I'm Not a Terrorist, But I've Played One on TV (14 page)

While my wife left the Big Apple to go to Italy on business I was heading to the Middle East with the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. It was the first time that a group of American comedians would be performing for the people of the region. I would be reinventing myself from a failed sitcom actor to a purveyor of world peace. Years before, I had left the Middle East to come to New York, and now I was leaving New York to head to the Middle East. To borrow another Jesus analogy, it felt a little like the messiah was coming home. Although in this reference, the messiah couldn't walk on water or turn water into wine. He was arriving in business class hoping his jokes would go over without getting heckled. Jesus died for their sins. I was dying for their approval.

Part Three

The Persian Elvis (a.k.a. Pelvis)

Dubai, UAE

T
oward the end of 2007 I traveled to Dubai with the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. Our special had come out on Comedy Central earlier that year, and it was the first time there was a show on American TV with a Middle Eastern cast in which we didn't all get killed. (The comics included me, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader, who were the founding members, as well as Dean Obeidallah, who was brought on as the fourth performer on the special.) This was progress for all Middle Eastern performers in Hollywood because everyone knows that the first step in having a successful career is to not die. Things were looking up, and our live shows were packed with new Middle Eastern fans coming out in droves. As my comedy friend Sam Tripoli said, I was becoming the Persian Elvis, a.k.a. Pelvis.

The special also made a big splash in the Middle Eastern and
Muslim communities around the world. After our clips were seen on YouTube, we gained some fame and were invited to Dubai to kick off a five-country tour of the region. This was a big deal because no American-based comedy troupe had ever gone to the Middle East to perform for Middle Eastern people. As a matter of fact, normally whenever Middle Easterners hear the words “American” and “troop” in the same sentence, it usually means their country is about to be attacked. So it was important for us to emphasize the word “comedy” when publicizing our Dubai arrival. It was also important for us to spell troupe with a “u.” What a difference a vowel makes.

When past American comedians have visited foreign countries, it was usually to perform on a military base for U.S. troops. USO tours, featuring some of the biggest names in entertainment, have long flown to parts of the world where the United States is at war. It has always been an honor for a performer to entertain soldiers fighting for our freedoms. But actually going to entertain the people we're historically fighting
against
was less common. What if Bob Hope had done a show for the Vietcong? What if Jessica Simpson had sung for Saddam Hussein's army? Judging by how Tony Romo's career as the Dallas Cowboys quarterback seemed to go south after he dated Simpson, maybe her performing for Saddam would have led to his downfall, too. Who needed Operation Shock and Awe when we could've given them Operation Look Pretty and Lip-Synch? (I know it was Jessica's sister, Ashlee, who famously got caught lip-synching on
Saturday Night Live,
but I'm sure Jessica probably lip-synched at some point in her career. If you don't like what I'm saying about Ms. Simpson, then you can go ahead and Twitslap me.)

We were instantly impressed by Dubai's grandeur. Nothing in
Dubai is small. They have the world's tallest building, one of the world's biggest malls, the greatest fountain—everything is big, big, big. They're so obsessed with setting records that I wouldn't have been surprised if one of the locals had once told me, “Maz, this is the roundest building in the world. Yes, a circle is normally 360 degrees. This building . . . 362 degrees. I swear! We bring engineers from Harvard. I don't know how they do it, but they add two degrees to the circle. It is so round it's almost square!”

And so our first experience in Dubai was also big. I and the other two Axis of Evil comedians, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader, really had no idea what we were in for. Once we got into town we were told by our promoters that there would be a press conference to kick off our tour. Press conference? Who the hell was coming to a press conference for us? What were we, the Blue Collar Comedy Tour? Then we realized—this was Dubai. In Dubai, everything was big, so we were the biggest comedy tour
ever
in the Middle East. We were like the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, but with tans. The Brown Collar Comedy Tour.

I was shocked to discover about fifty journalists and media types all seated and waiting attentively to watch us do a short show followed by a question and answer session. We were just comics trying to be funny. When did we become big-time? Apparently on the flight over the Atlantic. Whatever had changed, we were ready to embrace it. It was interesting performing in the Middle East for the first time because whereas in the United States we were seen as Middle Easterners, the people in the Middle East saw us as Hollywood stars—and ones with a special connection to their people. The reporters at the press conference asked us questions about the difficulties of being Middle Eastern and living in the United States.

“Do you often get profiled at airports when you travel?”

“How do you feel about playing terrorist parts in American movies?”

“Do you think that your Axis of Evil Comedy Tour will help bring peace and understanding to the world?”

“Do they have good baba ghanoush in Los Angeles?”

It began to feel like we were, collectively, the Great Arab Hope (or in my case the Great Persian Hope). Dubai is filled with influential people, and many of them wanted to have meetings with us. “How can we make a movie together?” “How much money will it take to start a studio?” “Can you introduce me to Angelina Jolie?” It was a bit overwhelming.

Meanwhile, our shows in Dubai were selling out faster than any of our shows had in the United States. Everywhere we went, people recognized us. I began to feel like the Eddie Murphy of Dubai. I quickly learned that I
was
the Eddie Murphy of Dubai—only because there was zero chance that Eddie Murphy was ever traveling to Dubai. For better or for worse, we were overnight superstars.

Where Have All the Locals Gone?

One thing you notice in Dubai is that you see local citizens from time to time, but you see many more immigrants. Mainly Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, and Filipinos. Also, there seems to be a huge disparity in wealth in Dubai. While driving back late from a club after a show, I would look out the window of the luxury car I was being driven in and see a blue bus filled with Pakistani men all barely awake, all in blue outfits, being shuttled home after a hard day of labor in the hot sun. I was told by some locals that these guys leave their home countries with the promise of making
money so that they can send it back to their families. Many of them work all day and then go home to sleep in apartments that serve as housing for several men in cramped quarters. They go years without seeing the family they're sending money to and they basically lead miserable lives.

It was something I tried to make sense of as I was living this superstar lifestyle, all of us traveling on the same highway in the middle of the night but going to such different places. It's sad that there isn't more equal distribution of wealth in the world, but that's a bigger problem that someone much smarter than me can explain in a different book than this one.

I tried to do my part by tipping well. It was the least I could do. I always had change on hand so I could tip the bellman, the driver, the housekeeping guy. And they were always very appreciative. I once tipped an Indian guy ten bucks for cleaning my room, and I think I might have paid his mortgage for the month. The rest of my stay, every time I would come out of my room this guy would pop out from behind a different plant and offer to clean my room again.

“Sir, can I clean your room again?”

“Sanjeev, it's already clean.”

“Sir, I would like to make it even more clean.”

“I'm telling you, Sanjeev, it's very clean.”

“Sir, I can make it very, very clean. Please give me this opportunity. Just one opportunity.”

I would give in and have to tip him a few more bucks. Spreading the wealth was getting expensive. I was lucky Sanjeev wasn't a meth head. I wouldn't have been able to keep up with his cleaning habit. But I was always amazed at how he was able to actually make it cleaner.

The thing that struck me about Dubai's diversity was that even though it was this place that claimed to have the biggest and the best, it felt like a lot of that was being generated by outsiders. The mystique of the place was imported. One night we were told that we would be taken on an authentic Dubai desert safari at midnight. I was excited as I imagined driving out to the desert to be greeted by Bedouins who had been living out there for hundreds of years. This was going to be the real deal. Maybe I could talk to one of these guys and get a feel for what it's like to live in the desert and hide in the sand to avoid danger. I had stopped taking roles as a terrorist, but maybe a role would come up for a desert Bedouin. I had to be ready. Soon we were en route to the vast and magical desert. I wanted to savor the entire experience so I asked our driver what part of the desert he was from. He told me Turkey.

“You mean there's a region in the desert called Turkey?”

“No, I am from the country of Turkey.”

“I see. So you're not a local desert dweller whose family has been living here for generations?”

He looked at me through the rearview mirror and turned up the Michael Jackson playing on his radio.

So what—he wasn't the real deal. I would just wait to find the real deal once we got out into the desert. That was the plan anyway. I soon came to realize that the “authentic” Dubai desert safari was catered by Filipinos who served us Italian food while we watched a Russian belly dancer wiggle her hips in a purple outfit straight out of
I Dream of Jeannie
. Russians are good at drinking vodka, training five-year-olds to compete in the Olympics, and killing you with their bare hands. Belly dancing is not their forte. Don't get me wrong—our Russian Jeannie was good, but she didn't have the extra hip moves that Middle Eastern belly dancers display.
I think you get it from growing up eating a lot of hummus and pita bread. This Jeannie had been raised on piroshki; you could see it in her moves. At least we got a chance to ride some camels, which, of course, were trained by Indians. Where the hell were all the locals? Maybe they would come out when the weather got cool. Just waiting for all us foreigners to melt before they showed their faces.

You Give Birth, I'll Videotape

Dubai is a city that has done a great job of branding itself as being very Westerner friendly. So much so that some Americans don't even consider it part of the Middle East. I was doing a radio interview for one of my stand-up shows in Dallas one time and the morning deejays were asking me about my shows in the Middle East. One of the guys said, “I'd be afraid to go to the Middle East. I'd go to Dubai, but the Middle East, I'm not sure about.” In all fairness to the guy, maybe he thought it was a sane place in the middle of a crazy place. Kind of like Austin is in Texas.

A lot of Americans are okay with going to Dubai. It's kind of like Cabo to them. What's funny is I've been in the Dubai airport, which is a very international airport, and I've looked around and seen people in all different types of outfits, including the traditional Muslim garb. If someone from America who only knew the Middle East through the perspective of Fox News were dropped into this scene, they would freak out because they'd think they were surrounded by a bunch of al-Qaeda terrorists. When in reality it's just businesspeople, day laborers, and accountants who happen to wear those clothes and once in a while blow things up, assuming they are in the demolitions racket.

After our first trip to Dubai, we were suddenly getting requests
to come back every few weeks. The real estate bubble had not burst yet, so there was still a lot of money being thrown around. We would get calls one week before an event with ridiculous offers.

“We want to pay Maz fifty thousand to perform at our event next Tuesday.”

My manager at the time was losing his mind. He didn't know how to handle it. We were doing okay in the United States as actors and comedians, but in the Middle East we were superstars. I'm telling you, we were the Brown Collar Comedy Tour. He would get me a ridiculous offer and I would have to remind him that I had a local gig at a university that same night, which obviously paid much less.

“Can we cancel it?” he would ask.

“No, we can't cancel it. The kids have been promoting me for months. I can't flake on them this late.”

“Maz, it's fifty grand!”

“I hate those damn kids! But I can't do it. I can't.”

“Fifty grand, Maz!”

“Maybe the kids will buy a lot of DVDs.”

One event I was able to make was the launch of a new real estate development company in the summer of 2008. For anyone who has forgotten or was not yet born in 2008, the real estate bubble did, in fact, burst worldwide right around that time. So launching a real estate company that year was like buying your wife a diamond necklace the night before you catch her in bed with your best friend. These guys went all out and hired me as well as two world-renowned pianists who were flown in from Japan. No expense was spared. I flew out to do the gig with crutches because I had broken my ankle playing soccer the week before. At the time my wife was pregnant with our first child. I remember telling
the organizers that if she went into labor, I might have to cancel the show. Everyone was asking why. It's a seventeen-hour flight from Dubai to Los Angeles, so even if I tried to make it in time, geography was working against me. I was discussing this with a young Jordanian driver on the way to the event. Yes, the driver was Jordanian. This was Dubai, so no locals were to be found.