What if Felix was Saudi? Arabs React to the Jump Through the Sound Barrier

posted on: Oct 15, 2012

While more than 5 million people around the world watched with awe Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner’s conduct the world’s first jump from as high as 39 thousand meters from planet earth, many Arabs where busy commenting on the historic event on micro-blogging site Twitter with a mixture of satire and self-pity.

Most popular were tweets from Saudi Arabia, where the trend “What if Felix was Saudi?” was trending in Arabic.

“If Felix was Saudi, he would have a basket full of notes with his phone numbers to sprinkle on planet earth, to compensate for all of the girls he has been missing,” one tweep wrote in reference of Saudi Arabia’s strict rule of separating between the genders and how teenagers in the kingdom revert to the act of “Targeem” (finding a creative way to give a girl your number) to overcome this obstacle.

Another tweet by another commentator was: “if he was Saudi, his mom would have send food with him just in case he feels hungry.”

While a sarcastic female tweep wrote saying “if Felix was Saudi, he would dedicate his jump to the Royal family and the dignified Saudi nation once he landed.”

It wasn’t long before the Lebanese caught on to the sarcasm, tweeting things like that Felix couldn’t have been Lebanese because his space suit was branded Armani and that his shuttle wasn’t a Porche!

Another Lebanese Twitter poked fun at famous talk show host Zaven Kouyoumdjian who is renowned for never-failing to ask almost every guest that ever appeared on his show about how they felt about a certain thing that happened to them.

The user wrote: if Felix was Lebanese “Zaven would ask him: “how did you feel when you jumped, scared right?”

Zaven Kouyoumdjian himself tweeted saying:
“Good luck @FelixBaumgart hope ull break ur record, if not u already scored Lebanon best joke of the day.”

But there were the somber Arabs, who reflected in more seriousness.

“English are praying for him to stay alive. Arab are too busy making jokes about him. :),” wrote a tweep by the name of Abdullah AlOsaimi.

Al Bawaba