Talimambo Number Five (Antonio Beltrán Hernández/Juan Kalvellido)

Talimambo Number Five is more than a comic book, it’s a graphic novel, or better, a pictorial novel, as Juan Kalvellido is more than a cartoonist, he is a painter, a Goya of the photoshop era. This book is a truly worldwide product, or, as they say, “global,” or rather “trans”: cross-cultural, cross-border, cross-linguistic, trans-political.
First for its theme: The meeting — not that unlikely — between Zahir, an Afghan Taliban escaped from the U.S. camp in Guantánamo , and Martín, old Cuban peasant who was a comrade-in-arms of Che Guevara during the liberation of Cuba, to the sound of mambo music of the immortal Pérez Prado.
“I am a sincere man from the land of the palm trees”: this verse of the song Guantanamera may “equally apply to Martin or to Zahir. To see at length these men is to understand that what brings them closer is much more powerful than what could separate them. The Caribbean coconuts are very different from the dates of Registan, but equally are of the palm.”
Talimambo Number Five , p. 34)
By its languages: the text of the novel is in Spanish, French, English and Arabic, and thus accessible to a vast global audience. And the Western part of the public will have to make little effort to forget ingrained reflexes as they open the book, as it opens and reads from right to left — the Arabic language makes this necessary — and not left to right. It’s one way to get into the skin of the “other” and begin to change your outlook.
By its creators: To complete Talimambo Number Five needed the collaboration of an author, Antonio Beltrán Hernández in Paris and Mexico, an illustrator, Juan Kalvellido in Malaga in Andalusia, a translator, John Catalinotto in New York, and the workshop19 publishers, translator Sihem Guesmi , graphic designer Anwar Labidi and printer Finzi, all in Tunis.
And finally by its message: what Talimambo Number Five tells us is that humanity , beyond ideologies and machineries, has a common destiny and can find a common language, in other words, a Taliban can learn to dance the mambo .
May this book find its audience and inspire others, and become the first in a series of graphic, pictorial, photo-graphic novels treating in new creative ways the major themes of this century.