“I was thinking, why is my story is special? Why can it be represented in a graphic novel?”
For Akram al-Saud, a survivor of imprisonment and torture under the totalitarian Assad regime in Syria, this question laid the groundwork for his participation in a collaborative research project led by the University of Victoria (UVic) that works with genocide and mass atrocity survivors to centre survivor voices in the development of visual narratives for non-expert audiences.
His story will be the subject of the latest graphic novel to emerge from this international SSHRC Partnership-funded project, Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives, directed by UVic professor Charlotte Schallié (Germanic Studies) and UBC associate professor of teaching co-director Andrea Webb. Al-Fazia افلظ یع – the Horror: Surviving Assad’s Prisons is the culmination of over two years of collaboration between al-Saud and German graphic artist Tobi Dahmen, and will be published by New Jewish Press in 2026.
Building collaborative relationships
Like previous graphic novels created through Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives, Al-Fazia افلظ یع – the Horror emerged from the long-term development of a trust-based relationship between a survivor, an artist and scholars.
“Survivors hold unique knowledge not only of the atrocity itself, but also of the process of sharing their stories,” says Schallié, a historian who worked on narrative art in Holocaust and human rights education before expanding the same methods to understanding other genocides and mass atrocities. “This is about trust, about relationship-building.”
Taking a visual approach to gathering testimony, the project centres the voice and agency of survivors while presenting accessible pathways to learning with empathy.
“We didn’t need to have expertise. We needed to have empathy and listening.” – Uğur Ümit Üngör, professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and research cluster co-lead
Graphic novels as representation
Previous publications have shared the stories of Holocaust survivors, including award-winning graphic novels Emmie Arbel: The Color of Memory (Reprodukt, 2023) and But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust (New Jewish Press, 2022).
“To my knowledge, there are no graphic novels about prisons in Syria, even though they had such an enormous impact on that conflict,” says research cluster co-lead Uğur Ümit Üngör, a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD Institute whose research focuses on the contemporary Middle East. In his research, many Syrian survivors had shared about the impact of imprisonment and torture.
“When this project first came to me, I was grappling with the problem of how to represent the Syrian prison experience, because there were no photos, no videos, only a few eyewitness testimonies.” He introduced his long-time friend, Akram al-Saud, to the Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives project team in 2023, and the process of using graphic art to represent one survivor’s experience began.
Born in Deir Ez-Zor, al-Saud was arrested four times before fleeing Syria. His first and longest imprisonment began on March 28, 2010, before the revolution, and lasted for nine months. An architecture student in Aleppo at the time, he was arrested by the air force intelligence services. After the 2011 revolution, al-Saud was arrested and detained three more times. Today, he lives in the Netherlands, where he has spent the last two years meeting with Dahmen.
For al-Saud, the agency and autonomy that lies at the centre of Survivor Centred Visual Narratives’ methodology was a crucial piece of the process, one that allowed him to share his experiences on his own terms.
“It’s heavy,” he says of sharing his story. “Sometimes, I had to remember things that I didn’t want to. But I started to really see the power in this kind of art.”
Empathy and agency
With Dahmen, an ongoing, evolving conversation developed, where he was able to check everything and make changes throughout the process.
“It was important to be able to adjust, and feel safe to say whatever I want.” – Akram al-Saud, Syrian survivor
Although Dahmen was not an expert in the area before beginning to work with al-Saud, he tried to imagine himself as a proxy for the reader, who might encounter knowledge of mass atrocity for the first time through Akram’s story. The result is an accessible pathway to learning, based on empathy and listening.
“The story Akram told me is quite something, so I knew that he had trusted me a lot with it, and I tried not to disappoint his trust,” says Dahmen.
Fall of the Assad regime
In October 2024, after nearly two years of work together through interviews, recordings and feedback on drafts, Dahmen and al-Saud completed the storyboard for the graphic novel. Work then began on the final manuscript, just as Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria fell on Dec. 8, 2024.
Al-Saud had relied on sharing many of his experiences from memory, but now he was able to access and provide video of the prison where he was detained.
“I never imagined that I would be able to share a video of the prison with Tobi before we finished the book. Now he could see the corridors, the cells, the prison itself,” says al-Saud.
Looking forward
As Syria opens to the world again and the international community learns more about the oppression and injustices of the regime, new possibilities have emerged for Al-Fazia افلظ یع – the Horror: Surviving Assad’s Prisons.
It will also now be possible to distribute Al-Fazia افلظ یع – the Horror: Surviving Assad’s Prisons in Syria, and Akram’s full name will be associated with the manuscript—two significant changes that would not have been possible before the regime fell.
Such changes are emblematic of the evolving, ongoing, collaborative nature of projects developed under Survivor-Centred Visual Narratives, which also has research clusters focused on the Holocaust, Rwanda, the Yugoslav wars, Iraq and Turtle Island.
“A graphic novel may not save the world, but when we continue to sit down together, to listen and to learn, we can shape space for stronger communities to emerge.” – Charlotte Schallie, project director
