[Review] Intisar in exile by Pedro Riera, a feminist plunged into civil war

A civil war is raging in Yemen but it is absent from most of the media. To learn more, is the second volume of the life of Intisar, a modern woman in Yemen, a good gateway?

A New Beginning

As for the first volume, Intisar's car, the scenario is by Pedro Riera. Don't worry, if you haven't read the beginning published in 2012, you can read this volume without knowing anything. In addition, everything changed in Intisar's life. Riera no longer tells the story of a woman's life in Yemen because she had to flee the war to Jordan. The drawing and colors of Sagar, the new artist, are very different from the previous volume. Sagar's work is impressive. The bright colors around red, orange and purple contrast with the narrator's very dark situation.

A portrait of a woman

Intisar introduces us to a freedom-loving and feminist woman. The voice-over narrative centers on an exiled Yemeni. The first chapter is a road trip in his new car that offers him freedom. Her friends use social media to get more equality. On the contrary, Riera presents a figure of evil by the half-brother who pushed his wife into depression and then repudiates her. He repeatedly denounced the stigmatization of divorced women. Intisar opposes Yemeni Islamists who want to replace the dictator but offer no change for women. The war offered a space of freedom and protest for women because their husbands kept them away from the bombings. The narrator does not present herself as a heroine – her feminist tenacity caused her to be fired from her job as an anaesthetist and her brother then had to return to war-torn Yemen to make sure their pay helped.

Hot topicality

Comics are not only the fine portrait of a woman but also the collective tragedy of a country. Like a civil war in Yemen for dummies, this book helps to understand the causes and course of the war. Intisar hates Saudi Arabia being blamed. The narrator shows how Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkul Karman is idealized by the Western media. The reader plunges into the past of a fierce country that has always resisted. The judicious guide of the actors of the war of Alienor Benoist proposed at the end of the volume by Delcourt is a precious help. We can also salute the beautiful publishing work for this volume both for the quality of the book and for the bonuses.

Everything is grey

With Intisar, the black and white of stereotypes no longer exist. A veiled woman struggles with misogyny. After talking about patriotism, she debunks this myth at the end of the story by showing that it is a source of civil war. Migration is more complex than one might think – leaving is very expensive and refugees often return despite the bombings. The narrator knows very well that she leads a life of rich exile and that this is not everyone's life.

Intisar in exile is therefore a fantastic dive into the complexity of a country and a woman. Each thematic chapter illustrates significant anecdotes. We constantly feel all the paradoxes of the author and the complexity of the situation: the perception of his country, his situation as a rich exile…