In the running in Angoulême: An oriental education, Beirut in the golden age

The 2020 confinement has pushed many French people to introspection, and comic book authors are no exception. Charles Berberian (Le Journal d'Henriette, Monsieur Jean…), found in this suspended period a starting point to tell “his” Beirut. This is the city in which he spent part of his young years between 1969 and 1975, before arriving in Paris to flee the civil war.

In An Oriental Education, which is part of the 2024 official selection of the Angoulême Festival, he sketches the teeming Lebanese capital as it is today, with its “ambient brothel”, its people bruised by the explosion of the 4 August 2020, who no longer expects much from the future. But above all, as the title suggests, he returns to the footsteps of his childhood. Charles Berberian invites the reader on a stroll through the heart of the city. It's not easy to identify with it, as since the beginning of the 1970s, many buildings have been razed and the streets have literally changed face.

He travels through his lost paradise, with, it must be said, a bit of melancholy. Other images come to mind. Those of the time when Lebanon was still the Switzerland of the Middle East. We relive his days at the beach at the Saint-Georges hotel, the stormy nights from the Tarazi building, his first paintings at the Saroulla cinema or the wait at the bus stop in the hope of meeting a pretty daughter... We then witness with him the first upheavals of the civil war in 1975, to the rhythm of “confinements” (well, well) in the apartment. “Come into the hallway when there’s shooting everywhere, please,” his mother orders him. But also ceasefires. “Don’t come home too late and watch out for snipers.”

An oriental education is also a graphic gem. Like this disjointed and teeming city, this album is an anarchic patchwork of different techniques and formats. As Beirut frees itself from urban planning rules, Berberian plays with imposed figures. The author mixes styles, goes from one to another, returns to the previous one. Certainly the reader finds the author's touch, that of his best-known works, in the most classic boxes. But the watercolors are breathtaking and the 4-color Bic drawings are remarkable. Charles Berberian adds photos, old postcards, pieces of road maps... He also mixes eras, incorporating some of his oldest drawings into the story.

An oriental education is ultimately a declaration of love. To this city first, which the author loves like a member of his family whom we sometimes allow ourselves to criticize a little. And also to his deceased loved ones, to whom he brings back life in the sweetness of happy days. There are his parents, but above all his Greek grandmother Yaya and his brother, the director Alain Berberian who died in 2017, the most present father figure. A tribute full of modesty and great virtuosity.

“An oriental education”, by Charles Berberian, Casteman, 160 pages, 25 euros.