/ARTS WEEKLY/ART-PAKISTAN: ‘Cartoon is Blank Verse’

By Zofeen Ebrahim Reprint | | Print |

Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Pakistan, Apr 29 2003 (IPS) - Is it valid to render tragic moments and events in illustrations? What is so funny about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or for that matter, the barbs that the governments of India and Pakistan are trading?

Reportage and photographs about these are understandable, but where do cartoons fit in?

Ask Feica, the cartoonist of the English-language ‘Dawn’ newspaper, whose recent exhibition of some hundred cartoons and illustrations at Karachi University was a runaway success.

"Who says satire is always funny? Cartoons are political comments that are topical drawings. If a painting is like poetry, cartoon is blank verse," says Feica, who never uses his real name, Mohammad Rafiq and is widely known as just that – Feica.

"Can you imagine the storm in me that has made me come up with these?" Feica says, putting the black-and-white illustrations in neat rows of his studio floor. "Imagine what would my work be like if I could witness all that is happening in Iraq first-hand. I can be more than a soldier.”

What do most of his cartoons depict? "Hypocrisy within American politics – I’ve shown them as looters," Feica says heatedly. How has war affected the artist in him? "My mind works with feverish frenzy when I’m troubled. In fact, it is like a stimulant and I’m on a high," he adds.

His work offers caricatures of U.S. President George W Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, U.S. Central Command chief Tommy Franks – and closer to home, Pakistan President Gen Musharraf, Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Indian Foreign Minister George Fernandes.

Just about no one remains unscathed from his vitriolic pen.

Feica’s sketches have silent onlookers in caricature form. One regular one is an ex-editor of ‘Dawn’, Saleem Asmi. "His face makes a very good caricature," he says in all seriousness and adds, "But I never used him when he was the editor. His other regular onlooker is the crow – " a very intelligent bird”.

The collection exhibited at the university included coloured sketches that he had made prior to Mar. 21, when U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq. "But since then as a mark of protest I’ve started making black and white ones. In fact, I feel, the black-and-white ones are far more potent."

He shows one sketch that features an army boot pushing journalists, pens, cameras, a book titled ‘Freedom of Press’ out of the television screen.

Another one shows Saddam Hussein being entangled in a yarn by someone from the United States, while an entangled Yasser Arafat looks on. Yet another shows a U.S. national on a bull looking at a road leading to Syria through a telescope. Behind him is a completely ransacked Baghdad and the bull saying ‘No inva$ion Plans’.

Feica is good at donning and taking off masks with aplomb. He is known to be an angry man. He denies it though and says innocently: ”For if it were not for the funny bone in me, I’d have died of depression.”

Then he becomes a maverick. "I used to fight (with editors at the ‘Dawn’) but now we talk, discuss although there are continuous arguments. Sometimes they get offended, sometimes I get hurt and become a recluse, but life goes on."

He has saved all his cartoons that have been rejected by ‘Dawn’. Then, he becomes an impish child who has something up his sleeve. "I’ve filed all of them, and they run in the hundreds, with comments as to why the editorial team rejected them. When I compile these war sketches in book form, there will be a section of my rejected illustrations and cartoons with comments."

That is the arsenal he plans to use as payback when he takes out his book of sketches in a couple of months.

A sort of a rolling stone, having worked at the ‘Frontier Post’, ‘The Muslim’ newspaper, and at a leading advertising agency, he does not deny that he has finally found his niche in ‘Dawn’.

However, the rebel in him stirs for having agreed that he has found his bearing. Among his compatriots he likes Sabir Nazar of the ‘Friday Times’ and Zahoor of the ‘Daily Times’. But Stephen Bell of ‘The Guardian’ newspaper remains his all-time favourite. "I even enjoy Indian cartoonists like Mario and Laxman immensely."

How did the artist in him grow? "It’s all common sense. I didn’t learn anything at the art school, they just polished my raw edges. An artist is born, not taught,” says Feica, who says he was drawing when he was three.

What if he cannot come up with anything? "I get scared when I feel I’m getting saturated. It has not happened in a long time, thank God." He can come up with an idea and execute it in two hours. "Once a newspaper I was working in gave a blank space to where my cartoon was printed with a line: ‘Today our cartoonist could not come up with any idea’."

But Feica does not like to be labelled a cartoonist alone. ”I paint, I sculpt, I’m an artist. Making cartoons is just one medium of expression that I use.”

He dreams of doing a larger-than-life mural of "I don’t know what. Only time will tell, but for it to be executed I need money as sometimes I don’t have enough to buy paints." He even hopes to start a cartoon museum where "I can conduct workshops and teach the newcomers."