The Usurper

How is it even possible to draw on a day such as this, when all we do is to listen to those we trust the most on news from Aleppo?

But then, the cartoons are already drawn. They were drawn on the onset of the Syrian revolution and are as true today as they were in 2011.

Juan Zero, 2012.

Ali Ferzat.

For one thing, Ali Ferzat and Juan Zero each created a persona on Al-Assad, a counter image to the constant presence of his official portraits in the public sphere.

Theirs was a whimpering asparagus of a usurper to the throne. His struggle to keep a crown much too big for him atop his head formed a series of drawings by Juan Zero during the early stages of the conflict, while it was the throne that challenged him time after time in the cartoons by Ali Ferzat.

Juan Zero, 2011.

It was a tale too of two types of captivity. He was caught up in a position of power, which was not legitimately his as visualized by the crown many sizes too big for him. This in turn exposed the indignity in which the Syrians were living. The latter had the courage to stand up against the former in 2011.

Ali Ferzat.

The weakling, however, understanding nothing, reacted with sheer violence; his warrior friends stepping in for him.

He can pretend to stand tall, but the Syria of his rule has turned into the black market of the world, as a friend of the artist Sulafa Hijazi says. Syria has become everybody's dirty game.

Ali Ferzat drew the cartoon below in the first months of the revolution. It is now time for Death to bow to the applause.

Dignity. The goal of the Syrian revolution was dignity.

Ali Ferzat, 2011.

The cartoons shown are courtesy by Ali Ferzat and Juan Zero.