Cartooning and other forms of satire boomed during the youth-led uprisings of 2010 and 2011 sometimes described as the Arab Spring. But as those revolutions were co-opted by extremists, or brutally repressed by other anti-democratic forces, the space for free expression began to shrink. Now, says Hajjaj, it is narrower than ever. “U.S. allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have managed to persuade the Americans that democracy is no good for us, and they should be able to do whatever they want,” he says. Faced with such abject politics, “the least we can do is make jokes about our reality. They should allow us that.”

 

When his art has got him into trouble before, he has bounced back. After Hajjaj portrayed the Jordanian King in cartoon form two decades ago, he was fired from his job at government-owned daily Al Rai. Crushed and afraid, he took a job at a smaller newspaper and for a while became “an ordinary cartoonist, drawing cartoons that would make nobody upset.” But within a year Hajjaj returned to tackling controversial topics. In the wake of the worst terrorist attack in Jordan’s history—a series of bomb attacks on three Aman hotel lobbies that killed scores of people in 2005—he drew a cartoon of three interlocking hands on a black background. One red, one green, one white; the clasped palms in Jordan’s national colors became a symbol of solidarity, reprinted on t-shirts, pens, and banners.

 

Whether his arrest will change the way he responds to future events in the Arab World, Hajjaj says, it’s too early to say. Upon his release last week, his lawyer advised him to keep a low profile. Instead, he turned in his customary weekly assignment—though it took a little longer than usual to decide on a subject. Hajjaj’s drawing depicted an artist hunched over his desk. A welder’s mask shields his face from flying sparks as his pen hits the page.