What’s it like to be the spitting image of the most photographed face in the world? When I caught up with Ilham Anas — AKA the US president — he can’t talk for long; he is on the back of a scooter in his home city of Bandung on Java, racing between “jobs” as Obama.
Since US President Barack Obama’s improbable rise to highest office in the US, 36-year-old Anas’s life has taken a similarly unlikely turn. The prominent ears that made him self-conscious as a child, he says, have become his fortune; a photographer by trade, Anas has found a new career as the leading presidential doppelganger.
Now he travels the world, lending his likeness to various charities and causes; he recently spoke at a Greenpeace rally in Thailand urging global leaders (including his own double) to do more to address climate change.
Anas has appeared in several TV ads, including a bizarre commercial for a Philippine heartburn medication, in which he is overfed by a woman impersonating former Phlippine president Gloria Arroyo.
Anas says he is a huge fan of Obama, and is careful with the work he chooses, refusing jobs he feels might be controversial or reflect badly on his famous twin. So uncanny is the likeness that he regularly gets stopped in airports by Obama admirers. He has taken to wearing a hat and sunglasses on the street to avoid the inevitable questions.
Obama’s rise has changed Anas’s life, and his view of himself, as he recounts in his autobiography, Because of Obama.
“I see my resemblance to Obama as a blessing,” he says. “I used to look at the mirror and I had a negative perception of myself.”
Anas has a similar heritage to his hero, being of Kenyan and US descent. He also shares the president’s love of a quiet cigarette, but there are differences too.
“One thing I could not mimic is his voice. Obama has a baritone voice; mine is like a child’s,” Anas said.
He is also a devout Muslim; he can be seen praying in a video on the Time magazine Web site. His faith, he says, guides his family and professional life.
Indonesians delighted in Obama’s election in 2008; he was seen as one of their own. Obama spent four years in Jakarta as a boy in the late 1960s, and his stepfather was Javanese, but two cancelled trips last year saw the ardor cool a little. A statue of a young Obama was removed from a central Jakartan park in February after a Facebook campaign by Indonesians who argued he had not done enough to deserve the tribute. The statue now stands in the yard of his childhood school.
Anas noticed that the demand for his presidential services waned in his homeland, despite the continuing flood of international requests, but was largely restored by the presidential visit last month, despite it being cut short because of fears that volcanic ash spewing from Mount Merapi could cause Air Force One to be grounded.
“Obama used Bahasa Indonesia [the national language] in his speech, and he got enthusiastic applause,” Anas said. “He talked about his experience in his village in Jakarta as a four-year-old and his deep feelings for our country. He showed us how humble he is, that he is warm and sincere.”
Anas, however, missed Obama’s trip to Indonesia. He was in the US ... playing Obama.
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