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Outlook: The sad tale of the laughing cab driver

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Moustafa Chamseddine in his taxi

05/08/2019 GMT

The sad tale of the laughing cab driver

BBC World Service - Outlook, The sad tale of the laughing cab driver

When Moustafa Chamseddine ended up in a Syrian jail, laughter became his only comfort

How Moustafa Chamseddine used humour to help him and his fellow inmates survive inside one of Syria's most notorious prisons.

Moustafa Chamseddine was one of thousands of people who were disappeared during Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s. For many years his family didn’t know where he was. Moustafa had ended up in Syria’s notorious Tadmur jail. But there, even torture couldn’t quell his spirits, and he used humour to help him and his fellow inmates survive their ordeal. Lizzie Porter went to meet Moustafa in Beirut where he now works as a taxi driver.

When Balu Natarajan won the US National Spelling Bee competition in 1985, he became its first Indian-American champion. Now, over 30 years on, he’s training his 12-year-old son, Atman to follow in his footsteps.

Puneet Agarwal is a 26-year-old telecommunications worker from Delhi, but over the last few weeks he’s been mistaken for a Bollywood sex symbol – the actor Sunny Leone. It happened after she inadvertently read out his phone number in her latest film.   

Image: Moustafa Chamseddine 
Credit: Leila Molana-Allen

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