Habibi

Graphic novels are great because it’s actually acceptable for an adult to read a book with pictures.Habibi by Craig has too many pictures. The story itself spans full-circle as novel should but there were parts of the story that left me with a few questions.

A young Arab girl, Dodola is sold into marriage. Her husband, a scribe, educates her. One night thieves break in and kill her husband and she is sold into slavery. While held by her captures, she saves a young Negro child named Zam from death by claiming him as her brother. She escapes along with her new brother (more so a surrogate mother); and they happen upon an abandoned boat in the desert. At this point she is 12yrs old, and provides food and water by prostituting to traveling caravans. This mean of earning a living continues for nine years.

Zam begins to inquire about how she gets food/water for them. She commands he stay on the boat because boys can be captured and sold as slaves. This works for a while but eventually curiosity gets the best of him and follows her. He discovers how she really provides for them and it causes him emotional trouble and continues to haunt him throught the book.

 

A lot goes on within 600+ pages, so for me to explain everything would be wearisome for writer and reader alike.  Dodola gets captured once more and is placed in the palace as a concubine for the sultan. She and Zam do not come together until the end of the book when he is 18 and she is 27. A lot of weird stuff happens from the time they separate until the very last pages of the book.

The artistry is amazing. Craig Thompson makes excellent use of light and dark space and the details of each character is amazing. The time frame is unclear but the setting is clearly someplace in the orient with an evident western influence. Dodola is undressed nearly the entire novel, and it explains why Zam began to have confusing sexual desires for her so but its not clear that its the cause of some of his self-destructive choices.

There were a lot of sexual tones;   there was also a lack of clarity when it came to love and lust. Did Zam love Dodola or was he just lusting...Did she love him or was she in lust with the idea of him? It was never a distinction. Sexual perversion was just something that went on in the fictional society that they live in. There was no protest as to whether it was right or wrong.

There were also a lot of references to religious events that criss-crossed Islamic and Christian text. It was hinted that the characters where Muslim but to an unknown extent. 

This book was strange and left me with questions. I even tried to find a little explanation online but the majority of the sites just talked about the artwork without really diving into the content of the story.