Deena Mohamed dazzles in her debut graphic novel Shubeik Lubeik (Arabic for “your wish is my command”), spinning an irresistible fantasy tale set in Cairo, Egypt, where wishes are all-to-real. Indeed, in this book wishes are a formidable commercial and industrial commodity with a long and tangled global history. Alternating between vivid depictions of Cairo and its residents and a methodically designed series of infographics that document the commercial and political history of her fanciful wish-product, Mohamed imagines a palpable geopolitical wish industrial complex, a global business mining, refining, and churning out wishes to be bought, sold, and regulated for industrial quality, complete with all the value, pain, and social conflict that you’d expect from such a high-value, often unstable, highly interpretive commodity. Mohamed’s book tells the story of three Cairo residents whose lives will be transformed after buying a wish from a kiosk merchant who’s just trying to get rid of the accursed product–he hates wishes and considers them a violation of Islamic principles. In this eight-page excerpt, the reader is quickly introduced to the Egyptian wish economy, the kiosk merchant hoping to unload his wish inventory, and an old Christian woman who will surprise him much later in the story. Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed will be published by Pantheon in January.
