Sharro Karl - And then God created the Middle East and said Let there be breaking news

People often ask me where is the Middle East? Its the area between Egypt, Iran, Yemen, Turkey and the British Museum.

A telling Western phrase about the Middle East is borders were drawn without regard to ethnicity, as if thats a bad thing. I mean, if they had divided states by ethnicity, my grandmothers old neighbourhood in Baghdad would have been four different countries.

You may wonder why the Middle East gets so much airtime. Well, regions of the world were competing to host the apocalypse and the Middle East won.

When God put Europe near the Middle East, it was an Occident waiting to happen.

I dont know how the tradition of each new US president rearranging the Middle East like theyre redecorating came about, but its high time they found another hobby.

War is an expensive way to learn geography.

Arabic is technically the fifth most-spoken language in the world, but if you discount the words inshallah and habibi it drops to number seventy-three.

As one of my own extra-curricular activities, Im making the Arab version of Homeland. The US scenes will be filmed in Iceland and we will get Australians to play the American roles.

The two main exports from the Middle East are oil and news.

And now you know why they call it the Purge-ian Gulf.

Its based on a religion from Palestine, an alphabet from Iraq and Lebanon, and an urban model from Syria, but lets call it Western civilisation.

For an Arab to be fluent in English: write a PhD.
For a Westerner to be fluent in Arabic: order lunch.

You cant take a laptop on a flight to the US, but the US is free to fly jets full of bombs into the Middle East. Thats balance for you.

It seems the US exported so much democracy to the Middle East, it ran out of it.

When the Ottomans attacked Vienna, it gave Europe croissants. When the US invaded Iraq, it gave the Middle East ISIS.

They should give hurricanes names like Mohammed or Fatima. It would make it much harder for them to enter the US.

While Khalil Gibran is famous in the West for his writing, in Lebanon he is famous for getting an American visa on his first attempt.

When I travel abroad, I toss my clothes casually into a suitcase, because I know that, as an Arab, I will be searched at the airport and security will fold my shirts and trousers neatly for me.

I hate it when people stereotype you because youre an Arab. Yesterday someone asked me to introduce algebra to European languages.

As a Middle Eastern person, when you visit a museum in Europe, it feels like when you visit friends and see a book you lent them years ago proudly displayed in their bookcase.

And then God created the Middle East and said, Let there be breaking news and analysis.

The main worry I have about driverless cars is how Western journalists would get their stories in the Arab world with no taxi drivers to talk to.

I like to think that theres an alternative internet where Arab taxi drivers write about their amusing encounters with foreign reporters and their simple worldview.

What is it about the Middle East that makes journalists want to describe a persons eye colour as a specific shade of coffee in a political article?

Reporter: Im here in a war zone, bombs are falling around me, theres an earthquake ...

Presenter: We apologise for the poor sound quality.

We Arabs are like, You cant report on Arab countries without learning Arabic.

Learns Arabic.

Why do you know Arabic? You must be a spy.

In excellent news from Lebanon, railway employees have had a pay rise. Despite the fact that there are no railways.

Lebanese headlines make even the truth sound like a lie.

So to recap, Syrias war is a civil war wrapped in a proxy war, entangled with a holy war and enmeshed with yet another holy war.

My favourite thing is when pundits say: This aspect of the Middle East is complex, thorny and very difficult to understand. Heres my 500-word article explaining it all.

Im deeply grateful to Westerners who, despite being in the midst of a historic crisis of their own, still take the time to lecture us.

I would stay out of internal Saudi politics, but since they took it upon themselves to hire and fire Lebanons prime minister, I have started treating their business as internal affairs.

If you remove the US, UK, France, Russia, Iran, Saudi, Syria, Israel, Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait and Egypt, Lebanese politics is very simple.

I dont know what gives Western opinionators the impression that the Middle East is a puzzle they have to solve.

An Arab dictator is like a matryoshka doll in reverse. Every time you remove one, you get a bigger one.

I love how they call them World War I and II. Its the Europeans idea of being inclusive and allowing us to share the credit for their wars.