Remember to be Funny

And other things I forget

I ask sometimes for pictures of the camp where Mahmoud lives, just to accompany any update.

I’d love more shots of people, but he is very aware that perhaps they don’t want to be photographed, and is reluctant to ask for permission. What is it for? they might ask. How could he answer that?

Last night our conversation started out as funny, as for some reason the translation program wrote “I met a woman by the tents”. I got very excited for him, asking if this was some kind of possible romance, and he said “No, no, no, nothing like that!” Sometimes there is a “sound alike” word in Arabic that is mistranslated – I think the word for woman and tent might be similar? But no, he met no woman.

It did remind me how tough this issue is for him. Before the war, his father and mother would have probably found an appropriate match, asked Mahmoud if he approved, then met with that family. If her parents agreed, there would be a supervised encounter and if the couple wanted to move ahead, some arranged and chaperoned dates, and a wedding planned. This would be an important and expensive affair, involving many gifts to the new couple to set them up in an apartment or even a house. And now Mahmoud has no father, no house, no property, no money, and like so many young Gazans, sees little chance of getting married, or even meeting someone. This is not a society where you strike up a conversation with a girl you like the look of while shopping for vegetables. And Mahmoud is shy, to boot. He doesn’t talk about it much, but the whole subject feeds his sense of utter despair at the life in a room in which every exit seems to be bricked up..

That cleared up, I suddenly realized with a start that I couldn’t remember sending him May rent. Which is strange, because I never forget rent, and reassure him at the end of every month that it’s on the way. He unfortunately confirmed I had completely forgotten, telling me he sensed I was having financial difficulties and he asked the landlord if he could wait a bit. Well, he’s not wrong that I have hit a dry patch, but still have plenty of credit, so I used it immediately and told him not to be afraid of reminding me, as an eviction would be a disaster.

I wake up every morning to an update for Mosab Abu Toha, and every day I look at the names, praying I don’t see any of the Shaats, as he often reports what happened when I slept. Mahmoud’s anxiety about being shot or incinerated is obviously tenfold what mine is for him. When you have this to worry about, you sure don’t need to worry about getting evicted. Mahmoud was quite relieved I remembered and ran to pay the rent.

Since I never forget, I wondered how “accidental” it was, subconsciously. I am so ready to move to the next stage with this solar panel. I didn’t want to sell off the last of my stocks (a very modest sum, less than $1000) but I am going to have to. I use Fidelity, which I haven’t been crazy about. If anyone loves their brokerage house, let me know, because eventually I will have money to reinvest, the whole settlement due at the end of the summer. I haven’t found Fidelity user-friendly, but I’ve always been stock-stupid and impatient with taking the time to learn.

I have been buoyed by two of you “turning on” your pledges. Thank you. This led to a lively E-mail exchange with one of the pledge-turn-oners, a former Italian grad student (and now awesome translator) at NYU (1983-1987), who spoke of his fond memories of how funny I’d been there. One wouldn’t think being French graduate secretary would be a perch from which one honed one’s comedy skills, but I was the go-to person for birthday limericks and witty sendoff speeches, and most memorably, three years of Office Oscars, in which I created a list of awards in which I altered the name of a film, followed by a synopsis that weaved something that had happened in the office in the previous year with the plot of the actual film. (Example: “The Collar Purple” – because my Department Chair actually had this purple shirt he wore regularly, and one day it matched the black eye he sported from a racquetball mishap.) I have this skill of the gentle tease that hurts no feelings but has just the tiniest bite to it – like noting someone’s chronic lateness, or anger at unmade coffee, or dread at the villainous registrar tormenting faculty with questions about the fulfillment of majors. I replicated these faux Oscars at a bar I worked at, and at an ad agency – those were equally memorable. But after that, never again did I work in quite the right environment – which requires at least 20 coworkers who knew each other well. (I tried it one year on FB, but everyone has to know each other for the inside jokes to work. Who has 20 friends who all know each other and follow each other’s updates closely? It fell flat.)

All this to say, the dear friend’s modest suggestion was that I show off my laughter-making skills more, and although some of my memes aren’t half-bad, he was thinking of the Sedarisian-style short stories from “Ink from the Pen.” I listened. It’s excellent advice.

It’s very hard to be so tuned in to Mahmoud’s daily distress and then our own political nightmare to get in the right headspace to write funny, but I’ll try to do so more often. God knows there are enough political pundits out there who ably cover that base - Substack will survive with fewer rants from me about the Orange Gorgon. Bringing a smile to your faces might be the biggest act of service I can undertake.

MCO 2026