The Danger Bleeds Red

Artist: Tracy Chahwan (Lebanese, b. 1992). Writer: Yazan al-Saadi (Syrian-Canadian, b. 1984). “My Heart Burns,” 2020. Digital comic

Yazan al-Saadi and Tracy Chahwan’s My Heart Burns

Yazan al-Saadi and Tracy Chahwan’s My Heart Burns details the horrors that Syrian refugees face when they are preyed upon by scammers. Throughout the first several pages of this comic, the character’s features (and the settings in which they are placed) are represented with distinctive, individualizing detail. The six-panel sequence that closes My Heart Burns therefore comes as a stunning contrast in its stylization. Through a combination of mise-en-scène (the specific placement and perspectives taken on the contents of the panels), color symbolism (in the printed version), and imagery drawn from the history of propaganda—as well as a shift in the written narrative, from past to present (with a bleak prediction of the future)—this final page serves as a powerful call-to-action.

The text in the first panel insists that current efforts to inform refugees about the dangers of scams and fraud do not “help those who have already fallen into a trap,” and that such awareness campaigns do not “tackle the true heart of the matter.” This text is accompanied by a stark, high contrast rendering of a refugee seated behind a table. The “displaced” status of this figure is emphasized by her posture and by the chiaroscuro rendering: she is swathed in heavy shadows, despite the presence of an obvious light source. While the light refuses to shine on the refugee, the room itself tilts down to the right in the direction of the door (as if to say “move along, there’s no help to be had here”), and also toward the danger of the whirlpool in the following panel. The visual metaphor is clear: stateless peoples can not only expect no recompense if they are taken in by scams, but this lack of legal and institutional support will tip them into dangerous situations.

In the following panel, the danger bleeds red as the Kraken emerges from a whirlpool while the storm rolls in and the sea froths. In previous panels, red symbolized the burning anger against the injustices done to Umm Ahmed and her family. Here, the red that fills the sky and water evokes the lives lost by those taking the dangerous Mediterranean Passage to refuge.1 As the old proverb goes, “Red sky in morning, sailor’s warning.”2 Even for those who might survive the crossing to Europe, other dangers can still sink hopes, and these two are evoked by the image of the Kraken; its many arms suggest the numerous barriers and impediments the refugees face, from the scammers who steal everything from them to the entangling, tentacular loops of red tape that deny them access to the basic rights of citizenship—further symbolized here by the paperwork that the Kraken proffers, bafflingly and uselessly. The Kraken has also served historically in wartime propaganda to portray a variety of nations as dangerous (including Germany, England, and Russia), and as a metaphor in socialist writing for specific aspects or embodiments of capitalism, including landlordism, banking power, legal corruption, and globalization.3 Yazan al-Saadi and Tracy Chahwan are therefore drawing upon one of the more extensive entries in the politico-economic bestiary to figure the human monstrosity of institutional indifference that causes so much suffering and death.

1 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, “The Sea Route to Europe: The Mediterranean Passage in the Age of Refugees,” United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United States, 2021, https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/protection/operations/5592bd059/sea-route-europe-mediterranean-passage-age-refugees.html.

2 US Department of Commerce, NOAA. “ESRL Global Monitoring Laboratory - Global Radiation and Aerosols.” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, October 1, 2005. https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/about/redsky/.

3 Fredona, Robert, and Reinert, Sophus A. “LEVIATHAN AND KRAKEN: STATES, CORPORATIONS, AND POLITICAL ECONOMY.” History and Theory 59, no. 2 (2020): 167-87.

Al-Saadi and Chahwan make further allusions to propaganda in the third panel. Here, the text captions speak of the harm that deluded notions of “purity” and “supremacy” are causing humanity overall. As the vocabulary calls to mind Nazism and white supremacy, so the black on red image of the sunburst encircling the globe visually evokes those same poisonous ideologies; the black on red color scheme and sunburst imagery being familiar from numerous nationalistic wartime propaganda posters.4 This panel underlines the point iconographically by encircling the entire globe with barbed wire: this is a nationalism that constricts the entire planet, with dire consequences. By repurposing 20th century calls to war in this way, the threat of nationalism is conveyed in its own visual language.

The following panel depicts faceless, burdened silhouettes trudging through a room; the red color of these silhouettes in the final published version now invokes the violence experienced by all the displaced people who are “searching for a safe place to live as normally as possible” across time and throughout the world. The universal nature of their suffering is emphasized by the lack of distinguishing details—they are just shapes picked out against a solid background— while the blank, featureless room through which they march suggests the indifferent institutions that provide no real shelter. These anonymous figures now stand for all the refugees that have ever been.

4 “Powers of Persuasion.” National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, June 6, 2019. https://www. archives.gov/exhibits/powers-of-persuasion. The penultimate panel reminds us that the challenges caused by the displacement of entire communities of people will only worsen as parts of the Earth become more and more uninhabitable due to climate change. But the grey figures in the final panel view these drowning refugees with disdain. They are literally faceless, wearing masks that betray no empathy or emotion. Paradoxically, they are actors in their refusal to take action on behalf of those who cannot act for themselves—empty performances with no humanity behind them. The direction of their eyeless stare directs the reader’s own eyes back to the previous panel, visually repeating the cycle, daring us to acknowledge our own failure to act, and to see that inaction as fatal to all humanity, including our own.