With Yasmeen #5, from Scout Comics, Yasmeen, now in high school in the United States, is continuing to deal with flashbacks of her days in captivity.
Plus, she is being subjected to racist taunting in the hallways, while helping a school friend, a victim of cyberbullying.
The flashbacks involve Iraq in 2014. Yasmeen is then 16, and ISIS invades Mosul, and her family is under threat. Yasmeen’s family makes a run for it, but Yasmeen is captured by terrorists, and kept a sex prisoner with three other girls! If there was ever a time for her to try to escape, this is it! Yasmeen’s father tags along with the Iraqi army as they prepare for battle in hope to rescue Yasmeen from her new owner.
Writer Saif A. Ahmed (The Dinner, etc), an Iraqi screenwriter and structural engineer, has been living in the US since 2015. His dialogue, sense of story progression, and character development put Yasmeen in a fascinating category. For us North Americans, the politics of Iraq may appear opaque and puzzling, but Ahmed walks us through the dynamics of the situation. The undertones of suspense and suspicion, the climate of intolerance are made real.
Likewise, illustrator Fabiana Mascolo (Caput Mundi, Ruggine), a Rome-based artist brings a carefully crafted thin line style to Yasmeen. Mascolo’s lines are exquisite, her colours atmospheric without exaggeration. The spatial quality of the visuals in this penultimate issue (one more issue to go!) gives us the illusion of wide-open areas, of uncramped surroundings. The character gestures and expressions are fascinating, as they, in turn, reveal and conceal their thoughts and motives.
This is a really engrossing book, full of the threat and weight of political and cultural reality, and well worth reading. If you are motivated to read about international cultures and communities and have a sense of what human struggles are being felt across the globe, Yasmeen can serve as an eye-opening, personalized primer on power, innocence, immigration and resilience. Highly recommended.
Scout Comics, Yasmeen #5 (of 6), $3.99 for 25 pages of content. Assume Teen + rating
Newsdesk