Funny You Should Mention …

Nada Wahba 

Managing English Editor 

The water looked shallow. The young man prepped himself as he slowly eased into the water, not taking its temperature into account.

As he ventured deeper into the surface, the water level inched closer to his torso and his feet became less resistant to the current. 

Inevitably, he started swimming the further he went into the water. Only he was fully clothed, on a gloomy day where it had stopped raining in Egypt and he was attempting to cross one of its streets. 

Recently, streets across Cairo were flooded due to heavy showers which caused chaos to ripple throughout the city. A lot of people were stuck on the streets for several hours and some of them had to camp somewhere and couldn’t make it home. 

Despite the havoc that wreaked across the city, millions of Egyptians responded to the situation with classic Egyptian humor. 

One of the things that truly iconisicizes Egyptians is their inborn ability to turn matters, no matter how serious, into jokes. 

The ultimate defense mechanism is humor; whether it be about a light subject or a rather heavy – borderline depressing- one. 

Egyptians have a way around things – how they maneuver throughout the day and find unorthodox ways to get through the hardships that pile up on them is remarkable.

Ironically enough, despite their overuse of humor in their day-to-day interactions, they’re the same people who came up with the well known (I assume) proverb that in essence can repel anyone from using humor as a primary source for a coping mechanism.

“El dehk men gheir sabab elet adab,” which is roughly translated to “laughing without reason is absurd”.

We usually don’t have any boundaries when it comes to jokes. Even though the proverb is popular, Egyptians always come up with reasons to joke, which highlights the irony of it all.

But, maybe it’s misunderstood. 

Maybe it’s not meant to be cautionary where if someone laughs without reason they’re pegged as excessive. Rather, it serves as a gateway into how intimately Egyptians intertwine humor with their lives. 

It explains the relationship between Egyptians and humor; so much so that it’s integral in their systems that the moment they actually laugh without reason it does become absurd.