Mohammed El-Kurd: uncertainty

Transcript context

…A few questions here, but one of them is about humor. In Rifqa, you wrote, “My mother has always said the most tragic of disasters is those that cause laughter.” What do you think she meant by that? I don’t know. That’s my mom’s saying, but I don’t know, it’s probably a proverb that I first heard from my mom, but it’s [foreign language 01:57:40], the most evil of an atrocity is what makes you laugh. It’s open for interpretation. One school of thought would say, “You should be wary of the things that make you laugh,” but another school of thought would say, “This is a commentary on our natural reactions to tragedies.” In 2012, 2011, something like this, we had a protest, and after the protest, all of the women of the neighborhood were sitting down under the fig tree of our neighborhood, which they always do. And a bunch of soldiers, maybe 40 soldiers, started marching down the street and everybody dispersed and hid in their homes. But my aunt, who has now passed away, my aunt refused to go home. She wanted to gather her teacups because she really cared about her teacups. I was begging her to go inside and she refused. She was gathering her teacups. A soldier grabbed me and squeezed me between his baton and an electricity pole. It was very excruciatingly painful and traumatizing for me as a child, but it’s also a funny memory, in a way. Despite the pain, despite the trauma that came with it, there’s still something funny about it. The absurdity of it.…

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