Abbas Naaseri / A peace agreement was signed in the Middle East. If you have lived in the Middle East, you know you should not put your hopes in its permanence. The agreement was signed by someone who — at the very least, to sustain the sales of the weapons produced in his country — would have to start another war after a while so that the financial cycle of arms sales would not falter. The ink of that signature was stained with the century-long blood of Middle Eastern peoples, whose wars were fomented by those powers under false pretexts.
I come from a generation that was born into war.
Many of my childhood memories are filled with news of battles and the sound of air raid sirens on TV— every day, hundreds of martyrs carried on the shoulders of the people,
hoarding, long queues for rationed goods, missile attacks.
Later, still in my childhood, we witnessed peace, the return of prisoners of war, and the ceremonies held to welcome them.
And to this day, we continue to live under the shadow of war and the fear of tomorrow.
From birth to death, we never see real peace — the very peace that those who signed the agreements have taken away from us.
They have infiltrated everywhere, even into special art events.
If you wish to win in such an event, you must paint a dark picture of your country, your people, and your culture, so that your darkness makes their whiteness appear brighter — and for that, they reward you with a prize.
Today, the world of cartoonists — much like the Middle East itself — has been drained of hope.
Hopeless artists no longer seek someone to blame.
They have accepted the conditions as they are and, without protest, merely watch the results and events orchestrated by the organizers of such exclusive festivals.
Hopelessness has turned into an incurable disease among cartoonists and caricaturists — they await death, without even trying to heal.
For weeks, I have been writing about hope — about whether we can still make a difference.
The state of cartoon art, after all, is not yet as dire as the situation in the Middle East.
We can still change our circumstances and heal ourselves.
We have no other choice; we must find the antidote to this poison on our own.
No one understands us but ourselves — not even the manager who values keeping his position more than preserving your dignity and peace.
Amid all the hopelessness and numbness we witness, we can still count on you — the one who has devoted your time to reading these words.
We, the hopeful ones, though few in number, can still overcome despair, inequality, injustice, favoritism, and the influence of the powerful.
We may be few, but our small number is greater than hopelessness.
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Weekly Single Page of Cartoonmag
No 59
Saturday , 18. Oct . 2025
This single page has been prepared to remind the news and calls published on the cartoon magazine website and it is supposed to be published every Saturday.
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