{"id":25531,"date":"2023-03-13T09:11:50","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T07:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/?p=25531"},"modified":"2023-03-13T09:22:58","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T07:22:58","slug":"the-politics-of-wishful-thinking-deena-mohameds-shubeik-lubeik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/the-politics-of-wishful-thinking-deena-mohameds-shubeik-lubeik\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Wishful Thinking: Deena Mohamed\u2019s Shubeik Lubeik<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shubeik Lubeik, <\/em>a graphic novel by Deena Mohamed
\nPantheon Books<\/a> (Penguin Random House) 2023
\nISBN: 9781524748418<\/p>\n

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Katie Logan<\/h4>\n

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In the summer of 2019, Egyptian comics artist Deena Mohamed led a workshop on comics translation <\/a>as part of London\u2019s biannual Shubbak Festival<\/a>, in which she shared with the participants that her already award-winning comics trilogy, Shubeik Lubeik, <\/em>would be published in her own English translation in 2021. In a nod to the workshop\u2019s preoccupations, she also explained that she had yet to settle on an English title for the project. The trilogy constructs a world in which wishes as material objects are bought, sold, and used to varying degrees of effectiveness; though Shubeik Lubeik <\/em>might be most closely translated as \u201cyour wish is my command,\u201d the change robs the phrase of its playful sonic qualities and its Arabic literary history.<\/p>\n

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Shubeik Lubeik<\/em> is published by Pantheon<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The world has changed many times over since that summer of 2019; those of us eagerly anticipating Shubeik Lubeik<\/em>\u2019s arrival on the U.S. literary scene had to wait an additional two years past the planned 2021 publication date. And when the English-language Shubeik Lubeik <\/em>finally did arrive in January 2023, courtesy of Pantheon Books<\/a>, it showed up wearing its original title.<\/p>\n

It would be difficult to discuss the content of the English-language Shubeik Lubeik <\/em>without first marveling at the care with which Mohamed has shepherded this project across linguistic and cultural borders. From the outset, it\u2019s clear that Mohamed intends to confront English-language readers with the ghost of the Arabic original. In addition to retaining the original title, the striking hardcover is bound on the right, and the inside cover greets readers with the following inscription: \u201cThis book was once in Arabic, so it is read from right to left. You are now at the beginning\u201d (the back cover offers a similar note-cum-admonition, telling readers habituated to reading from left to right that \u201cyou are now at the end\u201d). While Cairene signs and billboards remain in their Arabic original, Mohamed includes footnotes for key information and for building a jocular familiarity with the audience; for example, an early footnote explaining \u201cyalla\u201d acknowledges that it\u2019s \u201ca word you\u2019ll be hearing a lot.\u201d In an article for <\/a>Big Issue<\/a>, <\/em>Mohamed writes that this unconventional approach to translation \u2014 at least to those who don\u2019t read manga \u2014 \u201copened up\u201d the process for her.<\/p>\n

Mohamed\u2019s expansive, playful, yet rigorous approach to translation mirrors the expansive, playful, yet rigorous world of Shubeik Lubeik. <\/em>Both narratively and visually, this trilogy is a knockout. Detailed storytelling flirts with dystopia, fantasy, psychological drama, domestic sagas, and political intrigue. As with other comics artists publishing in Arabic or in Arab-Anglophone contexts, including Leila Abdelrazaq<\/a>, Iasmin Omar Ata<\/a>, Magdy El Shafee<\/a>, and important collectives<\/a> such as Samandal<\/a> (Lebanon), TokTok<\/a> (Egypt), and Maamoul Press<\/a>,<\/u> Mohamed engages the surreal, the magical, and even a bit of noir as she constructs a world where the logic of wishes co-exists alongside contemporary Egyptian bureaucracy. Each of these artists has described the way in which recourse to the medium of the graphic novel as well as genres that engage the fantastic allow them to narrate histories and circumstances they would otherwise consider un-narratable. Recounting her experience drafting the black and white graphic novel Baddawi <\/em>(Just World Books, 2015), Leila Abdelrazaq <\/a>explains that in narrating her father\u2019s life, the visual language of comics allowed for a range of representational options: \u201cBecause I will never understand what it\u2019s like to grow up in war and to grow up as a refugee . . . I resort to more surreal imagery that gives more of a feeling and implies something than trying to replicate something exactly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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From Shubeik Lubeik<\/em> (courtesy Deena Mohamed).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Similarly, Mohamed\u2019s efforts to narrate day to day life in contemporary Cairo benefits from the way she introduces wishes as a commodity that people buy, sell, trade and use. In her deft hand, fantastical wishes become the mechanism through which the reality of one\u2019s circumstances is revealed. \u00a0In Shubeik Lubeik<\/em>, the wishes characters make throw into relief the extractive<\/a>, exploitative, racist, and misogynistic practices that swirl around the trilogy\u2019s characters. Readers will not be surprised to learn that the mining for the \u201craw material\u201d of wishes occurs primarily in the Middle East and Africa, while the refining, marketing, and profiting off these goods takes place in Europe and the United States<\/a>. Additionally, wishes are sorted into classes based on effectiveness, governed by a complex global bureaucracy that exacerbates pre-existing wealth disparities, and morally censored by religious authorities and activist groups.<\/p>\n

Mohamed shapes this world so thoroughly that, for the reader, each discovery of a new stakeholder, a new regulation, or a new wrinkle in the wish system is simultaneously an intellectual delight and a sobering reminder of the way even generosity and community are conscripted into neoliberal economic orders<\/a>. For example, when a former wish charity must turn down donated wishes, one character explains:<\/p>\n

People [have to] donate money, and then those funds are used to buy subsidized wishes that the government provides at a discount . . . Those subsidized wishes are actually a requirement for all countries who signed the second wish equality amendment of \u201994 . . . and based on that, we qualify for the public-interest wish loans from the International Wish Federation.<\/p>\n

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