Shubeik Lubeik
written, illustrated, and translated by Deena Mohamed
2022

This graphic novel is amazing! I highly recommend it. It came to me as a second-hand recommendation with the suggestion to just go into it cold, with no expectations of what it is. Just know that it is brilliantly done and beautifully illustrated, award-winning, and anyone reading this should definitely give it a shot. That said, this is a book review blog, so I’m going to go into more (ie, some) detail, but am respecting the original recommendation enough to put those details under a cut.

The opening line of the book defines the title:

In Arabic folktales, Shubeik Lubeik
is the first part of the rhyme a genie
speaks once released from a lamp.
It means “Your wish is my command.”

The setting is contemporary Egypt with magical realism where wishes have been commodified. This has not changed history or culture all that much and the author does a brilliant job of showing how wishes of different strengths and costs fit into the current world: wishes do perform miracles, but they don’t stop poverty or colonialism or conflict, they’re just one more commodity. The framing story is that a man running a street kiosk in Cairo inherited three first-class wishes that he wants to sell. Each wish gets its own full story about who uses the wish and why, and they are each distinctly different and somehow balance hard-hitting with completely sweet. And also hilarious! But also serious.

Each of the three wishes is acquired by someone with their own unique circumstances completely different from each other and yet they are also all connected by the simple fact of intersecting at this kiosk and the need for a miracle. What really gets me about this is the way the author writes these characters: They’re all very different but the narration respects those differences and presents them as fully-developed characters with complexities that make them so very real.

Plus, the art is beautiful and expressive and conveys the story so well. The separate stories interwoven with connecting threads is a masterwork of storytelling. This is the sort of book that becomes a classic by both being hugely entertaining and delving into important themes. Starting with the question: if you could wish for anything, what would you wish for?