102 Time October 21–28, 2019
It was late on a Friday in April when
Alexander Gorbunov, one of Russia’s
most popular bloggers, got a call from
his mom. Police officers with assault
rifles had barged into his parents’
apartment, she said, asking about
her son, what he does for a living and
whether he has ties to terrorism.
Gorbunov, 27, felt helpless. He
was living in Moscow, a thousand
miles from his family home. The
police claimed his phone had been
used to make bomb threats in
Moscow, but Gorbunov suspected
a different reason for the raid—that
his online rants, posted under the
pseudonym StalinGulag, had hit
a nerve inside the Kremlin. “Like
any authoritarian regime,” he says,
“this one is most afraid of being
laughed at.” His writings, skewering
the government over corruption and
mocking President Vladimir Putin,
had earned Gorbunov, 27, over
a million followers on Twitter.
After the police visited his
parents, Gorbunov felt he had few
options left. “With no independent
courts in Russia, the only way to
protect yourself, however fleetingly,
is to go public,” he says. So far,
it’s working. The police have not
pursued charges against him, and
after he revealed his identity in May,
Gorbunov’s popularity in Russia has
only grown. His new YouTube channel
has racked up over 2 million views for
his tirades on Russian politics, which
he delivers deadpan each week from
his wheelchair. (He has a condition
known as spinal muscular atrophy.)
Gorbunov recognizes the difficulty
of bringing change to Putin’s Russia
but is comforted by his online
supporters. “There are people out
there who share my thoughts,” he
says. “That’s what creates hope for
this country’s future.”Alexander Gorbunov
Speaking out under Putin
By Simon Shuster
RUSSIA
in one of The firsT self-porTraiTs
Zainab Fasiki shared publicly, she is
standing vigil over the city—giant, green,
naked. Fasiki, 25, says The Protector of
Casablanca was a way to fight against
daily street harassment. “The message
is: This is me trying to protect the city.
I’m here, and I can change some things.”
That defiance characterizes much of
the work in Fasiki’s new graphic novel,
Hshouma, published in French and Arabic
editions in September. The book, whose
title roughly translates as “shame,” pairs
the artist’s playful illustrations with dis-
cussions of sexuality, gender-based vio-
lence and censorship. “I want every Moroc-
can to read it because we have nothing on
these topics at school or at home,” she says.
When Fasiki first left her conserva-
tive hometown of Fez for college in the
coastal city of Casablanca, she thought
life would get easier. But catcalling was
a daily challenge, and for the handful of
female students in the same mechanical-
engineering degree program as Fasiki,
bullying was common. After a man tried
to snatch her bag in the city center last
year, Fasiki, who has been drawing since
the age of 4, was inspired to publish many
of the illustrations she had kept private—
some featuring nude women.
Fasiki’s conservative critics say her
images are degrading. But she wants to
draw attention to society’s obsession with
how women present themselves. “I’m try-
ing to say you can see a naked woman and
you can find it normal. It has nothing to
do with sex. It’s just a body.”
In early 2018, Fasiki launched a men-
torship program to prepare 20 female art-
ists each month to navigate exploitation
in Morocco’s art industry, which she en-
countered at the beginning of her career.
Inspired by Egyptian feminist Nawal
El Saadawi and French- Iranian graphic
novelist Marjane Satrapi, Fasiki is also
countering Western narratives that por-
tray the Middle East as either hypersexual
or repressed. “Everyone wants you to be
a certain way,” she says. “I love proving
them wrong.”Zainab Fasiki
Comics crusader
By Joseph HincksMOROCCO
Next Generation Leaders