Juha

Abstract

The Arabic Literature class of Spring 2014 will present a small skit depicting a famous caricature that is very well known in Arabic Literature. The “Juha” is a small-minded jokester that is often the center of many jokes and short stories that examine the gap between idiocy and wisdom. In one of the stories to be presented, the Juha goes hunting with his friend. They come across a tiger’s den and Juha’s friend decides to peek his head inside. The Tiger bites off his head, but the Juha can’t see this because he is outside the cave. After some time, he pulls out his friend from the cave and see that he has been beheaded. He can’t tell if something is wrong though, so he takes his friend’s body back to his wife and asks her: “When your husband left this morning, was he wearing his head?”

In another story, the Juha goes into town one day riding a donkey. He passes by the townfolks and one of them decides to joke with him. He says to him, “Oh Juha, we remember your donkey, but we don’t remember you.” The Juha replies, “This is normal, the donkeys usually know one another.”