Mariam Naiem, the Ukrainian daughter of Afghan refugees, is a writer and scholar who focuses on the Russian colonization of Ukraine, and whose mission is to uplift Ukrainian voices. She accomplishes both in the graphic narrative A Brief History of a Long War: Ukraine’s Fight Against Russian Domination (Ten Speed Graphic, Jan.), partnering with artists Yulia Vus and Ivan Kypibid. The work addresses both the present war and its long past, detailing the history of Ukraine from the 10th-century Kyivan Rus’ through the Holodomor (the Great Famine) of the 1930s through to daily life in the current war against Russian invasion. “This packs a punch,” per PW’s starred review, and “suggests a people inseparable from their drive for freedom.” PW talked to Naiem about how she synthesized the immediate struggles of Ukrainian people with an overall sweep of history.
The book begins with a woman being awakened by bombs, then uses conversations among locals in a bomb shelter as a framing tale. Why did you decide on that approach?
When I talk to people outside of Ukraine, they're very interested in how people survive. But I didn't try to make it more dramatic. I didn't show the most horrible nights. I wanted to show what I think realistic wars look like, the everyday. Of course, they're killing you physically, but there's also destruction on the symbolic level. And that's why there are two stories, because physically, you're trying to go to shelter, but also the whole point of being a person from a colonized society is you're feeling lost all the time. You don't understand what's happening to you. You don't have this linear narrative of your own, and at the end of the day, you have these gaps, and it’s kind of scattered.
Why did you include the ‘Living through wartime for dummies’ sections?
For example, right now there's only four hours per day when you have electricity, and when you don't have electricity, you cannot flush the toilet, because the water pressure is created by electricity. I wanted to bring out the idea that by the end of the day, we are just people. We cook, we sleep, we feel overwhelmed. It could be from your work, from your love life, or from bombs. Routine is something that creates your life.
The end of the book acknowledges that the end of the fighting will not end the effects of the war, and it includes the voices of four present-day Ukrainians. Why end it on that note?
I didn't want to make any propaganda that that will feel like victory for Ukraine. I do not believe in fake patriotism. The most complicated part will be after the war. When I see my Ukrainian friends outside of Ukraine, their reaction every time they hear any plane overhead, it's just devastating. That wound will never heal, and I need to acknowledge that now, because it will be much harder to swallow later.
My brother was on the front line and lost his eye. I remember him telling me, I was sitting in the trenches with a guy who was bombing Kabul when I was there. He left Afghanistan when he was five, that was the first time he was in the war, and 2015 was the second time and now he was with the people who invaded Afghanistan.
I have a lot of friends at the front line. I wanted to include their voices, because, to be very honest I'm doing this just for my friends and family to not die. We can talk about values and how democracy should prevail—but I think each of us, we just want our family members to not die.
