Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
A Bahraini folk song about seasonal showers springs to life in Ali Al-Jamri and Zainab Almahdi’s colourful comic that’s being featured in a not-for-profit, quarterly Moroccan magazine that shines a light on Arab culture.
The creative story, featured in Arablit Quarterly’s Spring 2023 ‘Rain’ issue, has illustrations and lettering in Arabic by Zainab and Ali’s translations of traditional rhymes and poems to form four-pages of nostalgic delight for readers.
“When the magazine called for submissions on ‘rain’, we pulled together a short concept around the songs children sing about rain,” said Ali, a 31-year-old Bahraini teacher who has published a variety of works over the years and is currently living in the UK.
“For inspiration, I used the book Min Turath Sha’ab al-Bahrayn, (which means ‘From the heritage of the people of Bahrain’ in English) by Mulla Muhammad Ali Al Nasiri, who collected folk songs.
“The comic is a fun celebration of our culture and traditions.
“I selected and translated the rhymes and the poems as well as story-boarded the comic while Zainab drew and coloured the art, bringing everything to life.”
According to Zainab, it took ‘a month and a half of chipping away at the project daily after work’ as they both have full-time jobs.
“During the first week of Ramadan, I worked on it almost every day from midnight until morning prayers,” said the 25-year-old GDN news reporter and GulfWeekly feature writer from Muharraq, who illustrated, coloured and lettered the comic by hand.
“After Ali sent me his side of the work, I developed about 10 versions of the first page in my style until I arrived at one I was happy with. I’m a perfectionist and I struggled a lot with that in this project, even though it was only four pages.
“I spent a lot of time researching what children wore in Bahrain in the 1950s and 1960s, and did many studies on the traditional wear and also on palm trees.
“The world needs more stories about Bahrain. There aren’t that many of us, so I want to do as much as I can to represent this land.”
It was also Zainab’s first time drawing a comic with a free-form panelling, meaning there are no hard lines dividing the panels.
“In his storyboards, Ali conceptualised this work in a way that I could never have,” she explained. “The resulting work has a flowy, narrative-style that really suits the subject of the story, in my opinion.
“As for the drawings, I drew them on paper with a pencil, then inked in the lines with a light green pen. I went on to add colours using water-based and alcohol markers. My favourite detail to add at the very end was the water droplets I drew with white ink.”
The two creatives are participating in the crowd-funded collective magazine for the second time and they are pleased with it.
“Zainab and I have worked together on several projects - I think we’ve been each other’s editor in various small projects,” Ali said. “But this is the first work that has both our names on it and was co-produced from start to finish.”
They had collaborated for the Winter 2021 issue with the Um Hmaar Returns!’ comic set during Gurgaon. Ali was even the guest editor for that issue called ArabLit Quarterly: Folk (2021).
“Ali has edited two of my comics, including Um Hmaar Returns! and they would have never seen the light of day without him,” said Zainab, who is now working on a cartoon series for the GDN exploring, translating and explaining local Bahraini sayings and expressions.
“I hope to illustrate a graphic novel one day and I’d love to draw one of Ali’s stories about Bahrain,” she added.
Meanwhile, Ali is excited about his first published comic and says that this is ‘hopefully not the last as he has caught the bug for it!’
“I’m working towards publishing my first collection of poetry, which draws a lot from the myths of Gilgamesh and Dilmun,” he said, as he is passionate about Bahraini history and has published several poems revolving around Arab culture. “In the meantime, I am one of Manchester’s Multilingual City Poets and am part of several developing projects for the city.”
The magazine is currently available for purchase on ArabLit.org website in PDF and e-book form.
For details on the duo, follow @KatoYukimaru and @alialjamri_scribbles on Instagram.
