Shubeik Lubeik

By Caitlin Plovnick

Content warning: violence, suicidal thoughts, discrimination

Shubeik Lubeik (“your wish is my command”) is a clever and moving three-part fantasy set in a world where genie-granted wishes are a regulated resource. Mainly taking place in modern day Cairo, Shubeik Lubeik is rich with background details that show evidence of cheap wishes gone wrong, often in the form of mutations, or tacky materialistic wishes for the wealthy, such as flying cars and dinosaurs.

The story follows three individuals who have the opportunity to make a 1st-class wish: the rarest, most expensive and most reliable type of wish available. Aziza wishes for peace of mind after the unexpected death of her husband. Nour struggles with depression and seeks to manage it. Shokry, who owns the kiosk where Aziza and Nour purchase the wishes, desires to be rid of the burden of the wishes, as they conflict with his religious beliefs.

Shubeik Lubeik is not primarily a work of graphic medicine, but it includes many examples of medical issues explored through the medium of comics, which I have attempted to summarize below:

Medicine in a wish-based economy

First, it is worth considering the general state of medicine in the fictional world of Shubeik Lubeik. Author Deena Mohamed includes notes and graphics between each story to provide additional context to the world her characters inhabit. Here she explains that medical wishes exist as a unique category that must be licensed and reported in medical wishing databases in order to assist with scientific research. There are regulations against wishing for eternal life or bringing back the dead (enacted after multiple outbreaks of zombies in the nineteenth century), but characters throughout the book make mention of wishes used to cure cancer or restore health to an ailing family member. A notice in the background of a city street scene explains the lack of visible COVID-19 precautions by noting that thanks to the National Public Interest Wishes, Egypt is plague-free. This is a parallel world to our own, where public health and medical research still matter despite the fantastic existence of wishes.

Healthcare settings

Another example of graphic medicine that runs throughout the stories is how Mohamed depicts different hospitals and healthcare facilities. In a story spanning decades and touching on a variety of economic conditions, we are given glimpses into the resources and conditions of public, private, and specialty hospitals, as well as wellness clinics and sickbeds at home. As a child, Aziza picks up prescriptions and administers IV drips and oxygen to her ailing parents in their cramped apartment. Nour sees a therapist in a city building crowded with clinics, where they discreetly wonder at the other clients in the waiting room. Later, they visit a second clinic in what appears to be a quiet and leafy location. This therapist’s office is filled with plants and comforting objects, and Nour’s experience is considerably better. Central character Shawqia, in an alternate past, waits with her children in a long line outside of a rural clinic in Upper Egypt for schistosomiasis (parasite-caused infection from flukes in tropical rivers/lakes) treatments that will later infect them with hepatitis. In the present day, her family members wait to see her while seated in the crowded hallway outside the ICU of a large private hospital, after multiple failed attempts to find a bed for her. While not necessarily central to the plot, comparing the details shown in all of these examples of treatment centers and waiting rooms could be a useful exercise for those interested in thinking about healthcare accessibility and disparities.

Part 1: Aziza

The first story’s main character, as mentioned earlier, grows up with ailing parents who need her to care for them. This affects Aziza’s development, as she keeps her emotions bottled up in order to avoid an outburst she might regret. Several panels early on depict Aziza’s true emotions as she inwardly rages about the conditions of her life and cries with fear of her parents dying, contrasted with her outward calm and maturity as she tends to them. This sequence presents a sympathetic portrayal of the often-quiet suffering of caregivers.

Much of Aziza’s story takes place after she purchases a wish from Shokry’s kiosk following the death of her husband. A 1st class wish is not typically affordable to someone like Aziza, who bought it at an unusual discount and even then, had to work hard to raise enough money. She is almost immediately stopped by an officer who interrogates her and insists she take her wish to a registration office to prove she has the right to use it. What follows is a bureaucratic nightmare that lands Aziza in jail. The story continues on from there, but a relevant piece to graphic medicine is the sequence depicting Aziza climbing up and down increasingly steep stairways to visit offices where she is repeatedly turned away to chase down additional paperwork, all the while getting further and further from being able to use the wish that she purchased. While it is not directly related to medicine, this sequence is a useful illustration of how bureaucratic systems or lack of insurance can create barriers for those, such as Aziza, without the wealth, power, or literacy to navigate them.

Part 2: Nour

Part 2 focuses on happiness, but in terms of graphic medicine it could probably stand alone as a story about depression. Nour, a young non-binary university student from a privileged background, struggles to affirm and manage their own experience.

Mohamed visualizes Nour’s depression in a variety of ways: first, there are the graphs that Nour, a former math prodigy, creates to measure their feelings against a perceived ‘normal’. These graphs expand in scale and complexity throughout the story as Nour experiences gains and setbacks, at one point reduced to a chillingly flat “who cares” across the x and y axes. These graphs help Nour to make sense of and communicate their feelings, but also show how Nour can get trapped in depression’s limited perspective. In addition to the graphs, Nour’s depression is made visual through illustrations of them lying in bed in an increasingly messy, neglected room, depicted from above. Plenty of visual information is also communicated through the emotions evident in Nour’s facial expressions and body language, and in the violent lettering used to write out their most self-sabotaging thoughts.

In addition to communicating a visual experience of depression and recovery, Nour’s story illustrates the challenges involved in asking for help and seeking treatment. The first friend that Nour confides in is unsympathetic, seeing depression as a shallow first-world problem. Similarly, the first therapist that Nour meets with is a poor fit, recommending that Nour, who presents as nonbinary, might be happier if they changed their appearance to reach ‘a more “normal” look’. A second therapist is able to provide better advice, although Nour still experiences setbacks. These sequences could be helpful in thinking about how to have constructive (or avoid non-constructive) conversations with patients or loved ones who seek advice on mental health issues.

Finally, Nour’s dilemma over how to use their 1st-class wish presents an interesting philosophical exploration of how to treat depression. Even in a world with magic wishes, there is no easy solution. Nour considers wishing to be happy or have more energy, but fears the consequences of becoming alienated from their real feelings or never being able to relax again. In darker moments, they consider wishing to die or disappear as a way out of depression. Mohamed takes great care to emphasize that each person’s experience of depression is unique, and one person’s solution may not work for all. In the end, Nour finds an appropriate and practical way to frame their wish, and improvement is shown in all of the visual devices described above. Separately, Nour finds a way to leverage their privilege and education to help others, and the effect this has on their self-perception is illuminating.

Part 3: Shokry

Part 3 delves into the history of how Shokry came to have a set of 1st class wishes to sell at his kiosk, and how he considers them a kind of curse. But when he discovers his longtime customer Shawqia has terminal cancer (and that her religion does not forbid her to make wishes) he is determined to give her the final wish. Shawqia, however, declines the wish. The graphic medicine component here has to do with end-of-life care and patient preferences. Shawqia’s extended family and network of friends (including Shokry, who has sold cigarettes to her for years) can’t bear to lose her, and assume she is refusing the wish out of selflessness. They press her to use the wish and seek additional treatment, while she repeats that her only desire at this point is to sit by the sea in Alexandria and eat shrimp. This differs from Nour’s consideration of suicide in that Shawqia is satisfied with the life she has lived and does not want to escape from it so much as to move beyond it. She declines resorting to extraordinary measures to prolong her life, but does not actively seek to end it.

In a final confrontation where Shokry, his faith tested by his despair at not providing all possible help, threatens to use the wish himself to cure Shawqia, she finally reveals the truth about her own history with wishes and leads Shokry to understand and honor her choice. Much has been leading up to this moment, and Mohamed uses the comics medium brilliantly to reveal the depth of Shawqia’s personality and the impact of her carefully considered life.

I’ll leave it to readers to discover how Shokry ultimately resolves the dilemma of the final wish, but will conclude by saying that I highly recommend Shubeik Lubeik as a brilliant example of graphic narrative with many elements relevant to graphic medicine. In three distinct stories, Mohamed combines existential questions with fantastical humor and intimate details of everyday life to explore how we care for ourselves and one another.

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Caitlin Plovnick is a librarian at the NYU Health Sciences Library and graduate of the Center for Cartoon Studies.