Reflections on Absence

Writer: Sarah Mirk (American, b. 1986). Artist: Maki Naro (American, b. 1981). Pages from Guantanamo Voices, 2020

Sarah Mirk and Maki Naro’s Guantanamo Voices, chapter 5, pages 99-100

Fouzi al Odah was one of twelve Kuwaitis imprisoned by the United States in Guantanamo Bay after the events of 9/11. He was held without charge for thirteen years before being released in 2014. In Guatanamo Voices, Sarah Mirk and Maki Naro create a sequence focusing on human rights lawyer Thomas Wilner’s attempt to provide legal representation for al Odah.

On the pictured page, Wilner, in profile, facing left (the opposite direction of English reading flow), holds a parapetlike safety rail while overlooking the Guantanamo base. Behind him an American flag also blows from right to left. The sole caption reads “January 2005.” The composition of the panel exploits a tension between reading flow and mise-en-scene: that is, between our tendency to read comics in sequence, following trained left-to-right reading habits, and our tendency to follow gazes in order to identify the object of another’s attention. Put simply: Wilner’s right-to-left gaze contradicts reading direction. Rather than inviting us into the page, the direction of his gaze directs our attention back towards what we have just encountered. Given comics’ necessarily spatial representation of time, Wilner’s backwards gaze both symbolizes memory in “looking back” and encourages us, by following his gaze, to perform this reflection ourselves by reviewing earlier panels. Wilner’s backward gaze is further underscored by its repetition in the second panel; the changed background suggests that time has moved forwards, but the repeated composition suggests that Wilner is moving against the temporal current. If the reader were to follow the hint in Wilner’s gaze and review the prior chapters they would discover other significant dates—beginning with Wilner’s introductory quote, “I first became aware of Guantánamo shortly after it opened in January 2002.” (87), a statement that declares its temporality as much as its subject. In 2002, Wilner’s response to images of captured prisoners at Guantanamo is one of unreflective relief: “Thank God we got those guys.” The pictured page’s first contemplative panel, with its simple statement of “current” time may therefore evoke the entire intervening duration; three years and twelve pages are therefore partially suspended here between narrative progress and the orientation of the composition, which pushes against the conventional structures of temporal and narrative flow. This sequence’s framing, bookended by the invitation to reflect, coincides with the object of reflection: Wilner’s prior apolitical unawareness and this moment of retrospection, as he waits to finally meet his client al Odah, also invite comparison between these two moments.

One might interpret the intervening pages through intervening duration, in which case the 2002-2005 events are straightforward: Wilner learns of al Odah and the other prisoners’ plight when al Odah’s father contacts Wilner about his son’s mysterious disappearance; they discover that al Odah was captured and delivered to the United States for a bounty, and denied his Geneva Convention right to a hearing; prisoners’ right to habeas corpus—to petition for a fair hearing—is central to the Al Odah v. United States case, and the court initially rules against its necessity; then, on appeal, the American Supreme Court reverses this decision, asserting such necessity. So far, so linear. Nearly half of this chapter, however, is composed of nonlinear asides describing legal and personal stakes and context. While these interruptions might be understood as interspersed exposition, an early flashback suggests otherwise. Wilner, the corporate lawyer, marching right (flowing naturally with reading), is juxtaposed by a matching composition of his adolescent self, walking left, a sequence of images that introduce his formative commitments to and beliefs in justice and American ideals summarized by his recitation of “...with justice and liberty for all” (89). This earlier juxtaposition of rightward and leftward movement with the representation of present and past versions of Wilner suggests another way of reading Wilner’s representation at this key moment in January 2005. Having established this leftward movement and gaze of the foregrounded subject to momentarily arrest our reading flow and comment on justice, Naro repeats this composition in an impassive American soldier’s oversight of prisoners, in both premodern supplicant and contemporary prisoner pleading for their hearings (93), in Japanese-Americans facing their extrajudicial incarceration and Justice Murphy’s condemnation of the unconstitutional act’s racism (96). In sum, when we encounter Wilner’s leftward gaze in the first panel of page 99, then see it doubled in the second panel, as Wilner walks towards his prior self, these subtly interruptive gestures already suggest Wilner’s considerations, and guide our own. Here, Wilner’s leftward gaze leads us not to another panel but off the page to reflect upon the narrative, and the directionality of prior gazes, thus far.

The second panel also quotes Wilner saying, “It’s a very weird situation to represent someone you haven’t met.” Wilner refers to legal representation, but this also speaks to the narrative itself, told (represented) by Mirk and Naro. Al Odah has only appeared in five of the chapter’s 64 panels so far: first on a street from which he disappears, then in a photograph held by his father, then thrice imagined when entering military custody, handcuffed, and hooded, a depiction that denies both his own vision and his particularized identity to the reader. As prior leftward gazing profiles have worked to evoke legal precedents, idealism, and a naive faith in courtroom justice, the panels in which Wilner approaches al Odah contrast their meeting with their prior distance. As al Odah first appears on a street only to immediately vanish, his absence rendered conspicuous in contrast with prior presence (88), this page inverts his near-complete visual removal from the narrative through a reappearance that asserts his former absence. It is striking that in an account ostensibly about a lawyer representing a client, Wilner and al Odah only meet three pages before its conclusion, sharing panels only twice. Al Odah’s visual absence reflects his actual abrupt disappearance and acquires its full meaning in the context of Wilner’s comment. This disappearance, al Odah’s lack of visual representability, thus becomes equivalent to his lack of legal representability: legal and visual absence converge, each symbolizing the other and, evidencing the same logic, becoming entwined.

Wilner’s exchange with the guard on this page also asserts the essential right to identity, as “Prisoner 232” is corrected to “Fouzi al Odah.” But, contextualized by the above absences, the guard’s confusion—“Who’s that?”—speaks to the danger of this system, reminding us that this numerical designation is not just dehumanizing, but is itself a kind of representational absence. It is only after Wilner (and we as readers) have met al Odah—after Wilner is allowed legal access to represent him and after Wilner’s account has allowed Naro to illustrate (and visually represent) him—that we are able to learn anything about who al Odah is. Denied this knowledge in earlier portraits, we now glimpse al Odah’s emotions and sense of justice, as he weeps above Wilner’s observation that al Odah “had firm beliefs in right and wrong”—a statement that echoes Wilner’s earlier comments captioned over the Pledge of Allegiance (89), that “You figure out what’s right and you stand for it.” These shared beliefs in the value of knowing right from wrong add a grim irony to the events of the following page (100), in which al Odah’s initial relief at having been taken into custody by the Americans is juxtaposed by his violent abuse.

Wilner’s silent, shocked response to this revelation is followed by Mirk’s narration not of their meeting, but of a statement confirming al Odah’s release nine years later. It is therefore unclear if this page’s final panel illustrates the conclusion of Wilner’s 2005 visit, or one of his many visits in the succeeding decade, or if he is visiting another inmate on the subsequent page; indeed, it is unclear if Wilner is entering or leaving Guantanamo. This temporal and directional ambiguity reasserts the various tropes asserted by Wilner’s leftward, resistant reflection. The backdrop, a tarp-masked fence, again pairs visual absence with legal absence, repeated by the page’s pessimistic concluding caption, that al Odah “was never charged with a crime…”. As Mirk reminds us, “habeas corpus” literally demands that the court “should have the body [of the accused]” to ensure a fair hearing. This chapter that thematizes lacunae—conspicuously present absences— articulates exactly such a need by presenting its negation. As such, it literalizes the abstract principle that a lack of representation forecloses the possibility of justice.