French cartoonist Fabien Toulme continues his thoughtful, moving recollection of a Syrian refugee’s complicated journey to France.
As this second volume starts, Hakim, his new and now pregnant wife, Najmeh, and Najmeh’s family have just moved from a smaller town in Turkey to Instanbul in search of more opportunities. But working under the table is hard in the big city too, particularly as more refugees make their way to the scene.
So Najmeh’s dad buys a fake passport to make his way to France, bringing his family in soon after to begin the process of applying for refugee status. There’s one issue, though: Hakim and his new son, Hadi, aren’t covered on the family’s status, and so they have to stay behind.
It’s a stressful, tenuous time, especially since Hakim is forced into sole caregiver responsibility as opportunities to earn money dwindle. Toulme does a great job recounting Hakim’s desperation as he’s forced to bunker down with his son in a hot-plate apartment, his wife mostly reduced to a weeping voice on the phone.
Things get worse when tragedy strikes back home in Syria, leaving Hakim nearly broken. As he tries to rebound, a paperwork snafu with the French consulate leaves him open to a choice he’s previously dismissed as too risky: making a trip across the Mediterranean with Hadi in search of safe refuge in Europe.
These scenes are the most heartrending in the book. They cover the nervy work of trying to find passage, the preparations for a dangerous journey, the hours of waiting on a remote beach under the watch of armed men. Hakim has prepped as best he can, buying a life jacket for himself and, devastatingly, water wings and a tiny tube for little Hadi. But the journey becomes desperate, with the men jumping into the water to try to swim their raft to shore in the middle of a dark, strange sea.
Toulme conveys just how frightening it is–how worried Hakim is for his son, and how desperate he’s become to take this risk. Since the series opens with Hakim and Hadi healthy in France, we know they make it, thankfully. But this second book of Hakim’s Odyssey fulfills Toulme’s goal of humanizing the refugees risking their lives to travel to Europe.