Writing the Sacred in Craig Thompson’s Habibi

This chapter discusses how Craig Thompson’s Habibi (2011) constructs the oriental sacred through Arabic calligraphy, weaving sacrality into the visual and textual narrative of the imagined, exotic other. The exotic and even erotic forms of calligraphy stylize a natural and imminently accessible sacred that works within an oriental mode of visual exposure. We can see this oriental sacred in the natural landscape, in the mythic and salvific animals, in the Islamic textual traditions of hadiths and Qur’an, and in the material body of Dodola who captures the young Zam’s erotic fantasies. Thompson deploys calligraphy to open Islamic and Arabic culture to the oriental gaze, imagining the sacred within the imagined world of Richard Burton’s 1,001 Arabian Nights. Within this space and gaze, Arabic calligraphy takes on the form and function of the sacred orient.