She studied at the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) in Beirut and at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD) in Paris. Follow her past cars riddled with bullet holes, into taxi cabs that travel where buses refuse to go, and on outings to collect shrapnel from the sidewalk. Here-and throughout-Abirached shares (and readers feel) a loss that cannot be named. Zeina Abirached was born in 1981 in Beirut, Lebanon. She grew up in Beirut as fighting between Christians and Muslims divided the city streets. When an attack forced Abirached, her schoolmates, and teachers to stay at school overnight, she realized that “our teachers were as scared as we were.” In the middle of her account, Abirached abandons words and uses scratchy white lines on black pages to draw remembered moments of peace: a jar of olives, a swing, a coop full of chickens.

I Remember Beirut was a scattered, but effective, glimpse at a difficult life through details only. But it approaches the idea from a different perspective. Abirached’s younger brother assembled a collection of shrapnel, and the author recalls watching the Olympics (“I remember Florence Griffith Joyner’s nails”). I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached is her memoir of growing up in Beirut during the Christian and Muslim war in the 1980s. Much like I Remember Beirut, this is a graphic novel memoir of Abiracheds childhood during the civil war in Lebanon. There was no water for showers, but an endless supply of cigarettes. Her mother tired of getting her windshield replaced every time a shell hit, and she eventually drove without it. Collecting memories introduced via the recurring phrase “I remember,” Abirached’s prose and artwork convey, with grace and humor, the way her family’s life during the war shifted from mundane to ominous and back again. I remember Georges Perec the final image announces. Zeina Abirached (Beirut, 18 gennaio 1981) è una disegnatrice e fumettista libanese. As with Abirached’s debut, A Game for Swallows, this b&w graphic memoir of growing up in Lebanon during that country’s civil war invites comparison to Persepolis. I Remember Beirut by Zeina Abirached, translated by Edward Gauvin As in my post for Beirut ’s preceding, award-winning companion title, A Game for Swallows, I find I need to start at book’s end.