“I am actually really proud that my best friend in the whole world is Jewish,” Palestinian-Canadian Eman Husseini told a captivated audience at a stand-up comedy festival in Amman, only the second of its kind in the Middle East.
“We grew up together. It was very cute, instead of playing cowboys and Indians, it was Israelis and Palestinians. She would come over and kick me out of my house,” he said.
Bringing humor to a part of the world better known for political tension and conservative social and religious mores is the “mission” of Husseini and other young Arab comedians of hyphenated background — be it American, Canadian, European.
PHOTO: AFP
And they don’t shy away from conflict or stereotypes. Instead, they tweak them for laughs.
“What we know as stand-up comedy — standing on a stage and telling jokes — is a new phenomenon in the Arab world,” said Dean Obeidallah, a Palestinian-American-Italian.
“There are no full-time stand-up comedy clubs in the Arab world. They haven’t heard jokes about their own culture like this before — no one’s held a mirror up to them.”
Obeidallah is part a group that, provocatively, co-opted the Bush presidency’s name for so-called rogue states intent on creating trouble, the Axis of Evil. In 2003 — two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks when many Arab-American comedians struggled to dispel suspicion and outright racism — he and Palestinian-American comedian Maysoon Zayid co-founded the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. The aim was to showcase Arab talent, an antidote to post-9/11 fallout that proved a hit and has been held every year since.
In December last year they took the idea to Jordan for what organizers and Amman city officials said was the first event of its kind in the Middle East. A success, it returned this month with the blessing of Mayor Omar Maani, who said “it paves the way for talented youth with aspirations to become stand-up comedians ... to make their dream a reality.”
Amman city officials said they hope to make it an annual event.
“We’re comedy missionaries,” said Obeidallah, who wants to organize workshops to help Arab youths break into the trade.
“In a way it’s like globalization through comedy. We are bringing the world together one laugh at a time,” he said.
Some two dozen comics performed here this year, including Obeidallah’s Axis of Evil cohort Aron Kader.
“I am a Palestinian from the US, but being a Palestinian in the US is politically incorrect,” he joked to the crowd in this desert kingdom where a majority of the six million residents are Palestinian.
“Because when somebody asks you what you are and you say you are Palestinian, they just kind of look at you … ‘Oh, Palestinian?’ No follow up question.”
New Jersey-born Zayid, the first woman stand-up comedian to perform in Jordan and the Palestinian territories, spared no topic in Amman — poking fun at Arab and Muslim society, her family and even her own disability, cerebral palsy.
“What’s up, Amman? My name is Maysoon Zayid and I’m a Palestinian fallaha [peasant], born and raised in Amreeka [the US],” she told cheering fans.
“My father is very conservative... I am the daughter of hajj [Muslim pilgrim] Musa Zayid. My mom looks like [Lebanese singer and sex symbol] Haifa Wehbe and my dad looks like Saddam Hussein,” she told the audience.
“It’s time for me to find a husband ... and where better than Gaza because they’ve got no place to run?” she said.
The 33-year-old, who delivers her routine sitting on a stool, is unfazed by her disability.
“But I see a couple of you looking at me, like ‘what’s going on with her? I think maybe she is drunk,’” the 33-year-old said of the body spasms caused by her condition.
“I do wanna assure you that I am not drunk because that would be haram,” or forbidden under Islam.
“I have something called cerebral palsy, which means I shake all the time, like I am a little bit Shakira, Shakira, and I am also a little bit Yasser Arafat,” she said, triggering peals of laughter as she compared herself to the gyrating Colombian pop singer and the late Palestinian president whose hands used to tremble.
Zayid, who regularly visits the Israeli-occupied West Bank where she runs a charity for disabled and wounded refugee children, has toured extensively in the US, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Her 2006 one-woman show, Little American Whore, was chosen last year by the prestigious Sundance Institute for its Middle Eastern Screenwriters Lab, a workshop to support emerging filmmakers.
She and Obeidallah are kicking off a new tour in the US and the Gulf States in January called Arabs Gone Wild.
“My reception in the Arab world is even better than my reception outside the Arab world,” she said. And her father “is very proud of the fact that I give a strong voice to the Palestinians, who are otherwise unheard.”
A few home-grown comedians also performed in Amman, including Jordanian Nabil Sawalha.
“Stand-up comedy is new in the Arab world,” he said, “but Arabs definitely know how to laugh and joke. They have always laughed at themselves and their problems.”
Jordanian cartoonist Imad Hajjaj agreed.
“Arabs in the region are still not used to the idea of stand-up comedy,” he said. “But comedy has always been part of our culture, although some people do not know sometimes how to get the laughs out.”
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
Counting was under way in Nepal yesterday, after a high-stakes parliamentary election to reshape the country’s leadership following protests last year that toppled the government. Key figures vying for power include former Nepalese prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, rapper-turned-mayor Balendra Shah, who is bidding for the youth vote, and newly elected Nepali Congress party leader Gagan Thapa. In Kathmandu’s tea shops and city squares, people were glued to their phones, checking results as early trends flashed up — suggesting Shah’s centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) was ahead. Nepalese Election Commission spokesman Prakash Nyupane said the counting was ongoing “in a peaceful manner”
RSS