The Times of London has published three collections of letters that appeared in its letters page. “The First Cuckoo” covered the period from 1900 to 1975 and was described as a selection of “witty and amusing” letters. “The Second Cuckoo” (1900-1980) came out in 1981. “The Third Cuckoo” (1900-1985) included, according to Kenneth Gregory who edited all three collections, “more classic” letters.

Arab News can’t claim the same pedigree or authority as a 200-year-old newspaper. But we have our own cuckoos with very distinctive calls and many different multinational colors.

If the number of letters we receive by e-mail, fax and mailbag and the steadily expanding space the readers’ views occupy in the newspaper are any indication, Letters to the Editor constitutes one of the most interesting and well-read portions of Arab News. The section presents a wide range of views — sometimes provocative, at times bitter and critical but always stimulating and interesting.

There are any number of reasons why a reader writes to the editor of his favorite newspaper. Normally a person writes about what gets him worked up or what moves him deeply.

What makes a reader worked up may be what they regard as a misleading, inaccurate or biased letter, report, or editorial. This month we received a letter from Abu F.I. Musa Menk, the mufti of Zimbabwe. He was so incensed by a recent editorial on Zimbabwe (“I totally disagree with every word in your ill-informed editorial that only reflects the biased views of the Western media”) that he wanted to discuss the matter with us when he visits Saudi Arabia this year for Umrah.

Some readers write to express their appreciation of something printed in the newspaper or draw attention to some news item, local or international, missed by the paper.

Then there are complaints about civic facilities (the absence of a post office here or the breakdown of water supply there) and the delay and harassment people face when dealing with government officials. Or it may be STC’s tardy response to a complaint from a subscriber or the sudden disappearance of SAWA cards during holiday seasons.

While these are topics that are more or less common to all newspapers, in the case of Arab News there is another factor which lends its letters package a unique flavor — the multinational composition of its readership and the problems some of our readers face as expatriates. So you will find in Arab News a letter from an expatriate complaining how local boys threw rotten tomatoes at him and another detailing the difficulties passengers from Asian countries face at the airport. In fact, in the 1980s a recurring theme in the letters page was South Asians’ anger about their being called “rafiq” in a derogatory way by some Saudis. Then there was a consistent campaign (ill-advised and misplaced as it turned out) demanding that expats be exempted from GOSI (General Organization of Social Insurance) obligations. Difference of opinions between Indians and Pakistanis often sparked a blazing correspondence in the letters column as has differences among Indians about the way Indian Embassy schools are run.

At first, the column occupied very limited space. There were two articles below the cartoon and a third on the right side of the page. This left very little space for the letters, just one or two on certain days. But whatever the space available, there was no shortage of writers. The most prolific and the most enduring of them has been Francis A. Andrew.

It is said of Disraeli that whenever he wanted to read a novel he used to write one. I have felt the same thing about Francis Andrew: It was as though whenever he wanted to read a “letter to the editor” he used to write one and send it to Arab News. He sent many when he was in Dammam and continues to send from Jordan where he is based now. And over the last 20 years or more he has brought a distinctive voice to the letters column. Even those who found his views extremely conservative and xenophobic are impressed by the elegance of his style and force of his arguments. Then there were Dr. Abdul Gaffar Khan (highly academic), Dr. Anwar Ul Haque (very often polemical), Raul Dandurand, all from Riyadh, and K.J. Haroon Basha. Basha still writes from Dammam and Dr. Haque from Islamabad.

With the expansion in the space (the Opinion Page now carries one article only and the cartoon occupies less space than before) and with the launching of the online edition we receive letters from all over the world. This has given an added dimension to the international coloring of our letters page. Some of the strongly worded letters expressing sympathy for the Indonesian maid Nour Miyati and calling for severest punishment for her tormentors came from abroad.

Home or abroad, we have some regular contributors. The names of Steve Corcoran, Nizam Addien B. Yagoub, S.H. Moulana, G. Gwin, Sanjay Nikam, K.H. Biyabani, P.B.V. Raajan, Muhammad Abdul Hadi, Muhammad H. Zakaria, Kelechi Ogbuehi, S.M.S. Reza, Mary Poppins (yes, that is her name), Joseph Koshi, Zafar Raja, Rashid Alhomaid, Mary Gant, Sumayya Khan (all from Saudi Arabia), Sam Baldwin, Carolyn M. Lacy, Lin Petro, Mike McDermid, Ed Friedemann, Arthur Flynn, Nancy Gee, Mahmood Kayani, Ghulam Muhammad, Otis G. Barlow (from abroad) readily spring to mind. I think the letters page is one of the few places where too many cooks add to the deliciousness of the broth.

One of the earliest pieces of written English music, the 13th-century pop hit of the period “Sumer is icumen in,” depicts the cuckoo as singing in the season:

Sumer is icumen in

Lhude sing cuccu ...

Let our cuckoos sing with their own rhythm in all seasons. Let them suck all the pretty flowers to make their voice clear.

(Senior Editor A.M. Pakkar Koya used to edit Opinion pages and now takes care of the widely-read Op-Ed Page.)