Thursday, Dec 14, 2006
Gulf News
Ahmed Ahmed, stand-up comedian, aspiring actor and regular Arab American, likes to tell people to google his name.
"It'll come up as FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist," he says.
Sure enough, a search turns up a wanted poster for Ahmed Mohammed Hamed Ali, whose aliases include Ahmed Ahmed. He is wanted for his alleged links to US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.
The not-so-funny thing, Ahmed the comedian bears a superficial resemblance to Ahmed the terrorist, who has $5 million (Dh18 million) on his head.
And their shared birthplace of Egypt does not help matters.
Airports and airlines' response, post-September 11, is to search, search, search and search, and occasionally, detain, question, arrest and jail Ahmed the comedian. Ahmed's response is to make fun and light of his troubles. "I show up at the airport in a G-string now," he jokes.
Misconceptions
A third of the Axis of Evil Comedy Troupe - a trio of Middle Eastern comics who specialise in telling it as it is from an Arab-American perspective - Ahmed says he tries to fight prejudice and misconceptions with humour. He is currently in Dubai, performing his stand-up routine, to a very receptive audience made up of Middle Easterners and Westerners.
Ahmed has not really needed to change his material, which also includes jokes about his family and their attempts to adapt to life in the US, to perform in Dubai. The effect of his performance is slightly different - the audience here laugh more out of empathy and commiseration.
He does not try to show how normal he and other Arab/Muslim Americans are; instead it is Americans' ignorance of Arabs and Islam that becomes the butt of the joke.
But what stands out more about Ahmed's routine is his humorous recounting of the unfortunate reality of travel in post-September 11 United States for Muslims and Arabs.
The examples are unfortunately many. In August, an Iraqi-born peace activist was threatened with removal from a New York-California flight in August for wearing a T-shirt with "We will not be silenced" in Arabic script.
Six imams were removed from a Minnesota-Texas flight last month because passengers became frightened when they saw the clerics performing their Asr prayers in the airport terminal prior to boarding the flight. For Ahmed's audience here, many can relate or know someone who underwent the same thing.
Procedures
"I loved it when he talked about airport procedures," says Samir Al Hamiri, a 27-year-old UAE national, who came an hour early to make sure he got good seats.
"When we go to the airport [in US], we automatically start taking our belts off for the search," adds the marketing manager, who lived in Canada a few years ago. Ahmed admits he is a little bitter when he thinks about what he and others like him have to go through. Rather than get angry or depressed, he takes his experiences as new material for his show. "It gives me a sense of healing and helps break down certain stereotypes through comedy," he says.
With this outlook, he has also turned the trouble his name has caused to his the bridge to something better. He is staying by Ahmed Ahmed. "If I change it, I won't have anything to talk about," he says, smiling.
Ahmed Ahmed is performing at Radisson SAS Hotel in Dubai Media City tonight. The show starts at 9pm.
Gulf News 2006. All rights reserved.
