Last night, I wandered the neighborhood, made new friends, shook hands, struck up conversations with passing strangers, and followed the wind wherever it led me…

Victor, from Argentina, told me all about his residency at a hospital on a tiny island off the coast of Spain… Abdul and Muhammad invited me to sit and sip tea at their table… we people-watched together, as they broke open and reloaded their cigarettes and told me everything they knew about California…

I asked them to tell me a Moroccan joke, something that made them laugh super hard… something considered really funny in Morocco… Abdul explained how observing normal life situations and finding humor in them is what they mostly laugh about. “Like how the comedians do this. They see real life.” I prodded him for a specific example.

Abdul: “In our fishing town, sardines are very cheap. You can buy a whole pallet of hundreds of sardines for only 6 dirhams! Why are these sardines so very cheap? I say it is because… they HAVE NO PERSONALITY!! ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

He retold the same joke (in Arabic) to the rest of his friends sitting around the table. They, too, all exploded in laughter!! then Abdul repeated the punchline to me in English, making sure I got the joke. “Because… they… have… NO… PERSONALITY!!!” and they all laughed again together while keeping one eye on my response to make sure I was laughing, too.

I did laugh. But for all the wrong reasons. At how awesome and hilarious it was to hear their unguarded happy laughter. At how there must have been something lost in the English translation. At myself, for pretending to understand the punchline to not hurt their feelings. At the infectious laughter feeding itself into swelling laughter…