By Sammy Ketz
Agence France Presse, 11 July 2006
A mother goes to Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, made notorious by graphic pictures of prisoner abuse at the hands of US jailers, and picks up her son who at long last has been released.
"Did you recognize me Mom?" asks her son when she finally sees him. "I was the third buttock on the right."
US forces capture a suicide bomber and present him to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who asks him: "So, how many times have you blown yourself up?"
Faced with a rising violence and a declining standard of living over the past few years, Iraqis are increasingly turning to gallows humour to cope with their daily hardships.
Populations in high stress situations or oppressive environments have longed evolved dark-edged jokes lampooning their tormentors and trials.
Unlike in the past, however, dangerous streets and a dusk-to-dawn curfew keeps face-to-face socializing to a minimum and jokes are traveling by text messages and emails, rather than by word of mouth.
Al-Qaeda's leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed in a US raid on June 7 and accused of masterminding some of the country's bloodiest bombings and attacks, is the favourite subject of the jokes.
When the Jordanian-born militant arrived in hell, Satan was awakened by a huge explosion.
Zarqawi was taken to Satan who asked him to explain why he did this.
"I can't get over of my bad habits," Zarqawi said.
Zarqawi's passionate hatred for US troops has made it to messages exchanged between lovers.
"I love you as much as Zarqawi loves US army humvees," read the message sent by one man to his sweetheart.
Even the ongoing violence that has claimed the lives of thousands of people, manages to elicit a forced-laugh.
During the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August 2003 that killed 22, an Iraqi tries to help a Chinese man lying at the scene in his own blood with an oxygen mask over his face.
The victim makes indiscernable sounds, so the Iraqi hands him a piece of paper and a pen thinking the man wants to make his final wishes before he dies.
The man scribbles in Chinese something before he dies and the Iraqi takes the piece of paper to the embassy where he is told that the man had written "Take your foot off the oxygen tube, I am suffocating."
Ousted president Saddam Hussein, who was the object of many secret jokes during his iron-fisted rule, is now openly ridiculed.
One joke goes that a US soldier gets into a fight with an Iraqi and wants to curse him as a "son of a ....." but does not know how to say it in Arabic.
So he instead tells him: "You like Saddam: one mother, many father," referring to the multiple marriages of the former dictator's mother.
The futile search for one of Saddam's former top lieutenants Izzat al-Duri, who was declared last week as the country's most wanted fugitive, is also making Iraqis laugh.
Duri is believed to have cancer and his death had been announced several times by the government only to be retracted later.
In one joke, National Security Adviser Muwaffaq al-Rubaie asks one of his agents for news on the hunt for Duri.
"We can't get him, he slips from our hands like ice," the agent answers alluding to Duri's first profession as an ice seller before climbing up the ranks of Saddam's Baath party.
Jokes also seem to be one way for Iraqis to deal with the rising influence of militant Islamists.
An Iraqi goes to a turbaned cleric and asks him for advice on how to protect himself from "jinn," the word for evil spirits in Arabic
"Drink it and tell me how you feel later," the cleric tells him, apparently thinking he was referring to "gin" the alcoholic beverage.
An Islamist militiaman storms into the home of an Iraqi and goes through his CD collection to see if he has any pornography.
He takes out a DVD of a football game and plays it on the machine and it turns out to be a porn film.
"You think you can trick me by labeling it 'Iraq 4, Brazil 1' -- well that's impossible!" said the militiaman.
The rising sectarian violence and the increasing polarization of Sunnis and Shiites gets some laughs as well.
A mixed couple fight over which television program to watch.
She, a Sunni, wants to watch Rotana Cinema, a popular Saudi-owned satellite channel, that broadcasts Egyptian movies.
The station's moto is "You can't close your eyes with us."
He insists on watching a religious Shiite-owned channel.
"With your channel you can't put down your arms," she says mockingly referring to the Shiite chest-beating ritual during religious ceremonies.
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Citation: Sammy Ketz. "In strife-torn Iraq, the humour has a dark edge," Agence France Presse, 11 July 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060711/lf_afp/iraqsocietyjokes_060711145226
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