April 2025 - Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed

Book Blog #8 April 28, 2025: Shubeik Lubeik

At once fantastical and down-to-earth, Shubeik Lubeik is the debut graphic novel of Egyptian author Deena Mohamed. “Shubeik Lubeik”, which is Arabic for “Your wish is my command”, is about wishes that can be bought: expensive first-class wishes come in bottles and are of good quality, but third-class wishes, called “delesseps”, come in cans and are often dangerous and unpredictable. Ultimately, the book is about what happens to us when we struggle to realize our dreams. It is also about what happens to us when our wishes are granted.

In the book, a street vendor named Shokry has long been saddled with three first-class wishes he inherited from his father. As he believes the wishes are in conflict with his religious beliefs, he is determined to get rid of them. The book centers around the three wishes and their recipients, so it is divided into three parts, whose characters are barely connected through Shokry.

The novel was met with some criticism by our book club. One of us felt I might have chosen a book that gives a better sense of the culture and people of Egypt. Another stated that he did not ultimately understand the author’s purpose in writing. Finally, the work is 518 pages long, heavy to carry around, and the stories can drag. I felt this in the middle story, about “Nour”, a university student of ambiguous gender who struggles with depression. Finally, some of us found the pages that explain wishes in an educational, pamphlet-like style to be tedious.

While we generally had mixed feelings about the book, we still managed to fill the hour with fruitful discussion.

One thing many people voiced appreciation for was the art. Personally, while allowing that it looks professional, I did not especially like it, with the exception of the genies, who come out of the wish bottles in a design composed of Arabic calligraphy. These images are inventive and beautiful. I didn’t mind not knowing what the Arabic meant. In a way, the mystery of not knowing added to the aura of the genies.

Someone raised the question of how many wishes were actually granted. After giving the question some thought, we concluded that the last two wishes clearly were granted, but the first wish was more complicated. Are there some wishes that not even a genie can grant?

For the most part, though, the book makes us think about what it might mean for us (and the world) if our wishes are granted. As a simple example, we see that Nour’s family’s neighbors have enough money to spend on frivolous wishes for pet dinosaurs that disturb the neighborhood. The third-class wishes (“delesseps”), purchased in cans, are less reliable and more potentially dangerous to those who buy them. I loved these ideas and was excited to see how Mohamed would run with them.

While one of the book club members expressed that she did not care for fantasy, to me the book felt very realistic in spite of the fantasy elements. In fact, the heavy focus on grim realities such as bureaucracy getting in the way of the poorer wishmaker (Aziza’s) story reminded me of the drabness of the bureaucracy of the “Ministry of Magic” of the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. On the one hand, I appreciate the realism because it makes me sympathize with the characters’ strivings, but on the other hand, I am frustrated by the fact that authors such as Mohamed and Rowling choose to allow fantasy into their books, but ultimately choose not to allow the characters any relief from the relentlessly drab side of life; their protagonists are just as bogged down by such  mind-numbing realities as they would be without any magic. What good is magic then, I wonder? And is it a lack of imagination, or is it the scruples of the author that prevent her from lightening her creations’ burdens, and by extension our own? Do the authors make choices about the fates of the characters out of integrity or cruelty? Actually, I don’t think Mohamed’s book is as dark as Rowling’s books are (although Rowling’s three protagonists do eventually get their happy ending).  Through Aziza’s story, Mohamed simply shows that life for a poor, uneducated woman is very hard and unfair. Even so, there is redemption. Although Aziza is unfairly imprisoned when the authorities claim she has no right to the wish bottle she honestly purchased, she does eventually gain her freedom and her wish.

I won’t spoil the book for those who have not read it by saying what the wishes are and what comes of these wishes.

I would like to spend a little time countering the idea that we do not learn much about Egyptian culture in this book. I believe that the fantasy element does not detract from our ability to get a feeling for the Egyptian people and culture. In the first place, Mohamed takes advantage of her story’s premise to choose wish recipients of completely different backgrounds–from those who are well off to those who have almost nothing. I do not want to give away too much of the story, but one of the wish recipients is especially unusual. We also learn a lot about Shokry, the vendor. We meet his family as a child and then the family he acquires when he grows up and marries. We see how his status as the oldest son in the family makes him the lifelong benefactor to his siblings; for example, he raises money for his younger brother’s lavish wedding. His mother and her importance in holding the family together is also featured. There are full-size pictures on pages 336 and 337 that show a key moment in Shokry’s life: in the first picture he is shown on a boat with his belongings and family members. (After the death of his father, he has decided to move away from his country beginnings.) In this picture, you can see a landscape being cleared of all greenery. In the next picture, the landscape is cluttered with gray buildings. Giving our eyes a break from the monotony, Mohamed makes transparent the side of the building so that we can glimpse Shokry settling into what appears to be his family’s two-room apartment. In the first room, Shokry stands surrounded by luggage. In the second room, some people sit on the floor, apparently about to partake of a modest meal laid out on a cloth.

For me, one standout moment of experiencing Egyptian culture comes from the character Shokry addresses as “Hagga”. She is an old woman who passes the time of day with Shokry at his kiosk. Although Shokry tries to force his last wish bottle on her when he learns this old friend is dying of cancer, she vehemently refuses the wish. And even though she is not one of the three characters who make a wish from Shokry’s supply, she is given space to tell her story anyway. It turns out that when she was young she also attained a first-class wish and she has the most outlandish story of all. But I digress. To get to the “standout moment of experiencing Egyptian culture”, I greatly enjoyed the part of the story when Hagga is visited by all of her friends and family members as she is recovering from cancer treatments in the hospital. Against the hospital’s visitation policies, the guests keep pouring into the room, and they are effusive and warm, bursting with the need to love and support this woman who is the matriarch who helped them get through the milestones of their lives. (In this way, she is like Shokry.)

While traditional culture is illustrated through the stories of Aziza, (who dedicates her youth to her sick parents, her young adulthood to the childhood friend she marries), and to Shokry, (who supports his extended family just as Hagga supports hers), Nour’s story feels more modern and perhaps familiar to the American reader. Nour is a university student from an upper-middle class family that does not feel as closely bonded as the other families featured in the book. Nour is alienated from society and parents, not strong enough to be truthful to any of the people who would care for them, (pronoun unclear). With at times crippling depression, Nour’s story feels like the longest as they struggle to just get through the day. Many days are spent in bed. Nour’s gender is ambiguous, and this was also a point of discussion in our book club meeting.

The title page of Shubeik Lubeik features an intriguing image: two hands reach out to grasp a corked bottle hovering just out of reach. The picture is dark, but a warm light encircles the bottle. I believe the hands in this image belong to Aziza, who worked in hard manual labor to make the money needed to purchase her wish. If you look closely, you can see bandages on one finger and a thumb, and a bracelet ornaments one wrist. In Aziza’s story, pages 62-63 feature full-page pictures. On page 62 we see a small Aziza, standing in profile, her arms folded. She looks at the mountain of cash that fills the facing page. Under these pictures Mohamed writes “In most situations. . . what stands between you and your wish is merely a mountain of money.” On pages 78-79, again a dwarfed Aziza faces a giant obstacle. These pages read “And in other situations. . . what stands between you and your wish could be a government employee with paperwork on the fourth floor.”

This contrasts with similar full-page pictures at the end of the book, where a certain someone freely gives away his wish. The author writes “In some cases, what stands between you and your wish (which is getting rid of your wish). . . is nothing at all.”

Lesson learned? Making wishes for oneself is complicated, but giving them away is easy.