Ever since people first put reed to papyrus (and probably for millennia before) the sharper-witted amongst us have made a living out of lampooning the puffed-up and presumptuous. From court jesters to stand-up comedians, the speaking of truth through humour has a long history.
Our region has its own storied tradition, from classical poets like Al-Jahiz and Al-Jarir and the assorted authors of the Arabian Nights to contemporary comedians like Duraid Lahham and Adel Emam, the Arabs have been poking fingers in powerful eyes for ages. No wonder then that in a region as awash in self-ascribed superlatives as the Arabian Gulf, the Pan-Arabia Enquirer has developed a fanatic following.
The razor-tongued descendant of the now-defunct Dubai Enquirer is clearly labelled as satire (and being Gulf-oriented, that satire is 7-star, of course), as a quick troll of the Comments section reveals, the shock and outrage it elicits can leave you wondering if some readers have a grasp of reality. Funnier still is that on occasion, its stories have been picked up as actual news.
“When you’re working for a newspaper that prints a press release verbatim, I suppose you’re not going to bother checking sources behind a story claiming that a Lebanese man spent 200,000 USD to get the region’s first iPhone 5,” one of team involved the Enquirer tells us by email. “We may well have been behind a few scolded sub-editors over the years.”
The Enquirer’s writers operate, for obvious reasons, anonymously and while it sometimes seems that no subject is taboo – Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal appears to be a particularly popular target – both religion and politics are treated with great care. After all, when a post about Al Qaeda using Expat Woman’s online forums to organise can lead to a strongly-worded written rebuke for its publishers, the Enquirer team are aware that poking fun at some culturally-sensitive issues could lead to meltdown.
Unlike the check-out rack tabloids it resembles, the Enquirer eschews fables of celebrity lovechildren or alien abductions in favour of a deft mix of the absurd (“King Abdullah of Jordan wades into Miley Cyrus/Sinead O’Connor online war of words”) and the ego-bursting (“Abu Dhabi voted number one in list of capital cities ranked alphabetically’) alongside more believable, or at least less improbable stories (“Qatari art gallery gift shop sells out of Damien Hirst’s 100 million USD diamond skulls”). Combined with the region’s reputation for hyperbole and attempting the unlikely, it’s easy to see why, for example, that story about Emirates’ on-board shisha lounge was printed in Britain’s Daily Mail as fact. “Seeing presenters on Al Arabiya and a Lebanese network read out our stories as fact,” the source continues, “are among our proudest moments.”
WHAT: The Pan-Arabia Enquirer
WHAT Pan-Arabia Enquirer
WHO Anonymous
WHERE www.panarabiaenquirer.com
WHY Because nothing is funnier than making fun out of the absurd and the over-the-top. The Enquirer, however, hits home because even at its tongue-in-cheekiest, the stories it runs echo a certain degree of believability.
