jayvdb added a comment.
http://ar.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?format=jsonfm&action=query&generat... responds with
... "2430512": { "pageid": 2430512, "ns": 0, "title": "(Habibi (I Need Your Love", "contentmodel": "wikitext", "pagelanguage": "ar", "touched": "2015-01-01T05:40:53Z", "lastrevid": 14634802, "length": 129, "redirect": "", "revisions": [ { "revid": 14634802, "parentid": 14634801, "minor": "", "user": "\u0646\u0627\u064a", "timestamp": "2015-01-01T05:34:58Z", "comment": "\u0625\u0636\u0627\u0641\u0629 [[\u062a\u0635\u0646\u064a\u0641:\u062a\u062d\u0648\u064a\u0644\u0627\u062a \u0639\u0646\u0627\u0648\u064a\u0646 \u0645\u0642\u0627\u0644\u0627\u062a \u063a\u064a\u0631 \u0639\u0631\u0628\u064a\u0629]] \u0628\u0627\u0633\u062a\u062e\u062f\u0627\u0645 [[\u0648\u064a\u0643\u064a\u0628\u064a\u062f\u064a\u0627:\u0627\u0644\u0645\u0635\u0646\u0627\u0641 \u0627\u0644\u0641\u0648\u0631\u064a|\u0627\u0644\u0645\u0635\u0646\u0627\u0641 \u0627\u0644\u0641\u0648\u0631\u064a]]" } ] }, ...
so the API thinks it is length: 129
my guess is the API response is conting bytes, and len(unicode) is counting characters
TASK DETAIL https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T85663
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To: jayvdb Cc: Aklapper, jayvdb, pywikipedia-bugs