Squire
by Nadia Shammas
art by Sara Alfageeh
2022
Squire is a YA graphic novel about wanting to be a hero, about how governments try to co-opt that desire to build their militaries and police forces, and about the difficult but true heroism of resisting unjust government orders.
The imperial government in Squire is fantasy Middle Eastern, with both the visuals and the names drawing on real-world historical examples to create a setting that's fictional, but also not far removed from reality. But the structure of the military, the empire's relationships with its neighbors, could be almost anywhere, almost any time. I was reminded of Rome, but also American rhetoric after 9/11, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israeli policy toward Palestinians. Someone more familiar with the history of Islamic empires might see other historical similarities that I missed, as well.
Our viewpoint character is Aiza, a tiny little girl who wants to grow up to a hero, a knight. Aiza is a member of the Ornu ethnic minority, and lives with her family in an enclave within the current borders of Bayt-Sajji. She sells apricots every day in the market, and it's clear that the Ornu are despised by the majority - accused of hoarding food, of price gouging, scapegoated as the cause of the national famine.
Aiza's grown up hearing stories of Bayt-Sajji's famous knights and seeing military recruitment posters in the market. When a representative of the army announces that Ornu and other conquered peoples can earn full citizenship for themselves and their families through military service, Aiza is eager to join up. Her parents reluctantly agree, but make her cover the traditional tattoos on her arm with bandages so that no one will know she's Ornu.
Aiza starts making friends right away with the other new recruits, and the next part of Squire reminded me a lot of the training scenes in Mulan, and probably a lot of other war movies I haven't seen. But underneath the scenes of camaraderie and triumph over adversity, there's something more sinister and realistic too.
On Aiza's first day, the recruits are taken to what look like the ruins of Petra, and they're told that in the past, all the people in the region belonged to a single, unified Bayt-Sajji. But then the various ethnic minorities drew 'lines in the sand' to hide behind, depriving everyone of the previous unity. The message is clear - the Bayt-Sajji sees the other countries not as sovereign states, but as wayward breakaway provinces. The others' ethnic identities aren't real, and invading and conquering them won't be acts of aggression, they'll be defending the greater nation.
Aiza is scrappy, but tiny and inexperienced. A kindly groundskeeper, a wounded veteran himself, agrees to give her extra training at night so she can catch up, just as every story like this might lead you to expect. Because she's exhausted and only cares about adventure and glory, Aiza misses the parts of their classroom lectures where the Ornu people are repeatedly belittled and blamed for all Bayt-Sajji's problems. What she and her friends are being trained for, is war with the Ornu state.
Thanks to the groundskeeper's help, Aiza passes her tests. She gets to keep training to be a squire instead of being flunked into the infantry. The trainees' next assignment is a week of survival camping. But they're ambushed by masked and tattooed Ornu bandits. One of Aiza's friends is injured, and the only way to save him is with her bandages, revealing her own tattoos, and spilling her secret. To everyone's surprise, Aiza gets promoted to full squire after the mission, although what she and her friends don't realize is that the goal of the too-soon, not-fully-earned promotion is to inspire the other recruits to hate the Ornu in their midst.
And here's where, for all the smart subversive messaging, the plot takes a turn that reminds you that Squire is still a kid's book, and still wants to model some kind of hope for the future. Because the realistic paths forward here are probably pretty bleak. And indeed, Aiza learns the groundskeeper's story, of how he was once like her, until he was forced to help put down an uprising in his own home village, then refused to keep fighting, and had his arm amputated as punishment. Aiza appears to be on track for something similar when another recruit accuses her of conspiring with Ornu spies and earning her promotion through deceit and treachery.
But this is revealed to all be due to the machinations of the general running the recruitment camp. Rather than just taking advantage of an opportunity to make an example of Aiza, which would be reprehensible but legal, she engineered the whole situation, including hiring the bandits to attack her own recruits. Aiza finds the incriminating paperwork, the groundskeeper rallies Aiza's friends to rescue her, and everything is resolved with a dramatic, climactic swordfight.
Well, almost everything, because Shammas and Alfageeh return to realism for the ending. Overzealous general or no, the Bayt-Sajji army is going to continue being used to persecute the Ornu and other ethnic minorities within Bayt-Sajji's borders, and to continue expanding those borders through conquest. Rather than have to fight their own families the way the groundskeeper did, Aiza and a few of her friends desert the army, knowing that they'll have hard lives as fugitives from now on.
The plot structure of Squire mostly follows the traditional script of stories about coming-of-age via the military. But within that plot is a lot of meta-commentary about the role such stories play in convincing kids that the way to live out their childhood fantasies of heroism is to join the army, and a glimpse at other, more realistic ways the story of one's own actual military service could go. I think this is probably a good read for any adventure-loving teen, and perhaps an important one for anybody who thinks their own life should follow the path laid out in typical adventure stories.
The imperial government in Squire is fantasy Middle Eastern, with both the visuals and the names drawing on real-world historical examples to create a setting that's fictional, but also not far removed from reality. But the structure of the military, the empire's relationships with its neighbors, could be almost anywhere, almost any time. I was reminded of Rome, but also American rhetoric after 9/11, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Israeli policy toward Palestinians. Someone more familiar with the history of Islamic empires might see other historical similarities that I missed, as well.
Our viewpoint character is Aiza, a tiny little girl who wants to grow up to a hero, a knight. Aiza is a member of the Ornu ethnic minority, and lives with her family in an enclave within the current borders of Bayt-Sajji. She sells apricots every day in the market, and it's clear that the Ornu are despised by the majority - accused of hoarding food, of price gouging, scapegoated as the cause of the national famine.
Aiza's grown up hearing stories of Bayt-Sajji's famous knights and seeing military recruitment posters in the market. When a representative of the army announces that Ornu and other conquered peoples can earn full citizenship for themselves and their families through military service, Aiza is eager to join up. Her parents reluctantly agree, but make her cover the traditional tattoos on her arm with bandages so that no one will know she's Ornu.
Aiza starts making friends right away with the other new recruits, and the next part of Squire reminded me a lot of the training scenes in Mulan, and probably a lot of other war movies I haven't seen. But underneath the scenes of camaraderie and triumph over adversity, there's something more sinister and realistic too.
On Aiza's first day, the recruits are taken to what look like the ruins of Petra, and they're told that in the past, all the people in the region belonged to a single, unified Bayt-Sajji. But then the various ethnic minorities drew 'lines in the sand' to hide behind, depriving everyone of the previous unity. The message is clear - the Bayt-Sajji sees the other countries not as sovereign states, but as wayward breakaway provinces. The others' ethnic identities aren't real, and invading and conquering them won't be acts of aggression, they'll be defending the greater nation.
Aiza is scrappy, but tiny and inexperienced. A kindly groundskeeper, a wounded veteran himself, agrees to give her extra training at night so she can catch up, just as every story like this might lead you to expect. Because she's exhausted and only cares about adventure and glory, Aiza misses the parts of their classroom lectures where the Ornu people are repeatedly belittled and blamed for all Bayt-Sajji's problems. What she and her friends are being trained for, is war with the Ornu state.
Thanks to the groundskeeper's help, Aiza passes her tests. She gets to keep training to be a squire instead of being flunked into the infantry. The trainees' next assignment is a week of survival camping. But they're ambushed by masked and tattooed Ornu bandits. One of Aiza's friends is injured, and the only way to save him is with her bandages, revealing her own tattoos, and spilling her secret. To everyone's surprise, Aiza gets promoted to full squire after the mission, although what she and her friends don't realize is that the goal of the too-soon, not-fully-earned promotion is to inspire the other recruits to hate the Ornu in their midst.
And here's where, for all the smart subversive messaging, the plot takes a turn that reminds you that Squire is still a kid's book, and still wants to model some kind of hope for the future. Because the realistic paths forward here are probably pretty bleak. And indeed, Aiza learns the groundskeeper's story, of how he was once like her, until he was forced to help put down an uprising in his own home village, then refused to keep fighting, and had his arm amputated as punishment. Aiza appears to be on track for something similar when another recruit accuses her of conspiring with Ornu spies and earning her promotion through deceit and treachery.
But this is revealed to all be due to the machinations of the general running the recruitment camp. Rather than just taking advantage of an opportunity to make an example of Aiza, which would be reprehensible but legal, she engineered the whole situation, including hiring the bandits to attack her own recruits. Aiza finds the incriminating paperwork, the groundskeeper rallies Aiza's friends to rescue her, and everything is resolved with a dramatic, climactic swordfight.
Well, almost everything, because Shammas and Alfageeh return to realism for the ending. Overzealous general or no, the Bayt-Sajji army is going to continue being used to persecute the Ornu and other ethnic minorities within Bayt-Sajji's borders, and to continue expanding those borders through conquest. Rather than have to fight their own families the way the groundskeeper did, Aiza and a few of her friends desert the army, knowing that they'll have hard lives as fugitives from now on.
The plot structure of Squire mostly follows the traditional script of stories about coming-of-age via the military. But within that plot is a lot of meta-commentary about the role such stories play in convincing kids that the way to live out their childhood fantasies of heroism is to join the army, and a glimpse at other, more realistic ways the story of one's own actual military service could go. I think this is probably a good read for any adventure-loving teen, and perhaps an important one for anybody who thinks their own life should follow the path laid out in typical adventure stories.
