‘My Only Weapon Is My Drawings,’ Lebanese Says : Poster Artist Chronicles Muslims’ Martyrdom

Lebanon has no official war artist to chronicle its 10 years of suffering, but it has Nabil Kaddouh, the poster king.

His dramatic wall posters of guerrilla actions and portraits of Muslim “martyrs” are plastered on bullet-pocked walls, shop windows and offices all over Muslim areas of Beirut and southern Lebanon.

“My only weapon is my drawings. I fight, in my own way, with my brush,” the 37-year-old artist said.

His most famous poster depicts a suicide bomber ramming an explosives-packed Mercedes automobile into an Israeli armored personnel carrier and the two vehicles erupting in an inferno of flames and shrapnel.

In another poster with a bombed mosque in the background, Kaddouh portrays the blood-stained Shia Muslim “martyrs” who died in the explosion, as a distraught mother weeps in the top corner.

The style is that of a child’s war comic, the features exaggerated and heroic, the guns and tanks drawn with infinite care and accuracy.

The political message is clear. In the fiery explosion around the Israeli vehicle, a Star of David disintegrates. The dead car bomber smiles down with satisfaction from heaven on the destruction he haswrought.

“Some fighters ask me jokingly to do a good job drawing them when they’re martyred,” he said.

“A neighbor of mine, a fighter, told me one afternoon that he liked a poster I’d designed for a martyr in the neighborhood.” Kaddouh said the fighter told him, “If I get martyred, make me look handsome, and fix my beard.”

Not long after, the man was killed in action against the Israelis, Kaddouh added.

Sometimes, Kaddouh said, “I get depressed. Once I took my work home. I had to do posters for nine martyrs. . . .

“It’s at times like that the job really gets me down. But I see all those young men fight with machine guns, artillery, bombs, even boiling oil and stones. I have to play my part in the struggle against Israel.”