Signs and sensibility

Caricaturist Mohieddin El-Labbad's most recent collection of caricatures is out. Fayza Hassan savours the humour
Mohieddin El-Labbad's drawings are simple and to the point, as 100 Drawings and More (published by Dar Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi and including many caricatures previously published in the Arabic edition of Le Monde Diplomatique) goes to show. His humour is biting. His message is always clear, devoid of winks or nudges only the well informed can capture. This may stem partially from the fact that children are his favourite audience. Egypt's hope for a better future lies with the young generations, and he owes them the best of his creations.
El-Labbad was instrumental in the creation of a children's books section at the publishing house Dar Al-Fata Al-Arabi. His book entitled The House (which showed how every animal has a home -- the bird its nest, the lion its den -- but Palestinian children have none) earned him a prize at the 1975 exhibition of children's books in Bratislava.
Education has always been a great concern of this artist who graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in painting but chose another medium to disseminate his message. While his caricatures, which range from the subtle to the hilarious, may make us laugh at first, it is impossible not to notice that they contain a didactic meaning, and always seek to instruct the reader about injustice, abuse of power, harmful ignorance and the pressing need for redress.
Using popular and easily recognisable symbols, his message is most frequently political: globalisation, human rights, American monetary and cultural hegemony, information technology, or the occupation of Palestine. For years an active contributor to the children's magazines Sindbad, Samir and Maged and a participant in the creation of Karawan (1964), El-Labbad was equally successful in his forays into the world of adults, with drawings published in Al-Gomhouriya, Al-Tahrir, Rose El-Youssef and Sabah Al-Kheir. In both cases his technique remained the same, either addressing children as young adults or the child he believes hides in every grown-up.
El-Labbad's other preoccupations include sign language and graphic design. In 1976, he established the first graphic design centre in Egypt: the Arab experimental workshop for children's books.
His various children's books are full of suggestions about symbolism and the creative ways in which signs can be put to good use. In Observations he recounts how, at the time of the first Intifada, the Palestinians were forbidden from raising their flag, and even from using its colours; yet somehow they managed to draw V-for-victory signs on the city walls using the forbidden green, red, black and white. One morning, he writes, the Israelis awoke to find the sign everywhere. Believing that it was the work of a single person, they brought buckets of white paint and whitewashed the walls. The resistance was well organised, however, and, using the idea of a Palestinian artist living in Japan, they divided the drawing into its elements. A large group of Palestinians participated in the scheme, each armed with only one of the four colours. Each member of the group would draw a component of the sign and run away. Another one would follow and would add another line in a different colour, so that by the following day, the defiant signs once again adorned all the whitewashed walls.
Non-violent resistance is the message of this particular lesson, and it is easy to understand how it must inflame the imagination of many youngsters -- especially today.
Less elementary perhaps, but equally striking, the cartoons of El-Labbad's new book, 100 Drawings and More, capture the character of a dictator, the essence of an unfair settlement with the bare minimum of lines and very few words. Nevertheless, they leave an indelible impression on the mind.
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