{"id":27599,"date":"2023-07-31T08:23:04","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T06:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=27599"},"modified":"2023-07-31T08:23:04","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T06:23:04","slug":"arab-american-teens-come-of-age-in-nayra-and-the-djinn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/arab-american-teens-come-of-age-in-nayra-and-the-djinn\/","title":{"rendered":"Arab American Teens Come of Age in Nayra and the Djinn<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
Iasmin Omar Ata’s graphic novel offers a coming of age story with a fantastical twist, in which Nayra Mansour, a Muslim American girl, is helped on her journey to selfhood by a djinn.<\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nayra and Djinn<\/em>, a graphic novel by Iasmin Omar Ata
\nPenguin<\/a> 2023
\nISBN 9780593117118<\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

Katie Logan<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

Introducing a 2018 reprint of Samantha Hunt\u2019s The Seas <\/em>(2004), the poet Maggie Nelson identifies \u201ca mysterious balancing act between the so-called real and the so-called fantastical, making words like \u2018magical realism,\u2019 \u2018surrealism,\u2019 allegory,\u2019 or \u2018fairytale\u2019 swirl around her work.\u201d Nelson resists these categorizations for the novel, though, describing it instead as \u201ca portrait of human psychology that imagines human emotion as an elemental force on par with air, water, wind, and fire. Seen this way, whatever is not \u2018real\u2019 in The Seas <\/em>could also be read as a deep, perhaps the deepest, sort of realism \u2014 a vision akin to, say, the penetrating insight of shamanistic trance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"nayra<\/a>
Nayra and the Djinn<\/em><\/a> is published by Penguin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nelson\u2019s assessment of The Seas <\/em>could just as easily apply to Iasmin Omar Ata\u2019s Nayra and the Djinn. <\/em>While the text is marketed for ages 10 and up, its designation as young adult literature shouldn\u2019t obscure the seriousness with which Ata treats their characters. In focusing on the complex interior life of young women, the Palestinian American\u2019s newest graphic novel highlights an exuberance that demands a similarly exuberant form, narrative technique or aesthetic. Sometimes, to get to the deepest sort of realism, you need a djinn.<\/p>\n

The titular Nayra is a Muslim American teen struggling under the weight of her classmates\u2019 Islamophobic bullying, her parents\u2019 high expectations, and a fraught relationship with her fellow Muslim student, and only friend, Rami. While Rami weathers the turbulence of high school by relying on her friendship with Nayra, the latter draws inward and secretly applies to transfer to another school.<\/p>\n

Overwhelmed by feelings and frustrations she can\u2019t quite name, she turns to an online forum for Muslim Americans. Through a strange sequence of events, the forum introduces her to a djinn named Marjan, who persuades Nayra to agree to a pact that allows Marjan to enter the human realm. As the two share more of their worlds with each other, they begin to reckon with the relationships and fears from which they\u2019ve each withdrawn.<\/p>\n

Ata, an illustrator and game designer who also goes by Delta and uses they\/them pronouns, possesses a keen eye for making internal tumult apparent to their audiences. Their first full-length graphic narrative, Mis(h)adra, <\/em>depicts Arab American college student Isaac\u2019s struggles with epilepsy. Using intense contrasting colors, abstract patterns, and surreal chains of knives that bear down on Isaac, Ata creates a powerful visual vocabulary for an underrepresented condition and challenges the dearth of language for representing illness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Nayra and the Djinn, <\/em>Ata, whose previous work also includes the incisive \u201cThe Anti-Palestinian Propaganda You Don\u2019t Know You\u2019re Consuming<\/a>,\u201d knows that they\u2019re writing for an audience of adolescents and young adults with limited experience of Islam or Islamic folklore. The novel\u2019s introduction includes a brief explainer about djinns, and descriptions of hakawatis and Ramadan \u2014 during which the story takes place \u2014 that seems directed just as much at readers as at Nayra\u2019s clueless classmates.<\/p>\n

Despite the presence of djinns, magical crystals, and portals through realms both fantastic and electronic, the novel ultimately centers the dynamic between Nayra and Rami. Ata conveys the turbulent emotions of a teenage girl for those readers who may have forgotten or never experienced their potency. Feelings of insecurity, anger, frustration, and fear lack expressive outlets and instead ricochet off and through relationships with others. Rami hasn\u2019t done anything to harm Nayra \u2014 she\u2019s a supportive if slightly clingy friend \u2014 but their friendship is changing nonetheless. The sensitivity with which Ata depicts the shifting contours of Nayra and Rami\u2019s friendship, the palpable \u201cnew weirdness between us\u201d that Nayra feels deeply but can\u2019t articulate clearly, places the author among a host of comics creators who have committed to taking the ups and downs of adolescent friendship seriously, particularly for girls, gender non-conforming folks, and queer teens.<\/a> Nayra and Rami are in good company with the Lumberjanes, summer campers who celebrate \u201cfriendship to the max\u201d in the comics of the same name (2014), the Best Friend Squad of Netflix\u2019s <\/a>She-Ra and the Princesses of Power<\/em><\/a> (2018), <\/em>and the Marvel juggernaut Ms. Marvel, <\/em>which crafts a multi-racial, religiously diverse friend group for its young superhero.<\/p>\n

As each series highlights, these friendships are affirming and joyous. They are also foundational sites for negotiating and re-negotiating individual and group identity, as She-Ra <\/em>creator ND Stevenson notes in describing a later season of the show: “What happens when you start to grow in opposite directions? When suddenly there is tension that didn’t use to be there. It’s something I think that happens often in real life that we don’t see often enough in media aimed at girls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stevenson\u2019s question lies at the heart of the conflict between Rami and Nayra, who are growing in ways their friendship might not survive. It can be hardest to stick with the people who remind us of versions of ourselves and of a past we want to escape, and although Nayra doesn\u2019t say so explicitly, it seems clear that Rami now represents many of those things for her. Nayra and the Djinn <\/em>is attuned to the ways in which the emotional stakes of these seemingly small conflicts can feel massive; Rami perceives betrayal and abandonment in Nayra\u2019s self-isolation.<\/p>\n

\"excerpt
Nothing is going right for Nayra Mansour. There\u2019s the constant pressure from her strict family, ruthless bullying from her classmates, and exhausting friendship demands from Rami \u2014 the only other Muslim girl at school. Nayra has had enough. Just when she\u2019s considering transferring schools to escape it all, a mysterious djinn named Marjan appears. As a djinn, a mythical being in Islamic folklore, Marjan uses their powers and wisdom to help Nayra navigate her overwhelming life. But Marjan\u2019s past is fraught with secrets, guilt, and trouble, and if they don\u2019t face what they\u2019ve done, Nayra could pay the price.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Because of the limits of a teen vocabulary for describing the strength of these feelings and experiences, Ata\u2019s art does much of the narrative’s heavy lifting. The novel\u2019s aesthetics are youthful, filled with pastels and charming details, like the way Nayra\u2019s round eyes transform into stars every time she encounters something thrilling. Light, monochromatic panels offer short flashbacks into the early days of the girls\u2019 friendship. But when characters confront tough emotions, the pastel palette mutates into something more overcast, and shadows and panels uncannily bisect or obscure character\u2019s faces. Nayra doesn\u2019t have to name her fatigue, hunger, or unease for readers to experience them; Ata\u2019s careful penciling and panel construction do that for her.<\/p>\n

Even as a visual medium, Nayra and the Djinn <\/em>is cautious about the role of images, things that can freeze and preserve moments instead of accounting for growth and change. Reflecting on a photo Rami\u2019s taken of the two friends, Nayra says, \u201cI\u2019ve heard that when you look at someone, you see your memories of them \u2014 not what\u2019s really in front of your face. Is that why things start to get messed up? Because one day you suddenly realize . . . that those two things aren\u2019t the same anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discrepancy Nayra notices between the image and reality is one the djinn Marjan helps her reconcile. Given the absence of other clear models for negotiating the rocky terrain of intense, formative friendships, Marjan becomes a valuable compatriot for Nayra. Marjan encourages her to adapt her thinking away from either-or logics; as Marjan describe the djinn world, they explain that djinns \u201clive in harmonious communities without separation, gender, or binaries. An individual is only distinguished by the power of their magic.\u201d While Marjan\u2019s description of the djinn world focuses on personal qualities, their dismissal of binaries also affects the text\u2019s temporality. As with Marjan\u2019s adaptive use of the internet, where Nayra\u2019s community of technologically literate Muslim Americans use digital spaces to preserve folklore and storytelling traditions, the sense of what is old and what is new, what belongs to the past or future, blends together. Even page numbers disappear in the sections of the novel that illustrate the djinn world.<\/p>\n

\n

Sherine Hamdy, \u201cWomen Comic Artists, from Afghanistan to Morocco\u201d<\/a>
\nKatie Logan, \u201c<\/a>Squire, <\/em><\/a>the Provocative Graphic Novel that Channels Edward Said\u201d <\/a>
\nAomar Boum, \u201cWhy COMIX? An Emerging Medium of Writing in the Middle East and North Africa\u201d <\/a><\/h4>\n
\n

Marjan and the djinn world are forces that disrupt Nayra\u2019s life, but help her explore notions of trust, power, betrayal, vulnerability, and honesty in new ways. When Nayra wonders aloud whether she\u2019s a good or bad friend, Marjan offer a corrective: \u201cI think you can be both at the same time. And that\u2019s why it can get complicated.\u201d Stepping out of these binaries of good and bad, past and future, \u201cnormal\u201d and not is ultimately the thing that helps Nayra start to make sense of her surroundings, to see more complicated patterns, to revise her assessment of certain people and to engage with herself more honestly. And \u2014 spoiler alert \u2014 it\u2019s the thing that allows her to return to her friendship with Rami by the end of the story. Young readers will find much to cheer for and wonder at in Nayra\u2019s journey, while older ones will be gratified by the care with which Ata weaves the fantastical into the very real.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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