There is an old Arabic joke about corruption. A thieving government minister is fired by the head of state and replaced, but the people who have long suffered under the minister don’t rejoice. When they’re asked why they’re not celebrating, one explains to the confused president: “Yes he was a thief, but he stole until he’d taken his fill. The new guy will be hungry.”
Growing up under authoritarian regimes in the Arab world was great for the jokes. It was always dark humour, but that made it easier to accept the inevitabilities of living under a dictatorship than trying to fight them. There were so many violations of rights on a daily basis that survival required adaptation. It was exhausting, and futile, to be permanently scandalised. And so we spared our energy and joked instead.
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