Graphic novel “Ahmadjan and the Hoopoe”: Drawing against powerlessness

They still exist, these special shops in St. Pauli: high ceilings, wooden floorboards that have seen centuries, drawings framed on the walls. On Hamburg’s Wohlwillstrasse, between record shops and a café, is Fritzen, a studio shared by three artists. One of them is Maren Amini. She welcomes us with a beaming smile and a plate of Gulpi Challaw in her hand: cabbage with tomatoes, onions and rice.

While working on her book, the illustrator bought traditional Afghan food once a week. Because every Thursday her father came to visit to work on “Ahmadjan and the Hoopoe,” their graphic novel together. A sophisticated comic about the life and art of Ahmadjan Amini. The portrait of a traveler hungry for life. And the portrait of a country that has not found peace for decades.

Maren Amini has always drawn comics. When she was 13 years old, she imitated hip-hop graffiti: “I still remember how proud I was of it – it crawled out of my hand!” Her career choice was clear: to become an illustrator. When she finished her studies in communication design in 2009, her drawing style was still complex and time-consuming. “Then I did a workshop – and since then it became more and more cartoonish,” remembers Amini, sitting behind the studio window.

An interest in everything human is always evident in Amini’s drawings. Her characters have big noses and small mouths and you can often see them laughing. Her best-known works include cover images for “Zeit” and “Spiegel”. Punchy works that are often created with just a few strokes.

»I love drawings that tell everything in one sentence and then elicit a laugh. This is the supreme discipline. When I have a new idea, I put it here in the shop window. And when someone laughs, I’m really happy. It’s like payment for me.”

Amini has quoted Edvard Munch’s “Scream” several times. At one point the world-famous figure in the Hamburg woman is a contented meditator, at another time it is a woman in a headscarf who screams at those watching. Below that is the line: »15.08. – Black Day for Afghanistan«.

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban captured the Afghan capital Kabul. A coup that felt like a slap in the face, especially for women, who are given few rights under Islamist rule. A trauma for people of Afghan descent all over the world. Maren Amini processes it in an artistic way – by telling her father’s story.

“I felt so powerless when the Taliban came,” remembers Ahmadjan Amini. »My home area was also affected by violence and destruction. I really wanted to do something. My idea was to collect all the atrocities that came through my phone and show them to the whole world.”

Ahmadjan and his daughter talk on the phone every day and discuss things. Maren can talk him out of the cell phone video project: it’s too brutal. Then Ahmadjan remembers a fairy tale that his grandfather used to tell him as a child. The “Conference of the Birds” by the Persian poet Fariduddin Attar, who died 800 years ago: A parable about an arduous search, a journey lasting years that ends with the realization that the object you are looking for can be found within yourself.

Ahmadjan Amini wears a turtleneck sweater and smile lines move around his eyes. He speaks with a gentle accent. He came to Hamburg for the first time in 1972 as a penniless tourist. A curious teenager who always sticks with the hippies he knew from Kabul – because they were always in a good mood. He lives in student dormitories and squats, attends art school and earns money.

“I worked on construction sites, in bars and as a dock worker,” the father remembers. »And as a beer tapper on the cathedral (the Hamburg fair, note d. Red.)! I got vouchers for the rides and rode the roller coaster until I couldn’t take it anymore.”

He also enjoys life: he paints, parties, has lots of girlfriends and lives for months in Ibiza, where he sells his pastel paintings on the beach. But in 1978 Ahmadjan had to leave Germany: forced military service in Afghanistan.

His daughter, who has never been to her father’s homeland, tells all this with a flourish. With a digital brush on the iPad and clear contours, Maren Amini brings the time before to life in “Ahmadjan and the Hoopoe”. Afghanistan in the 1960s, where the son of a shepherd grows up in the rural Panjir Valley north of Kabul. For the literal confinement of this time, Maren only needs one image: a stylized house wedged tightly between two high mountains.

It wasn’t until he went to boarding school in Kabul that Ahmadjan began to feel fed regularly and fell in love with art and with a woman. Ahmadjan’s English teacher portrays Maren Amini as a nightingale, one of 30 birds that inhabit the graphic novel. In the original by the poet Attar, the birds cross seven valleys in search of the Simurgh, the king of the birds. Based on the fable, the daughter divided her father’s life into seven phases for her book.

“Both stories are about an inner journey,” comments Maren Amini. »Someone who is a lone fighter realizes that he can only survive as part of the group. It’s about transformation and caring.”

In the fourth valley, the fourth part, Ahmadjan is released from military service. The Russians had taken power in Kabul, and the less than 30-year-old left the country on the first plane. In Germany he was recognized as a refugee and soon he actually had to take care of things: in 1981 his first daughter was born in Hamburg. The mother is the lifeguard Renate, whom he met during his daily morning swim. In 1983 the next child was born: Maren.

“We always painted a lot together,” the illustrator remembers of her childhood. “I showed him my butterfly drawings and he said, ‘You’re going to be a great artist.’ Then I never wanted to be anything else.”

“Ahmadjan and the Hoopoe” is Maren Amini’s first book, published by the renowned Carlsen Verlag, the home of “Tintin.” It’s not always easy to follow the many protagonists on the 240 pages. And was national icon Ahmad Shah Massoud, to whom Ahmadjan Amini later brought money to build a bridge to Afghanistan, actually just the kind war hero that Maren Amini portrays him as? But the illustrator doesn’t dwell on such complex political questions. Her strength is the poetic images that she finds for important markers in her father’s life, for example when, as a child at boarding school, he dreams of the mighty Simurgh, who flies as a white outline across a double page spread. Or the giant floating stone that represents the depression that overtakes the guilt-ridden Ahmadjan in Hamburg while his homeland is terrorized by the Taliban.

Maren Amini has created a colorful, imaginative and often amusing portrait – at the same time a declaration of love for art and for her fun-loving father. According to the artist, he is a “stand-up guy”: “I inherited that from him.” Ahmadjan Amini doesn’t have to think for long when you ask him about the origins of his unshakable optimism: “I went to boarding school as a 12-year-old and was completely there alone. I had to assert myself in various situations and I worked part-time. Life has had so much in store. And I just swam in.”

Maren Amini: Ahmadjan and the hoopoe. Carlsen Verlag, 240 pages, br., 26 €.