Both Tal and Masuh were arrested for this joke. Masuh later understood that Tal's joke was mocking Ali Rikabi, the Military Governor of Arab Kingdom of Syria, which was established in the Levant following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire toward the end of World War I. In another episode of Tal's rebellious and stubborn temperament, he and the students at Anbur demanded the school principal provide them with military training to fight the French authorities in Syria. The principal told them that those who wanted the military should go volunteer and those who wanted science should stay in the school. Tal told him that he wanted to make the school a military training camp to which his principal replied: "You want it a military training camp with a cigarette in your mouth?" Tal then threw the cigarette so forcefully that it burnt the tip of the principal's pants.