In Times of Peace

The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet will receive this year's Nobel Price for Peace tomorrow and on the day of the announcement the Tunisian intellectuals seemed unusually quiet for quite some time before uttering a incredulous, wondering, sarcastic REALLY???

Nadia Khiari, WillisFromTunis: Abbey Road, October 10, 2015.

Now of course the requirements to any peacework is stubborn idealism, hopefully coupled with organizational skills no less stubborn, if it is to succeed. All of which the Quartet (comprising the Tunisian General Labour Union, the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts, the Tunisian Human Rights League, and the Tunisian Order of Lawyers) comprises. They are agents to a political process, in the words of the Nobel committee, and to the prize is of course tied the cadeau of recognizing the one process of the Arab Spring with the most hope to it. 

Nadia Khiari responded by creating a confrontation between staged ideality and quite a few of old well-known cats among the noise above; the Kafka-reader in the garbage-bin for one, the police equipped with the baton and the faint-eyed of the nearly strangled.

The drawings above and below each comprises a complete scenery, which in itself is a rarity from Nadia Khiari. Add to this the amount of detailing, all of it calling out for attention. Every part of it very much accentuating her point on the amalgamation of naivety and manipulation immediately at play. Everything Peace comes cheap:

Nadia Khiari, WillisFromTunis, October 10, 2015.
The "Cafe of the Unemployed of Peace" is about to open
and as it is declared: "If this doesn't bring back the tourists..."

And yet, there is a side to the prize, which is as much a cadeau to the voice of Nadia Khiari and let us take the opportunity and place the cartoonist where she belongs, as drawn by Michel Kichka after the terrorist attack at the Musée Bardo in Tunis this spring. With a little tweaking her plinth is now a faintly Alfred Nobel in grey. Nadia Khiari speaks the language of peace against the terror in all its forms. NO FEAR Même pas Peur! YEAH!

Michel Kichka, October 9, 2015.

The cartoons shown are courtesy of their cartoonists and must not be reproduced without their permission.