[Reader-list] On laughter

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

"To hear myself speculating on military and political matters makes me
laugh, as much as it makes me laugh to listen to Syrian, Lebanese,
Jordanian, Palestinian, and other Arab leaders.  I am thinking again
of Jalal Toufic when he writes: "All I ask of this world to which I
have already given three books is that it become less laughable, so
that I would be able to laugh again without dying of it.  And that it
does so soon before my somberness becomes second nature.  This era
has made me somber not only through all the barbarisms and genocides
it has perpetuated, but also through being so laughable.  Even in
this period of the utmost sadness for an Arab in general, and an
Iraqi [and Lebanese] in specific, I fear dying of laughter more than
of melancholic suicide, and thus I am more prone to relinquish my
guard when it comes to being sad than to laughing at laughable
phenomena."

Walid Raad, Beirut