“Just because I came by boat… To escape the Taliban. The prison guard abused me. But I am a refugee. I only came here to save my life and Australian politicians are destroying me.”

I thought this section’s illustration and words were powerful together. The words are somewhat linear and so are the drawings, so a black background of seawater contrasts with a boat sailing the dangerous waters, the Taliban, a prison guard calling Yusuf a queue jumper, and finally an image of Yusuf’s face cracking and falling to pieces. I noticed that each of those images was progressively bigger, almost as if the obstacles that Yusuf has to overcome only get worse even though he is supposed to have escaped. And the words about the oppressors are accompanied by scary images, but the scariest image of his cracking face is accompanied by “But I am a refugee.” There’s significance in the pairing of words to images when it comes to Yusuf’s journey, how his identity is formed, and how he is broken down the most by treatment in detention centers and of refugees in Australia.