned from natural shapes into cubic shapes because of this oppression.
CBY: Yes, the same dehumanizing, sharp, inhospitable angularity is evocative and communicates volumes, with the visuals carrying both depth and extreme weight with their edge. I’ve had the opportunity to read many of your political cartoons on the Cartoon Movement platform, and you’ve published through a variety of outlets. How did you end up becoming acquainted with Liz Frances and decide upon working with Street Noise Books?
MS: Regarding the beginning of comics, or why I created comics, and where I met Liz, actually, after producing my first book, I was introduced by a group of artists, people like Seth Tobocman, Joe Sacco, Ethan, Peter Kuper, and many artists I met in the United States working in the art of comics. I am a political cartoonist, but at that time, I was still unsure about my knowledge of the art of comics, as opposed to cartoons, about how to create them, the principles, and how they work.
I lacked information on so much of this, even though cartoons are close to comics. I found there was a significant lack of information I needed. In the fall of 2019, Liz Frances came to Palestine and requested to meet with me. I didn't know her, and at that time we had no working relationship. So, I was surprised when I showed her some of my work and she asked me to collaborate on creating a comic book. She was asking me as a Palestinian artist to produce a graphic novel. At the time, I had finished my first book, which was a collection of political cartoons, but I was preparing to study for my master's degree in the United Kingdom. So, I told her that I wasn’t sure I could do it at that time. But since I planned to focus my master's research on comics, I thought maybe that would enable me to do it.
During my master's studies in the UK through the Chevening scholarship, I did a lot of research on comics, and I had the space to connect with artists in Britain, to study, to read, and to educate myself on the subject and prepare for my first comic book. I created what became Power Born of Dreams during my master's studies. Of course, I immediately sent it to Liz in the United States, and she offered to print the book, which became our first Palestinian comic book. It should be considered the first Palestinian graphic novel to come from Palestine. Liz and Street Noise had a big role in its publication. I also want to note that Liz is always searching and thinking about projects related to the Palestinian cause with other artists. She deserves a lot of credit for me starting my work in comics, because I was creating an academic project, but she enabled me to publish it in a cultural and commercial manner, reaching a wider audience.
CBY: It is enormously encouraging to hear of Liz sticking with you as a publisher on your journey as a comic creator from the first instance you met. Finding someone to support and amplify your voice with such unwavering commitment is a tremendous rarity. Mohammad, we always close by providing creators with a moment to share any unrelated work that has proven inspiring or has caught their attention lately, and given the inspiration you provide, I am especially curious what keeps your creative fire fueled. What other comics, film, music, literature, art, etc. would you recommend our readers check out once they’ve given Welcome to Hell a read?
MS: I believe that the issue of World War III magazine, which came out this year, subtitled, “The Right to Live in Peace” is worth reading. I was a member of its editorial board with Seth Tobocman and a group of artists. I believe it is a valuable read for many reasons: first, because it is about the Palestinian cause; second, because we worked with a large group of Palestinian comic artists to create these comics, in addition to international artists like Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, Seth Tobocman, and others like Derek Orak, whose work I believe should be read. In addition, there will be other works from me in the near future which I am working on in collaboration with Liz and other publishing houses
CBY: You've certainly offered a selection of other fantastic political cartoonists whose art is laden with social context everyone should take into account. Mohammad, thank you for making time to share your experience with our audience, especially in recognition of how harrowing it must be to recount some of the scenarios you've detailed in your book. For those who would like to learn more about your work, do you have any other publication, portfolio, or social media links you’d like to share? How else would you like to see our readers engage with the issues you’ve raised in Welcome to Hell?
MS: It’s very important to know what Palestinian prisoners and Palestinians in general are going through, whether they are alive or dead, prisoners or not. What Palestinians are experiencing is a form of genocide, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. Of course, I hope that there will be engagement with these issues, in solidarity with the prisoners, talking about them, and promoting their cause. In addition to discussing these matters, it's also important to engage in marches, movements, and protests, and to share on social media, consistently talking about them. Remember that every day that passes for these prisoners, the occupation kills them inside these prisons.
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