The Sheriff of Babylon #5: What is Truth?

Title: The Sheriff of Babylon #5

Writer: Tom King

Artist: Mitch Gerads

Publisher: Vertigo Comics

All is not as it seems in Iraq. Alliances, enemies, friends…anyone can become any of those in an instant. This month, Christopher and Fatima get drunk together in one of Saddam’s old pool houses and talk about life, 9/11 and those that celebrated the fall of the towers.

This is probably the most real comic I have ever read, the conversation, the ideology, the mentality of the characters, they are real. They talk like real people. The inappropriate jokes, the interaction, all of it.

For those that don’t understand or the pseudo-intellectuals that pretend to understand based on their one college poli-sci class and now know how to solve every crisis in the Middle East, Iraq has never been a calm and trusting place. The public persona of the people and the private conversations are two different realities.

Fatima and Christopher expose that as they discuss Christopher’s interaction with one of the 9/11 tower pilots as well as Fatima’s celebration of the towers coming down. Not for any great Islamofascist ideology, but for hopes that the embargoes would end and that she would be able to get batteries. Sometimes, we have to realize that our own selfish desires sometimes outweigh the whole of society.

Christopher finally opens up to Fatima and shows her a Babylonian fertility goddess idol, to which she kicks across the pool and professes her faith in Islam, even though she’s just been chugging vodka. This subtle move could be considered a confession of faith and an insult the indigenous population of Iraq, its history, its identity and its Arabization of the region.

This comic continues to draw me in as a reader and as a person of the region, it gives me insight on those from the outside looking in.