  We investigate the soft handbag contribution to two-photon annihilation into
pion or kaon pairs at large energy and momentum transfer. The amplitude is
expressed as a hard gamma gamma -> q qbar subprocess times a form factor
describing the soft transition from q qbar to the meson pair. We find the
calculated angular dependence of the cross section in good agreement with data,
and extract annihilation form factors of plausible size. A key prediction of
the handbag mechanism is that the differential cross section is the same for
charged and neutral pion pairs, in striking contrast with what is found in the
hard scattering approach.
