Interview with author Joe Sacco at January Magazine:
And, what are your theories for the reasons behind that? Just because those are tumultuous parts of the world?
It's
not about that, because you can find other tumultuous parts of the
world. It's the fact that, for whatever reasons, when I was younger I
became interested, say, in the Middle East, and sort of sucked into it.
I went once and I did the book Palestine, and I wasn't really
going to go back, I didn't really have any intention to go back, but
when the second Intifada broke out, my interest was rekindled, and it's
back to that same feeling that I had, I used to feel, which is that I
feel compelled to go and do something there. I'll only go to a place I
feel sort of compelled to go to. You know, that just pulls me in. I
mean there are other places that interest me, and I wouldn't mind going
if a magazine sort of made it easy for me to do it. The places I'm
really sucked into, that I'm going to go out of my way to go to, there
aren't that many of them, to tell you the truth.
You recently spent some more time in the Middle East? In the Occupied Territories?
Yeah,
in particular Gaza. I was there in November for a couple of weeks, and
then I was there February and March, a couple months, and I just got
back less than a week ago.
And how did it compare with the first time you went there?
Very
different, I felt that I was much more on the inside this time. And I
actually rented a place in a refugee camp. So I stayed in the camp. And
I got to know people that way, where I actually had someone with me the
whole time, because I don't speak Arabic, and it's a place where you
don't want to be just a random foreigner walking around because they'll
be suspicious of you. For good reason. So, I think I was a bit more on
the inside this time around, and I hope the book'll reflect it.
And so was that sort of more like your experience in the other book, Safe Area: Gorazde?
Yeah, maybe a little more like that. I mean, Safe Area: Gorazde
had some elements that won't be in this book; I was staying with a
family. But in Rafah that was very difficult to organize, because
people are so poor and because of the situation with women, where you
can't really be in the same place that the women are in the household.
It's very difficult for you to stay at someone's house for an extended
period of time. You know, for a couple days OK, but, ultimately, it's
just a situation where it's very hard to be in the same -- you know,
you're not even really supposed to see the women in a lot of these
households. So that wouldn't really have been practical for any
extended period of time.
And how did the situation there compare to the last time you were there?
It
was just a lot harder, a lot more violent. You know, life's pretty bad,
pretty rough in certain parts. It's very different in different parts
of the Occupied Territories. Where I was was a refugee camp called
Rafah, which is on the southern border of Gaza, with Egypt. And there
were a lot of house demolitions going on there, and there are just some
sort of spooky parts of the town because they're basically under fire,
or in zones where there's a lot of bullets flying around at different
times, so it was just a different sort of feeling from where I was
before, where I could just sort of travel, get in a taxi and go
anywhere. Getting down to Rafah was hard. You know, there are
checkpoints, and you can get trapped there. There's only one road out,
basically. And if it's closed for three days or four days, you're stuck
there. In the first intifada I was kind of going from one place to
another, sort of doing a little tour. In this case I just wanted to be
in one place, much like the Gorazde book, I feel it was a better way of
doing it, get to know some people well.