Even in the face of hardship, you need to be able to have a laugh every now and then. This is certainly true in Palestine and I’ve shared many a laugh and a joke with people in Nablus since I arrived. As ever, this has been an important part of building friendships, and that’s something I feel I’ve done a lot of over the past two months.
It’s fair to say, however, that in telling jokes there can be something lost in the translation sometimes. To illustrate this point, I will relay to you a joke I was told the other week.
I was taken out for breakfast by some of the students in one my classes, an all female group. One of the women told me a joke that went something like this:
A Palestinian man moves to America intending to learn good English. After a while, he has forgotten all the Arabic he ever knew, but hasn’t learnt a word of English. (Cue lots of laughter.)
I didn’t get it.
So the next day I told the joke to some of the staff at Project Hope, all men this time, and asked them to explain why it was funny. They said it was because he was Palestinian.
I still didn’t get it.
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