The victims of the crippled cruise ship the Carnival Triumph have received an outpouring of sympathy and support from the Syrianpeople in recent days, after news came to Damascus that more than three-thousand people were trapped for days on end in the floating food palace with barely three swimming pools. Syrians were universally horrified that the vacations of over 750 overweight American families were ruined by an engine room fire that caused the ship to lose propulsion in the Gulf of Mexico last Sunday.
"It's literally the shittiest situation in the world." said recent quadruple amputee Ali Mahbub. "I mean, yeah, the food is all-you-can-eat, but a lot of it is pretty average. And don't even get me started on those dickhead security guards. These people might as well be living under an oppressive dictatorship."
"Can you imagine being stuck on a ship for four whole days with your shitty kids?" shuddered Aleppo resident Fatima Dabir. "I can't personally imagine it, mainly because my kids have been missing ever since Assad shelled our house three months ago, but it must be truly horrible for those poor people."
In a moving speech in the capital yesterday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem put the calamity into historical perspective. "Surely this is the worst thing ever to happen to any group of people anywhere at any point in time. The passengers of the Triumph have been trapped against their will on a filthy, overcrowded ship for days on end and are now being disembarked in the American South. It's safe to say that nobody in history has ever experienced anything comparable."
"Despite popular sentiment, however, some Syrians are not convinced that the tribulations of the passengers of the Carnival Triumph were really so severe. "These people need to quit whining. Do they even realize how much worse it could have been?" fumed Iqbal Farhan. "They got stranded in the Gulf and could easily have been in unloaded in some icky third-world country like Mexico. They really need to count their blessings."
