Rabat – At the 2026 edition of the International Publishing and Book Fair (SIEL), one debut novel invited readers to pause rather than rush forward. Presented at the Editions Dar Attaouhidi stand, “God Called Me” by Khadija Shaqi places emotional life at the center of its narrative, with a tone that remains intimate without losing clarity.
Shaqi’s first book draws from lived experience, yet it avoids the tone of confession for its own sake. Instead, it builds around a moment of rupture. The author describes a point where avoidance no longer holds. The instinct to escape difficult feelings returns so often that it demands confrontation.
The text follows that shift. It revisits childhood memories and emotional patterns that shaped the present. Rather than present trauma as a fixed past, Shaqi treats it as something that continues to speak, often in indirect ways. The act of looking back becomes less about explanation and more about recognition.
The book’s premise rests on the simple idea that what people suppress does not disappear. It transforms, returns, and insists on attention.
‘Our emotions are not monsters’
In an interview with Morocco World News (MWN) on the sidelines of the fair, Shaqi spoke in direct terms about the intention behind her work.
“This is a book that talks about emotions and the emotional experience of the human being and how it is important to sit down with emotions and not run away from them,” Shaqi said. “Every emotion tries to tell us something important about our inner world.”
Her remarks resist the common hierarchy that separates acceptable feelings from those considered disruptive. Anger, sadness, or hurt do not appear as failures to control oneself, but as signals that carry meaning.
“The book mainly speaks about how, in my personal experience, I came to the conclusion that emotions are a blessing, not a curse,” she explained. “Suppressing an emotion means that we treat it as a monster, but our emotions are not monsters.”
This position gives the book its coherence. It does not seek resolution through elimination of discomfort, but through acknowledgment.
Writing vulnerability without exhibition
What distinguishes “God Called Me” lies in its treatment of vulnerability. The text does not push exposure for its own sake. Shaqi draws a line between expression and excess, between honesty and self-erasure.
“There is no shame in being vulnerable,” she said, while also noting that vulnerability does not require full disclosure in every context. The choice of when to speak, and to whom, remains part of the process.
This nuance keeps the narrative grounded. It avoids turning emotional openness into a rigid principle. Instead, it presents it as a practice that requires judgment, timing, and trust.
A quiet presence at SIEL
Within the broader landscape of SIEL, where political debate, history, and public policy often dominate discussions, Shaqi’s novel takes a different direction. It turns toward the interior, toward what remains unspoken in daily life.
That shift does not isolate the book from its context. On the contrary, it reflects a wider interest among younger writers in questions of mental health, self-perception, and emotional language. Readers at the fair engaged with the book not as a distant reflection, but as something that mirrors familiar struggles.
For Shaqi, the moment carried personal weight. “Presenting my book at SIEL is an honor. I am very proud of this experience and very happy to be here for my first book,” she said.
Listening as a literary gesture
At its core, “God Called Me” does not offer solutions in a conventional sense. It does not promise transformation through a single realization. Instead, it returns to a quieter proposition: attention.
To listen to one’s emotions, as the author insists, requires patience and a willingness to face discomfort without immediate judgment. In a setting defined by movement and exchange, the book introduces a different rhythm, one that asks readers to slow down and reconsider what they tend to dismiss.
In that sense, Shaqi’s debut does more than recount a personal journey. It opens a space where emotional life gains legitimacy, not as an abstract idea, but as something that shapes how individuals understand themselves and others.
