When you read Zeina Abirached’s A Game for Swallows, you might think it was written only yesterday, given that the world ladles fresh violence onto our screens every day. Abirached, a French-Lebanese graphic novelist and illustrator, is known for her autobiographical memoirs. A Game for Swallows is set in a Beirut indexed by sandbags and bricks and terrorised by shelling and snipers, where two children wait for their parents to return home, and the neighbours in the building come together to make sure they’re safe.
A review called this memoir “apolitical”, but a piece of literature so universal and articulate is nothing but that. The noun “apolitical” yearns for exactitude, faltering given that such an endeavour is impossible in a quotidian shaped by politics. While it’s true Abirached doesn’t “take sides”, that’s anyway beside the point in a memoir that attempts to articulate a child’s naïve experience of a day in a war-torn city. In choosing to question how children, who often don’t have the vocabulary of unimaginative adults, see those around them during the war, she unbinds the story of her childhood from the larger politics, shifting the gaze onto people who are otherwise mere numbers.
Abirached spoke to Scroll about her novel’s focus on the platitudes of lives caught in violence, the role of memory in shaping personal and collective histories, and art as a form of resistance against historical erasure.
A Game of Swallows is a graphic novel that tells the story of a single day in the lives of your characters.
And the night.
Yes, it’s a single night, a night that feels ordinary for the characters, but a night where a lot unfolds – one that also hints at more to come. It ended happily, but it’s not a happy ending. Why did you choose this structure of focusing on just one night? It’s a very Joycean approach.
In classical theatre – at least in Western, or Occidental theatre – you have three main rules: the unity of space, the unity of time, and the unity of action. It helps to concentrate the plot within these three rules. My idea was to talk about everyday life during a civil war, from the perspective of a child. But, of course, I didn’t want to write about every single day.
So, I decided to focus on one day, one particularly intense day and night, because my parents were away. It’s a day I remember perfectly because they were always with us, always making sure my brother and I were safe. Despite everything – the danger, the war – they were always looking out for us. But on this particular day and night, they were with my grandma, and they couldn’t come back. There were a lot of bombs, and the roads were cut off, so they couldn’t return. That’s why I picked this specific day and night.
I also found it interesting because, with my parents away, all the neighbours took care of us. That’s something very important: we lived through a civil war, and in times of crisis, like during COVID, you really feel the solidarity between people. Your family becomes extended. Your neighbours are also part of the family. This was crucial during the civil war, and it still remains a core value in Eastern cultures. You can see it today in Beirut, in Lebanon. People always help one another, no matter what. I wanted to show that – how everyone had a specific role in the social fabric.
I found it particularly striking that there’s a moment when even Anahala, who grew up as a housekeeper for one of the families, is sitting at the same table – it’s almost as if everyone is on equal footing. They’re all on the same level, and it’s the war that’s brought them to that point.
Of course, we were all equal during those times. And anyway, Anahala was part of the family too – she had raised three generations. She was considered more like a grandma than a servant. For us, she was definitely the grandma figure – she used to cook and bake cakes even when she couldn’t find eggs or butter. We didn’t have electricity, so it was very difficult to keep fresh items. To us, she was like a super grandma.
Each of the adults, in their own way, brought something positive and bright into our everyday lives. Anahala used to feed us, for example. And then there was the neighbour, Ernest, the French teacher. He used to come and tell us stories. It was very important. Storytelling was crucial because it opened up our imaginations. It was a way to escape from the harsh reality, to enter a world of dreams and imagination, even if just for a little while.
How was it revisiting these memories while writing A Game for Swallows? Was it a cathartic experience, or more challenging than you expected?
It was cathartic for sure. One of my first books – the first one, actually – I wrote in Beirut while I was still in Lebanon, back in 2001, when I was 20. The title is Beirut Catharsis. It’s a very short book, and of course, it was the first time I expressed anything related to that period, to that time in our lives. In Lebanon, the war ended in the ‘80s. It lasted for 15 years, and after it stopped, no one talked about it – as if it had never happened. I was nine years old at the time, and it felt very strange to grow up in a reality that no one acknowledged. No one would explain it. No one would even say that it wasn’t normal – that normal life isn’t supposed to be like that.
So, I understood it on my own, and I noticed that even in our history books in school, the curriculum stopped in the ‘70s – before the war. Even there, it’s not explained, it’s not transmitted.
Of course, it was cathartic, but it also felt like an urgent matter for me – just to say, “Don’t forget. It happened. This is part of our history. We can’t hide it.” We have to rebuild by knowing what happened – rebuild our lives, but also our country and our political life, without amnesia. The idea was simply to express, to tell what happened. And, by the way, a lot of intellectuals, artists, and writers did this work because, as a country, Lebanon didn’t.
How does that affect how history is taught in schools? Once you move into that so-called “normal” period, what do they teach about what came before? Is there a conscious effort to shape or silence certain narratives?
Even now, the curriculum still stops in the ‘70s – it hasn’t changed. Teachers today finish the history program before the civil war or maybe just touch on its first year. For the generation born even in the ‘90s, who grew up in a rebuilt Beirut, it’s very difficult to imagine what happened. And what’s important, I think, is that they know about it, so they don’t repeat the same mistakes.
Since it was a civil war, Beirut was divided in two. Even today, there are people from my generation – those in their 40s – who are still afraid to go to certain parts of the city. And all of this hasn’t been addressed emotionally or psychologically. We haven’t worked through it.
In her book-length essay, “Regarding the Pain of Others,” Susan Sontag wrote that, “All memory is individual, unreproducible – it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulation: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that lock the story in our minds.” How does memory shape our understanding of the past, and how did you approach the use of memory in A Game for Swallows?
A lot of Lebanese are very nostalgic for this so-called “golden era,” which, for my generation, feels like a myth. Of course, we didn’t experience this golden era – we were born in the ruins. And alongside those ruins, we had these mythical stories of the past. It was very frustrating. I remember my father taking us to the city centre, which was completely destroyed. I was about nine or ten. I remember how he would show us around, telling us, “Here, you could get the best ice cream in the whole Middle East,” or, “This is where I used to wait for the tram to go to the cinema with my friends.”, “And here, your grandpa had his piano shop….” And every time he said “here,” he was pointing at nothing – just stones on the ground. I called it “annoying,” but the real word is “disturbing.” What do you do with that? How do you process it? There’s something missing. How do you make history out of those two contrasts?
For me, the collective memory in A Game of Swallows – if we’re talking about the book – is about chasing the small details that were common to my generation. I wanted to write a story that every Lebanese reader, whether from the West or the Eastern part of Beirut, could relate to. In a way, those details could be seen as part of what we might call collective memory.
What are some of those details?
I don’t know if you remember this from the book, but there was no water during that time.
Your mother would compartmentalise the bottles – one for drinkable water, and the others for general use.
I did some research, and they used whiskey and bourbon bottles for drinking water. For the rest, they used large gallons. It’s funny – did we really drink that much whiskey? And why did everyone decide to do this? Probably because the glass bottles were sturdy.
For me, that’s a detail that could be considered generational memory, not collective. It offers insight into this period. We tried to find other examples, but one stands out: the radio. It structured our days and nights. The radio was a familiar domestic object, but it was also the only way to receive news from the outside when we were stuck at home for long stretches, unable to leave because of the shelling. The radio was crucial, not only for the news but also for telling us where we could go and where we couldn’t.
Speaking of details, another important one is that none of the characters ever leave the apartment. They are confined there, staying inside because stepping outside means risking death by sniper.
Exactly. There are so many things like that. That’s why I decided to tell the story using the medium of the graphic novel. You can suggest so many things without ever saying them outright, or stressing them. The reader can do their part: imagine, or research.
This also leads me to the use of black and white, which is very symbolic. When you draw in black and white, you can express feelings, but also sensations. The white can suggest the void, something erased, or light – something open. The black can suggest something obscure, closed, or heavy. These are contradictory sensations, and I wanted to play with them so the reader could feel things without even noticing. Like, why am I feeling this way?
I don’t know if you remember, but there’s a very violent scene in the book. My idea was to never show violence directly. There’s a scene where Shukri’s father is missing, but you don’t actually see him. You only hear imagined dialogue about what could have happened to him, because no one knows. It’s just black, with onomatopoeia – like “click” – so you can imagine what’s happening, but it’s never explicit or visual in a way that engages with the violence. That’s what I wanted to create. I also wanted to protect the reader, in a way, as my parents protected me as a child. I didn’t want to give them violent images but still find a way to convey the message – a way that’s aesthetic and tender.
What do you hope readers, particularly those who may be unfamiliar with the conflict, take away from your work?
We’re unfortunately accustomed to images of war, violence, and death, but we don’t really know what happens within families, inside their homes, and how everyday life is organised. I wanted the readers to look beyond the horror, violence, and destruction, and see what happens in the lives of people who are simply surviving. That was the purpose. My hope was for the reader to relate in some way, to feel more familiar not with the conflict itself, but with the culture, and to understand how survival mode works in that context.
I also want to ask about the role of artists like yourself, particularly as someone whose work acts as a form of historical documentation. How do you view your role in using art to resist the erasure of history, and what responsibility do you feel to ensure those forgotten stories are preserved?
This question reminds me, on a personal level, of how intense and important it was for me to piece together my history when I started doing my research at the age of 20 – a history that was still so recent.
I remember once, I was researching on the internet, and I found the French website of the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (National Institute of Television and Radio). There are so many archives there, and I searched for something like “Beirut 1984” or maybe I typed “demarcation line.” I don’t remember the exact keywords, but I found a documentary from French television in 1984 titled Beirut 1984: Streets on the Demarcation Line. I was born on one of those streets, so I clicked. I was very curious. I recognised the street – not the one I was born on, but the street where I used to go to kindergarten. It was a street from the 80s, and I thought, “Wow, what am I looking at? This is really a part of my childhood.”
The journalist said they were in a very dangerous part of Beirut because of the snipers. A lot of people had fled, but many families had stayed to guard their homes because it was their land. Then the camera enters a house, showing the stairs and an open door, and you see the silhouettes of people in the entry hall. There’s no electricity, just candles. It’s a bit blurry. Then, suddenly, the camera turns to the left and zooms in on a very elegant lady sitting in the entryway.
That lady is my grandma. In 1984, I was three, probably in the same entry hall. That moment changed my life and made me write A Game for Swallows. What are the odds? I was randomly looking at something on the internet, on a French site, and then I saw my grandma. My grandma, still alive, still in Beirut.
What’s interesting about memory, since we’re talking about it, is that my grandma is from the generation that lived through the “golden era.” She never wanted to talk about the war. Even when I asked questions, it was as if it was nothing. Not nothing exactly, but it was like her memory stopped in the ‘70s. She always wanted to tell me about the movies, the theatres, how the restaurants were, how they dressed, and how they had fun with my grandpa, and so on. I found it incredible that, without even knowing, she was showing me the way to enter this work on memory.
I suppose remembering is her form of resistance.
Yes, and when she appeared in that documentary, it felt as if she was telling me, “You can do it.” Now, I have a daughter, and she also has to know what happened. Of course, not now – she’s three – but she needs to be a part of this history. She can’t grow up without knowing the story of my country, her origins, her grandparents, and so on. It’s something we have to pass on to future generations because this region is always so complicated, violent, and difficult. And it’s difficult to keep a trace of what was before and what’s happening now. It’s overwhelming.
You know, you talked about the not-happy ending, and you were right. I didn’t want it to have a happy ending because it didn’t. Exactly like you said, “It ended happily, but it’s not a happy ending.” It ends with us leaving, and then eventually coming back to an empty building, except for one character. But that was the reality. That was the reality so many families faced. And I thought it was important not to transform it because it wasn’t like everything turned pink and fluffy overnight.
It’s not a fairy tale at all. Even though it’s full of tenderness, and the characters are sweet – you probably grow to love them – it wasn’t easy. Let’s not forget that.
