Zahra's Paradise (review)

On June 16, 2009, Mehdi, a fictional nineteen-year-old protester, joins the rally in Tehran against the contested election of Iran's President Ahmadinejad. He doesn't return home. As his mother, Zahra, and older brother, narrator and blogger Hassan, scour the hospitals, morgues, administrative offices, and courts, they quickly learn that there's nothing particularly special about another protester gone missing, and that a corrupt hierarchy stands between them and the truth about Mehdi's disappearance. The author and illustrator of this graphic novel, who chose to remain anonymous for political reasons, lead readers on a heartbreaking tour of a city paralyzed by fear, traffic, and red tape. Individual citizens, clerics, and bureaucrats, impelled by good will or a well-placed bribe, contribute hints and leads that help Hassan connect Mehdi's fate with a parcel of land in the city's largest cemetery—Zahra's Paradise—that has been hastily and clandestinely purchased by the government as a dumping ground for disappeared dissenters. This ambitious work succeeds as both taut mystery and blistering political screed. Comparisons with Maus are inevitable and apt, as Khalil's black-and-white artwork is at once candid and controlled in its treatment of brutality and devastating in its satirical depiction of the theocracy. Copious end matter ranging from glossary and background on the 2009 elections to statistics on executions and a list of over 16,000 names of the disappeared (in very, very fine print) help Western readers to interpret the events from the creators' vantage point.