Even though anglo-comic books never took off in Lebanon, Franco-Belgian comics were a staple of Lebanese childhoods for those who were French-educated until the Internet became a fixture of daily life. Since there are no punitive measures in the country against those who pirate digital files, Lebanese youth, for the first time, suddenly had unrestricted access to uncensored comics from all over the world aimed squarely at adults. This is why, until the 2000s, sequential art wasn’t practiced as an art form.
In 2007, Samandal Comics, a trilingual Levantine comics collective dedicated to the elevation of sequential art in the Arab world, was founded, and included members who would become notable in the local scene, such as Lena Merhej, Hatem Imam, and Fadi Baki. Samandal introduced alternative comics to the Lebanese art scene by showcasing experimental work that was surrealistic, deeply political, and unabashedly queer. It was a milestone in regional indie publishing, showing other local cartoonists that comics can be used as a form of artistic resistance against the powers that be.
However, Samandal wasn’t without its controversies. In 2010, the Lebanese state brought a lawsuit against its editors, accusing them of blasphemy, among other concerns, stemming from two stories that were deemed offensive to the Catholic Church. Following a legal battle that lasted years, the editors were fined in 2015 amid international outcry from free speech advocates. Since then, Samandal has continued operations on the margins. The size of the scene remains small, but a few cartoonists have emerged in recent years, despite a relative lack of institutional support, through their commitment to the DIY ethos and the transnational network of solidarity they’ve developed over the years. One of these emerging cartoonists in the Lebanese alternative comics scene is Nour Hifaoui. Her name isn’t as widely known as other local cartoonists, but she’s already made an indelible mark on Lebanon with her daring erotic graphic novel, Titties, released in 2022.
For those who aren’t in the know when it comes to the hipster scene centered around the Barzakh Bookshop & Café in Hamra, Hifaoui is a SWANA graphic novelist who, after graduating from the Lebanese Academy of Fine Arts (ALBA) in 2015, sought to immerse herself in the world of visual storytelling. After years of honing her craft in the Lebanese underground art movement, she was inducted into Samandal Comics. Currently, her output primarily lies within the realm of auto-fiction, presenting intimate yet provocative stories in an exaggerated art style in hope of accentuating their nuances.
Released to popular acclaim, Titties was the culmination of that approach to the medium, exploring the tumultuous love life of a self-insert persona in one-page stories recounting adventures with various partners. By presenting these encounters in a frank manner, Hifaoui examined how women from her background process pleasure during sex, down to the most trivial details in all their absurdity. In turn, she hoped to provoke the reader to confront the uncomfortable realities of our carnal experiences — prohibition, repression, and marginalization, as is painfully common in the Middle East. A memorable string of panels, for example, includes Hifaoui and her lover figuring out their video call setup. While trying to avoid alerting his roommates, her lover ejaculates prematurely after asking to see her face, leaving her visibly and audibly unsatisfied. Ultimately, this fearless act of transgression is in service of pushing the limits of self-expression in a failed state where heavy-handed censorship has, over the past couple of years, reached Orwellian levels, with few options left to meaningfully resist this perplexing status quo.
Contrary to the widespread perception of Arabs as inactive until their honeymoons, the vignettes presented in Titties aren't wish-fulfillment on Hifaoui's part but authentic depictions of sexual relations among local youth, inspired by her real-life hookups. What led to the origination of Titties as a concept, in particular, was her initial attempt at an open relationship after the arrangement had become popular on social media, especially for those in search of something unconventional in contrast to the suffocating nature of traditional romantic pairings. As Hifaoui navigated its trial and tribulation, she was, for the first time, sexually involved with several people simultaneously, and it opened her up to the possibilities of other forms of human connection. Following each liaison, she felt compelled to illustrate them in order to process what had happened — and then share them with friends as a form of therapeutic release. After a few months of documenting her trysts, she realized that she had laid the foundations for her first solo comic.
In terms of its subject matter and unrestrained presentation, Titties was unlike anything that had been published at the time. Ever the cosmopolitan, Hifaoui has taken inspiration throughout her career from such international creators such as Ulli Lust, Julie Doucet, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Speaking of her influences for Titties specifically, she said:
“I loved [Lust & Doucet]’s narrative style—works of autofiction revealing so much vulnerability and crudeness while simultaneously depicting relationships with intimacy. These comics made me reflect on my narrative style and my relationships.”
It’s no surprise then that Hifaoui was first introduced to the exhilarating world of sequential art in school when an obscure French comic artist was brought in for a presentation that intrigued her with the notion that she could draw the same character for pages in order to chronicle personal anecdotes. Back then, she was even nicknamed "Miss Curious" because, in her own words, “I would ask too many questions about people’s lives. I wanted to hear their stories, the intimate ones — the ones they wouldn’t share over coffee with a neighbor. It is as if I wanted to know the origin stories of people, where they come from, and how they became who they are.”
Factoring in the virtuosity of Titties, she no doubt had her pick of publishers for this particular title. After all, at first glance, it would seem odd to choose an independent one such as Samandal Comics, but she emphasized that, “I wanted my story published and read in Lebanon by Lebanese people. However, when it came time to print the comic, the printing house had reservations about the content. My second option was to print it with our collective in France and then distribute it in Lebanon, which is what I ended up doing.”
Given the sensitivity of the subject matter in a country as conservative as the Paris of the Middle East, she understandably was worried about a potential backlash. Thus, she was careful to have Titties distributed in safe spaces. She was certain her family wouldn’t try to read it as they weren’t a part of the target audience. Regardless, that didn’t mean Hifaoui's parents weren’t aware of its impending release.
“Obviously, my mother wasn’t pleased, but she understood that this was my life and my work, and she knew how to detach herself from it," she said. "On the other hand, my father has no clue what’s inside the comic; he only knows it's a feminist work exploring women's sexuality."
And yet, it turned out that there was no cause for concern as the response was everything she could’ve hoped for in light of the sociopolitical circumstances at the time.
“Initially, we printed a small batch to see how readers would react, but it sold out right away, so we printed several more editions, and all of them sold out, too," she said. "A friend of mine had to buy more than ten copies because each time his visitors saw it, they’d snatch it off his shelf! Eventually, it reached the shores of Italy when an Italian publisher translated it into Italian and sold copies of it there.”
Now that the fears of a pseudo-religious retaliation have been assuaged by the warm reception, Hifaoui plans to release more work in that mold. At the moment, she’s working on not one but two erotic graphic novels that will further her resistance against the censors of sexual self-expression in Arabia and beyond. One of these upcoming opuses will be a follow-up to Titties, cheekily titled Titties Too, in which the protagonist explores her queerness. The other will be called Labrys and will tackle lesbianism. Hifaoui proudly proclaimed it to be even more explicit as she now strives to examine long-distance intercourse facilitated by the latest technological breakthroughs in social media and sensual lifestyle products.
The post Nour Hifaoui’s <i>Titties</i>: Resistance against censorship in the Arab world appeared first on The Comics Journal.
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