taliban

Humor.

What is it and from which textures is it made?

It seems to be for every person different what he or she can laugh about. And sometimes this also determines who you like to spend your time with, as you might choose a person who understands what you laugh about and what is funny and what not. But there seems to be aswell a cultural code in humor.

In every country I've been so far, there exist jokes about different ethnic or language groups. They mostly operate with stereotypes, imitation of how one speaks or acts and the concentration on regional differences.

One thing I'm finding quite special in Pakistan are the political jokes that are being made (well, there are a lot of political (un)correct jokes in Germany or Europe aswell, still it is different to hear about them in a different country...). First of all there are jokes about the government or government staff. A friend told me that there were a lot of jokes forwarded about Zadari for example (the prime minister and head of state). I have to admitt that the Pakistanis find a quite strong happinness in forwarding messages on mobile phones (about mostly anything, from mass generated messages to quiz-questions). This seems to have gone so far that the government made a law that it is illegal to make jokes about the prime minister or his staff. Who is being caught doing so has to calculate detention for this. So the people stopped saying Zadari's name when joking about him, but using synonyms (animal names like dog for example...).

The second type of jokes, which came quite shocking to me and a friend of mine, when we were in the north, are the taliban jokes. They are not a regular fixed type of jokes that you could collect as a serious of „did you already hear joke XYZ“. They are rather an attitude how to deal with the turmoil that is shaking the country.

One example might illustrate quite well what I'm talking about.

We had made the acquaintance with a woman on the street. She was openly talking to us, showed us the two cows that she possessed and introduced us to her two children that were around her. We met several times while we were around in that village. One time, while she was taking the cows in the little shed that she had build, her little son, barely two years old, started fighting with a little stick with my friend. As she saw this, she burst out laughing and said in affection to her son: “Oh my little taliban!“