Jobrani, Ahmed, Kader: A Comic 'Axis of Evil'

DATE April 2, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani and Aron Kader of the Axis of
Evil Comedy Tour discuss their act and being of Middle Eastern and
American descent
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guests are three of the four members of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour.
Being of Middle Eastern descent in America after 9/11 and during the war on
terror has given these comics plenty of good and often discomforting material.
Maz Jobrani is an Iranian-American. He appeared in a recurring role on "24"
and is in the ABC sitcom "Knights of Prosperity." Ahmed Ahmed is an
Egyptian-American. He will soon be seen in the film "Vince Vaughn's Wild West
Comedy Show." Jobrani and Ahmed were first on our show together in 2002. Aron
Kader is the son of a Palestinian father and a Mormon mother, which he says
gave him many reasons to be a comedian. He had a recurring role on "The
Shield."

The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour special was shown last month on Comedy Central.
Now it's out on DVD. Here's an excerpt featuring Ahmed Ahmed.

(Soundbite of video)

Mr. AHMED AHMED: I'm watching the news too, and it's like it's kind of
messed up because they're showing, like, all these terrorist groups. OK.
There's like several organizations out there--Islamic Jihad, people think
Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda. There's so many. How do you know which one is
the best one to join? Like if you choose to join a terrorist organization,
how do you know which one is the best one to join? Is it like rushing a
fraternity? I think they have recruiters. These guys sitting outside of the
mosque going up to these little Moslem boys, `Come here, Habib, come here,
come here. I want to talk to you. Come here. Don't go to al-Qaeda, they
are...(word censored by station). Come to the Islamic Brotherhood. Why you
ask? They only promise you 72 virgins. We'll give you 72 virgins, one whore,
and a goat.'

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani, Aron Kader, welcome to FRESH AIR.

You know, naming your group like the Axis of Evil and your show's the Axis of
Evil Comedy Tour, it kind of like sets people up knowing what they should
expect. And I'm wondering, like, if it's given you each more freedom to do
this as a group under like the Axis of Evil umbrella.

Mr. AHMED: Well, this is Ahmed here. It was funny because Maz and I were at
the Comedy Store last night and we saw Mitzi Shore, and Mitzi Shore's the
owner of the club who initially put us together, and she originally started
the show as the Arabian Knights. But because Maz is Iranian, Persians were
like, `We're not Arab, we're Persians,' you know. `We have our own empire.'
So we changed the name, you know, because of that and also because Arabian
Knights was a little too dated. And after tossing it around and seeing what
was going on in the world and, you know, how our president was labeling, you
know, these countries as the axis of evil, and we all sort of played a certain
part in that, we thought what better way to sort of put it on the forefront.
You know, the name's provocative.

Mr. ARON KADER: Say we're evil and then come out smiling.

Mr. AHMED: Pretty much.

Mr. MAZ JOBRANI: Yeah, that's the thing we did was take the term axis of
evil and put the word "comedy" behind it...

Mr. AHMED: Mm-hmm.

Mr. JOBRANI: ...just to kind of right off the bat lampoon that term.

Mr. KADER: But we also, I think, also, all of our experiences were similar
in that we always talked about being Middle Eastern before 9/11 and noticed
that people were not even at all curious. There was a lot of apathy, and
after 9/11, there was a lot more curiosity, and it was a way to kind of get
people to listen to something that they probably wouldn't have before and so
by grabbing them with a good title with it, you know, with that, it kind of,
definitely made us more comfortable. OK, like, you know what you're getting
into. Now we can get into what we want to get into.

Mr. AHMED: And even with Middle Eastern people, you know, we started getting
a lot of gigs from Arab cultural centers and Middle Eastern groups and Persian
groups because they didn't want to have boring keynote speakers at their
events. They wanted comedians.

GROSS: Do any of you have relatives in the Middle East who really don't get
what you're doing? Who don't get, like, the humor and don't have that
absurdist take on things that you do as comics?

Mr. AHMED: This is Ahmed here. I'm from Helwan, Egypt, which is a small
village outside of Cairo. Not necessarily a village, but it's a small, small
city.

Mr. KADER: It's a big town now.

Mr. AHMED: Yeah. Now they are. They've grown. And I get e-mails, believe
it or not, from like distant cousins that are like, `Hey we saw you on Web
site, man. This is great. Good for you. We will be looking out for you.
Please come to Egypt and do a show.'

Mr. JOBRANI: Yeah. This is Maz. You know, Iranians have always had a sense
of humor, and it's always been, you know, at parties and stuff. The way
parties always unwind at an Iranian party is that they sit around towards the
end of the evening, and it's almost like a talent show. Someone will sing.
Someone will tell jokes.

Mr. KADER: Mm-hmm.

Mr. JOBRANI: And so I get all kinds of e-mails from Iran supporting it, and
the only time I've had any difficulty with my stand-up in front of an Iranian
crowd is if it's an older Iranian crowd that doesn't speak English that well,
and the problem there is they still laugh, but if you have any sort of irony
in your jokes or if there's any sort of sarcasm, they're not too good with
that because that's just, I think, an age thing sometimes, with the older
Iranian crowd so...

Mr. KADER: Younger people might be more cynical and understand irony, but I
think in general, Middle Eastern people, they do understand irony but it's
definitely not the first thing they laugh at.

Mr. JOBRANI: But it's more straight. Like, you know, there's--like, I think
a lot of Iranians, like you were saying, like Iranians before what we're doing
now, were used to kind of like--the jokes that they would tell at parties,
it's like, you know, a Polack, a so-and-so and so-and-so walk into a bar, but
like in Iranian terms.

Mr. KADER: Right. Yeah.

Mr. JOBRANI: You know what I'm saying. That kind of stuff.

Mr. KADER: I have tons of family in the Middle East too, but I've found that
they've been extremely supportive because it's, you know, at least we're
representing our, you know, people in the media, and they know that that is a
necessity for us and something that's good.

GROSS: Aron, in your act you talk about driving with a cousin in the Middle
East. Talking about how much they really hate America, and is that a true
story and would you tell it for us?

Mr. KADER: Yeah, you know, I exaggerated it enough to make it, you know, a
good bit on stage, but it was a serious situation where we're in Amman,
Jordan, and my cousin is, `You, America, you guys, you're so this and that,
and you think you're this and that,' and then we're passing a Dunkin' Donuts
and a KFC, and I cut him off and said, `Hey, Faez, you like the Dunkin'
Donuts.' `Yeah, I go there from time to time. I like it. It's not bad.' And
my dad and I are kind of, you know, winking at each other, like, `This guy
hates us and loves us at the same time.' And then that whole night after that
conversation I was sitting there thinking, `This is hilarious. I've got to do
this on stage.' You know, so it was one of those natural situations that
turned into a bit really fast.

GROSS: How did you change it for stage?

Mr. KADER: Well, I can't get into all the politics that he was talking in
that situation, so you know, I just have him going, you know, right into, `You
hungry? You want something to eat? We got Burger King, McDonald's, Pizza
Hut, Appleby's.' You know. `Is that a TAIF Friday?' `Always Friday, no
problem. You want?' And then you know, and that stuff didn't happen, but
there is that situation or that experience in all my travels in the Middle
East like--Ahmed probably knows this--on the Nile River in Egypt, there's
these boats that have restaurants on them, and they're just parked there.
They don't go anywhere. They're set up for people to eat, and there's a
Chili's, a Chili's on the Nile River, you know, and to me, that just like blew
my mind. So it was kind of a cumulative effect of like all the Americanized
products and then their sentiments were totally in contradiction.

GROSS: Maz, you tell a story on stage about how your e-mail account was
closed because of a joke that you told. Is that a true story and would you
tell it for us?

Mr. JOBRANI: Yeah, you know, I do a joke where I say I have a friend who
asks me about, you know, he thinks that I'm an expert on the Middle East so
he's always asking me when the next terrorist hit is going down, and so I did
that joke one night and then another friend was in the audience who e-mailed
me the following day, jokingly, and he said, `Hey, I had a great time at the
show. By the way, when's the next terrorist hit going down?' And then I was
actually a little scared to e-mail him back at first because I thought, you
know, `Am I being watched?' And then I thought, `N o, I'm not being watched.
I can joke about this stuff.' So then I sent the e-mail back, joking back with
him, and then the next day I tried to log onto my e-mail account and it said,
`Account closed. Access denied.' And then I tried to contact this company,
and I couldn't get through to them because they don't have a phone number. So
I had to e-mail them and explain who I was and I said, `I'm a comedian, I
don't know why I got shut down.' And then I contacted this organization called
NIAC, which is the National Iranian American Council, which is like the NAACP
of Iranians, and I started talking to them. And basically there was two
theories going on. One was that it could have been that they said that I'd
sent spam, and that's why they were closing me down. I hadn't sent spam. I'd
sent an e-mail recently, you know, around that same time just talking about
our shows and stuff, but, at the same time, the, you know, my contacts at NIAC
were saying that they do have certain programs that recognize certain red-flag
words, like anything having to do with terrorism or anything having to do
with, let's say, child pornography or something, and these programs will shut
down your account because they don't want it to come out that you were doing
something illegal through their, you know, their services. So yeah, I got
shut down, and I finally got back on, so I'm back on.

GROSS: I wonder like if I had sent the same joke whether they would have
closed down my account.

Mr. KADER: Yeah.

Mr. JOBRANI: I don't know, you know. They might be watching you, Terry
Gross.

GROSS: My guests are three of the four members of the Axis of Evil Comedy
Tour--Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader. We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guests are three of the four members of the Axis of Evil Comedy
Tour--Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader. They are Americans,
respectively, of Iranian, Egyptian and Palestinian descent. Their Comedy
Central special comes out on DVD this week.

Have any of the jokes that you've made had consequences? People have
misinterpreted it or authorities have misinterpreted it?

Mr. JOBRANI: Here in the states or overseas?

GROSS: Either.

Mr. AHMED: I had a little bit of a tiny controversy. I was in Dubai. I
went there three times last year, and the third time I was there I did a show.
And they have in Dubai what they call the CIDs, which is the sort of secret
police that drive around as civilians, so you never know if you're standing
next to one. And they got tipped off that there was this comedy show at the
Radisson Hotel, and they came down. And they came at the very tail end of the
show, and I was, in fact, doing my show, and then I did a sort of screen
projection of Aron and Maz's acts. So it was sort of like a presentation, if
you will, to try to do some business with the comedy and sell the rights and
so forth and so on. And they came at the end of the show, and they didn't
know what was going on. `Where's the permit? What kind of material is this
guy doing? Who approved it?' That kind of thing.

Mr. KADER: Mm-hmm.

Mr. AHMED: And our producer, my producer at the time sort of pulled them
aside. He told me, `Hey, go stand over there because these guys want to
arrest you.' And he sort of talked them out of it, and then they said, `Well,
we're going to come back tomorrow night and watch his act.' So there was
like--so the producer said, `Hey, don't do these certain jokes.'

Mr. KADER: Mm-hmm. There are definitely jokes that get misinterpreted.

GROSS: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So did you have to cut jokes out?

Mr. AHMED: Yeah. So he said, `Don't do certain jokes. They wanted to
arrest you. You know. I'm just telling you.' He works, you know, in the
entertainment industry over in Dubai, and he's from Dubai, and he understands
the politics and the law and all that stuff. It's very strict when it comes
to stuff like that. And he basically just said, `Look, don't do those jokes.
You know, edit that piece on that joke.' You know, we sort of went back and
reconstructed my act. Well, the next night I went up on stage and did my set,
and sure enough the secret police were sitting in the audience, and they were
in stitches, they were laughing so hard.

GROSS: What did you take out because you were afraid you'd be arrested?

Mr. AHMED: There's a joke I do, it's not even a joke. They're more
observations, really. If you've ever been in Dubai, it's a very decadent, you
know. I don't know if you saw it in the DVD at all, but there's the bit that
I do where I say, you know, `They have the only seven-star hotel in the whole
wide world in Dubai, and when critics ask who gave it seven stars, you know,
the emir was like, "I give it seven stars. It is my hotel. I'll do what I
want to do."'

Mr. JOBRANI: Me.

Mr. AHMED: And my producer was like, `Don't say that because then you're
like making fun of the emir,' and I was like, `Well, no I'm not, it's like,
you know, it's more of like an observation.' There was another one. Dubai,
when you go to Dubai, it's a Muslim city, and it's, you know, technically a
very strict Muslim city, but it's so liberal and it's growing and progressing
so fast. But it's sort of schizophrenic in a sense because you'll go down to
the beach, you'll see Muslim women wearing hijab, you know, over their head,
scarves around their head and then you'll see like European men in speedos,
you know, like, side by side, which is just kind of bizarre. It's a bizarre
visual to see hijab woman and like an overweight guy in a Speedo, like a
G-string. And then you'll see like a mosque, and right across the street from
the mosque there's a night club, like attached to the hotel. So around 8:00
every night, you know, you'll hear the adhan call the prayer. (He imitates a
prayer call and then drums) You start hearing the techno beats, and it's
confusing. And people think, `Oh you're making fun of it.' I'm not making fun
of it. That's what you see when you go there.

Mr. KADER: Mm-hmm.

Mr. AHMED: So I had to, you know, for the, you know, sensitivity of the
people, you know, the way they would react, I had to cut some of that stuff
out.

Mr. JOBRANI: I think, Terry that...

GROSS: That's like your Dubai material, isn't it? Like a whole chapter came
out.

Mr. AHMED: You know, the same thing happened in London. I was, you know,
privileged enough to get invited to do this show, you know, amongst a bunch of
other performers at the Royal Albert Hall in London in front of 3,200
conservative Muslims, and the organizer did the same thing. He pulled me
aside. I had to sit down with the sheik, or like an imam, and they edited my
act for me, and I had sign a...

GROSS: Gee.

Mr. AHMED: I swear to God. And they were like redlining jokes. `You can't
say that, you can't say that.' And I...

GROSS: What did they redline?

Mr. AHMED: The one joke where I say, `Whenever I go through airport security
now I just put on a G-string.' I just go up in a G--they say, `You can't say
G-string here.'

Mr. JOBRANI: No, you cannot do this.

Mr. AHMED: And so I was like, `Really?'

GROSS: Geez.

Mr. AHMED: They're like, `No, no. Just say, you know, you...

Mr. JOBRANI: Undergarments.

Mr. AHMED: Yeah. I mean, it was really, it was very delicate, and they
actually made me sign a contract, so if I didn't--if I, you know, breached
whatever I said I wouldn't do, then they, you know, wouldn't pay me.

Mr. KADER: Ahmed always has a line that makes me laugh even though it's not
intended. But he has CDs that, you know, he'll sell at shows, and there's one
that's kind of uncensored and then there's the other one that's clean, you
know, no cussing. It's for children and Muslims.

Mr. AHMED: And you know what's so funny is after my shows, people will come
up to me and say, `Is that really for children and Muslims? Because I have
three kids that don't want to hear your uncensored one, so I'll take three
CDs.'

GROSS: So like when you're in the position of having like a sheik edit your
material or like the secret police basically editing the material, do you feel
like, `I'm going to rebel against this and stand up for free speech,' or do
you feel like, `I really want to perform in this country, and I'll do what it
takes.'

Mr. AHMED: Not at all.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. AHMED: No, I do what it takes. I'm a rare breed, Terry, because most
comics would say, `Forget that. You know, I'm better than that. I'm an
artist. I'll say what I want to say,' you know. And that's all fine and
dandy, but then you end up sort of excluding yourself from, you know, the
universal message vs., you know, some people like to have their niche core
that they talk to, and I think I come from more of a place, where, OK, you
know, `I'm a comedian. My job isn't that serious. I can bend a little bit.'

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. AHMED: I'll cut out the G-string bit. I'll cut out the bit about the
whatever. It's like, I don't mind.

Mr. KADER: It still has to be about the audience.

Mr. AHMED: I don't mind bending, you know, not my spirit or like, you know,
my vision or my material, but it's more about compromising a little bit.
You've got to give people a lifeline.

Mr. JOBRANI: There's also...

Mr. AHMED: You can't just say this is my way or the highway. I think
there's a...

Mr. KADER: In America you can, though.

Mr. JOBRANI: Yeah.

Mr. AHMED: No, but I'm saying there's a sense of, as a comedian, there's a
sense of, you know...

Mr. KADER: Please the crowd that's in front of you.

Mr. AHMED: Yeah, we're entertainers.

Mr. JOBRANI: But there's...

Mr. AHMED: So there's a sense of give and take that's involved, and I don't
mind, you know, giving a little to take a little bit.

Mr. JOBRANI: There's also...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. JOBRANI: ...the question of who's trying to edit you? Is it a comedy
club owner or is it the secret police? I mean...

GROSS: Exactly. No, exactly. And there's a big difference. And also...

Mr. JOBRANI: Well...

GROSS: ...is it being edited because it's offending somebody's religious
sensibilities or it's offending...

Mr. JOBRANI: That's it.

GROSS: ...the person who holds the power in the country and is oppressing its
people.

Mr. AHMED: Both really.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. AHMED: Both. Because a lot of it's coming from, you know, sort of a
selfish point of view and a personal point of view, and the other is for the
quote/unquote "cause." But, you know, and Islam, you know, everybody's cause
is different. There's 72 branches of Islam. There's so many different ways
people practice it and believe it and observe it. So the way I observe it
might be different from the way a sheik observes it in Dubai.

GROSS: Now, are there any things that you find it uncomfortable to joke about
even in the United States where there aren't secret police who are editing
your material?

Mr. AHMED: Cancer and rape...

Mr. KADER: Mm.

Mr. AHMED: ...I don't think are funny.

Mr. JOBRANI: Yeah, you still don't talk about rape, cancer, AIDS, Holocaust.
Those are not good comedy. I've just started to do a joke, not about the
Holocaust, but about the president of Iran saying that it never happened, and
so it's also your take on it.

GROSS: Oh, oh, what...

Mr. AHMED: Mm-hmm.

GROSS: What is it? What is it?

Mr. JOBRANI: Well, the joke I'm doing is I say, you know, I'm talking about
the image that Iranians have in America isn't that good, and I say, `The
president of Iran isn't helping any because he says stupid stuff.' And I say
like, `He came out and said the Holocaust never happened,' and I say, `That's
just so stupid. Why would you say that?' And then I go, `Even if he's dumb
enough to actually believe that, doesn't he have a friend that he can run it
by before he tells the rest of the world and embarrasses every Iranian in the
world?

Mr. KADER: Mm-hmm.

Mr. JOBRANI: Doesn't he have some friend, where he can be like, `Hey Hassan,
I'm thinking of telling the world the Holocaust never happened. What do you
think?' `I don't know, Mahmoud. Maybe you should keep that to yourself. You
know, you should maybe try saying something a little less harmful at first.
Go out and say, "Holocaust, schmolocaust." Try that, see how that goes. And
then work your way up into a political diatribe.'

Mr. KADER: Yeah.

Mr. JOBRANI: So that's--but that's making fun of the guy saying it never
happened. Right?

Mr. KADER: Right.

Mr. AHMED: Yeah, getting into the mentality of how that happened.

GROSS: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Getting back to what we
were talking about, if there are subjects that even in the United States you
feel it's difficult to joke about, are there subjects related to the Middle
East or to how Arab-Americans or Iranian- or Palestinian-Americans are treated
in America or terrorism that you feel like, `This is really funny, but yet, I
cannot go there.'

Mr. AHMED: Aron, you probably have stuff about the Arab-Israeli stuff.

Mr. KADER: I do, and I've always found that people are either completely
unaware of the situation or they're vaguely aware, and so it's kind of the
challenge of getting them to understand it without understanding it. Like,
they don't have to have any knowledge of it to kind of get my jokes, so it's
kind of almost like watered down in a way. So then it comes off as not as
edgy, but then after 9/11 there was a--I did take a couple of cracks at jokes
that didn't end up making it. Like, you know, the al-Qaeda camp. You know,
`I didn't want to go to al-Qaeda camp. My mom dropped me off. I don't want
to go. But then when she comes to pick me up at the end of the summer, I
don't want to leave. I love...' You know? You know, `We play capture and
burn the flag and kick the oil can.'

Mr. AHMED: Capture and burn...

Mr. JOBRANI: It's a great bit. You ought to keep doing that.

Mr. KADER: I know. It's like one of those bits that I did too soon after
9/11, and then I just bailed on it because people were like, `I don't know if
we can joke about that,' you know. It was too uncomfortable.

Mr. AHMED: There was definitely a lot of that.

Mr. KADER: And recently I was doing this joke that I was really surprised
got a laugh, where I said, `Hey, we all know Osama's evil, but gosh he's a
good camper. What is he, an Eagle Scout?' You know, like, `Where did he get
this tent with a kidney dialysis machine? Which, you know, sporting goods
store is he going to? Like, what has he got an I-tent from Seattle? What is
it, you know, you got a Web cam that beams your videos straight to al-Jazeer?
Like where does he...' And I kind of go on about this and talk about how if,
you know, if you leave Bush in a mountain range, we'll find him or he'll die.
You know, like there's not going to be--how long's he going to survive with a
flint and a machete.

GROSS: Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani, and Aron Kader will be back in the second
half of the show. The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour comes out on DVD this week.
It also features Dean Obeidallah. They're on tour together now.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with three of the members of
the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour. Maz Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader are
Americans, respectively of Iranian, Egyptian, and Palestinian descent.
They're on tour now, and their Comedy Central special, which premiered last
month, comes out on DVD this week. Here's a clip featuring Aron Kader.

(Soundbite of video)

Mr. KADER: Yeah, I got a cousin named Jihad. Any Jihads here? It was a
very popular name in the late '70s. I've got a cousin named Jihad. He takes
the bus now everywhere. Can't fly. He called me from a Greyhound station,
seriously, and he calls me, and he's like, `This sucks. They're frisking me
and ID-ing me and looking at me funny. Screw this, man. I'm changing my name
to Raymond.' That's good. Now your name's Raymond Adullah Mahjid. That
doesn't change anything. Think!

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Now Ahmed Ahmed and Maz Jobrani, I can imagine that you have been
profiled because of your names, but Aron Kader, you're Palestinian-American
and, from your name, Aron Kader, nobody would know that you're from the Middle
East. There's a great story behind how you got your name. Would you tell it?

Mr. KADER: Well, my name is Haroun, but there's not a lot of Harouns in the
Middle East. There's a lot of Mosas--Moses--and Aaron and Moses were
brothers, bibically, right? And so, it's funny because, you know, my grandpa
was Mosa so because Aaron is Moses' brother my name became Aron Moses. So in
Arabic it's Haroun Abu Mosa Abu Hadair. But they just changed it to Aron
Kader, and my mom's, you know, white, from Utah, and they just--I don't know.
I guess they just liked the name Aaron because it was related to Moses and it
was my grandpa's name, but then they only gave it one A. And sometimes people
ask, and I think the real reason is because my parents were like, `Well, it's
not a traditional Jewish name, and we're Palestinian, so let's just drop an
A.' And I'm like, why don't you just say that Elvis spelled it with one A, you
know? Like it's not a good story to tell like, `Well, we don't want him to be
too Jewish.' But the truth is that they didn't want--my dad didn't want us to
have ethnic names that profiled us at all because he grew up immigrant-style
and feeling like a minority and feeling left out, and he didn't want his kids
to have that experience.

GROSS: Now, Ahmed Ahmed, you say that your name is the same name as a wanted
terrorist from the Middle East. Is that true?

Mr. AHMED: Oh. It's the worst. This is...

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. AHMED: Seriously.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. AHMED: This is not even a joke. People think it's like, `Hey, you're
telling a great joke.' You know, if you actually Google my name, don't Google
`Ahmed Ahmed comedian.' Just Google `Ahmed Ahmed.' My Web site comes up first,
and right under that there's a link for the FBI's Most Wanted.

GROSS: Our researcher and producer Sam is nodding his head in affirmation
across in the control room.

Mr. AHMED: Right. Now ask Sam to click on the photo of this cat. He's from
Egypt. He's shorter than me, but if I grew a moustache, we'd look alike. And
he has like 30 aliases, and one of them's Ahmed Ahmed and the other one's
Ahmed the Egyptian. So like, I'm like, I got to find this guy, man, because
he's killing me. But I...

GROSS: So--so--go ahead.

Mr. AHMED: I was just going to say, you know, I wonder if he's in the Middle
East Googling me, saying, `Hey, man, there is this comedian in America, bro,
using my name. This is crap, man, I can't believe it.'

GROSS: Have you ever been mistaken for him and been, like, prevented from
going on a flight or whatever?

Mr. AHMED: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We haven't talked in a while, have we? I
spent 12 hours in Clark County prison the day before Bush was re-elected.

GROSS: Whoa!

Mr. AHMED: Yeah. The weekend before Bush was re-elected, they had arrested,
detained, and/or profiled over 10,000 Arabs and Middle Eastern and Muslims
around America, and the ACLU actually did a sort of count on that statistic,
and they contacted me and stuff. But the day before was November 1st, I
guess, I was flying out of Las Vegas airport, going to do a show in St. Louis
with my comedy colleague, Rabbi Bob Alper. We do a show, "One Arab, One Jew,
One Stage." And I'd gone through security, got my ticket, went up to the
boarding gate. People were sort of boarding. The jetway was still connected.
And I go up and I give the guy my ticket, and he looks at me and, you know,
there must have been some sort of weird scary alert going on because they were
just--they didn't even, you know, there wasn't any questions asked. He just
kind of said, `Hold on a second, sir. You're not going to be able to make
your flight.' And I was like, `Oh, I have to get on this flight,' you know.
`What seems to be the problem?' He said, `You're not going to make your
flight.' He didn't even explain it to me. So we started sort of going back
and forth, and then the Las Vegas metro pulled up, and it was a black cop and
a white cop. The white cop just handcuffed me and didn't even read me my
rights or anything. The black cop leaned into me and said, `Now you know what
it's like to be a black man in the '60s.'

GROSS: Gee.

Mr. AHMED: Like half joking, but half serious. So then they were walking me
through the airport really slowly, kind of showcasing me as if to say, `Hey,
we got one.' And then they took me to Clark County prison, took my blood,
fingerprints. I got new headsets. And they actually made me sit down, Terry,
they made me sit down with a jail psychologist who asked me all these
questions like, `Why do you think you're in here? Do you think it has
something to do with your inner self?'

GROSS: Really?

Mr. AHMED: Like just really weird stuff. Then they put me in this holding
cell with pretty much the cast members from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,"
and about 12 hours go by. I finally get on the phone in our cell because
people were taking turns using the phone. I get on the phone, I call my
buddy. I'm, like, `You've got to get me out of here. I think they think I'm
a terrorist because my name's Ahmed Ahmed, and da da da da.' You know, `Call
somebody and get me out of here.' I hang up the phone, I turn around, and this
gangbanger like, you know, clearly, like, you know, is in a gang. This guy,
OK, walks out to me and goes, `Hey, Homes, so they arrested you because you're
Arabic,' and I said, `Yeah, I think so, yeah.' He say, `So they think you're
like a terrorist?' I said, `Yeah, I'm not, but, yeah, I think they think
that.' He goes, `Well, then, blow this place up and get us out of here,
Homes.' And the whole cell started laughing, and I thought it was so bizarre
because I never told anybody I was a comedian, and so now the laugh was on me.
And then I started laughing, so it was kind of cathartic and healing, like,
you know, sort of like, you know, a way to sort of ease the tension of being
in, you know, in prison. But, at the same time, I thought it was God's way of
saying, `Hey, Ahmed, write some more material, man.'

Mr. KADER: `There's a joke for you.'

GROSS: Well, you know...

Mr. JOBRANI: Because God has an Arabic accent.

GROSS: I'm wondering, like, when you say to the police who have arrested you
or to the prison psychologist who's interviewing you and the other
authorities, when you try to explain, `No, I'm not Ahmed Ahmed the terrorist.
I'm Ahmed Ahmed the comic, and I'm with the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour.'

Mr. AHMED: Yeah.

GROSS: Like, first of all, do they believe you? And second of all, if they
figure out what you're doing is that helpful or...

Mr. AHMED: Well, here's...

GROSS: ...does that get you in even more trouble if the words "axis of evil"
come up?'

Mr. AHMED: Well, no, here's what happened is I don't even think--were we
doing Axis of Evil?

Mr. KADER: We hadn't...

Mr. JOBRANI: We hadn't started. We were still Arabian Knights.

Mr. AHMED: We were still with Arabian Knights.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. AHMED: But I always bring like newspaper clippings or...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. AHMED: ...or the interview I did with you. Some sort of...

Mr. KADER: Yeah, so you've got something to explain...

Mr. AHMED: Some sort of proof. Yeah, I had proof. So when I got to prison,
to the jail, the deputies or whatever, the sheriffs were looking through my
bag, and they pulled out all this like comedy paraphernalia--CDs and clippings
and what have you--and they were, like, snickering amongst themselves, `Hey
this guy's a comedian. Now the joke's on him.'

Mr. JOBRANI: It's a good thing you're not a prop comic...

Mr. AHMED: Right.

Mr. JOBRANI: ...like with machetes and stuff, because then they'd be going
through it. It would be like, `What's with the machetes.'

Mr. AHMED: Yeah.

Mr. JOBRANI: `I swear, I juggle. I swear.'

Mr. AHMED: Yeah.

GROSS: So...

Mr. AHMED: But there's no rhyme--you can't sue the government. I mean, I
spoke to like at least a dozen lawyers that were like, `You definitely have a
case, but it's going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to
pursue this thing.' So, you know, I mean, there's been a lot of stuff that's
happened. I've been detained several times coming over the Canadian border,
doing shows, being pulled over and detained in New York quite a bit.

Mr. JOBRANI: Mexico.

Mr. AHMED: I mean, I know all the people around the TSA. We're buddies. We
have pizza together. We call each other. We text message each other, `Hey,
I'm coming down.' You know.

Mr. JOBRANI: Aron and I always joke that Ahmed's the best guy to travel with
because they'll always pull him over, and then we can just sneak our
contraband cologne over.

Mr. KADER: We need a diversion.

Mr. AHMED: Terry, also too, with all the stress that's been happening with
me, I started getting alopecia, alopecia areata, where your hair falls out
from stress.

Mr. KADER: He's been de-Muslifying.

Mr. JOBRANI: Mm-hmm.

Mr. KADER: Or de-Muslimifying.

Mr. AHMED: De-Muslimfying myself. My body's trying to de-Muslimfy.

GROSS: Now you are--is that a joke? Is that--or...

Mr. AHMED: No. No. No.

GROSS: Is that true...

Mr. AHMED: No. Yeah.

GROSS: ...that that's why you lost your hair?

Mr. AHMED: I was traveling so much that every time I went through an air--I
mean, I can't tell you. I was like Tom Hanks in "Terminal." I was living in
airports for about two years. Doing shows by myself, with the guys,
separately, with other comedians, whatever. But, you know, because we have to
travel and go through airports, it was really like, you know, excruciating
experience for, you know, the couple of years I was doing it...

Mr. JOBRANI: Yeah.

Mr. AHMED: ...because I was always getting stopped, always missing flights,
always having to--and it was a very stressful time in my life. So my body
started to shake off some of that Chewbacca hair that I have.

GROSS: Wow, it sounds like you've really been through a lot in order to
travel around the world being funny.

Mr. AHMED: You know...

GROSS: You paid your dues for us.

Mr. AHMED: I have. I've taken the bullet, I guess.

GROSS: Yeah.

My guests are three members of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour--Maz Jobrani,
Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: My guests are three members of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour--Maz
Jobrani, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader. They're Americans, respectively of
Iranian, Egyptian and Palestinian descent. Their Comedy Central special comes
out on DVD this week. Here's an except featuring Maz Jobrani.

(Soundbite of video)

Mr. JOBRANI: Yeah, the Iranians--it's funny, because people--I tell them, my
American friends, I go, `Yeah, I'm Iranian.' They go, `Oh, so you're Arab.'
I'm like, `No we're actually different. We're not Arab, but, you know, I
mean, we're similar. You know, we're all getting shot at, you know, that's
one thing.' But you know, but Iranians are actually, ethnically we're
actually, you know, we're Aryan. We're white. We're white. So stop
shooting, you know, that's what I'm trying to...' And then my American friends
go, `Well, how can we tell you apart? How?' And I go, `Well, it's in the
accent. It's in the accent. Iranians, when Iranians speak, they talk a lot
of slow. Iranians talk like this. Iranians talk like this. We talk very
slow, like, you know, maybe we just shot some heroin. We are falling asleep.
How are you? How are you? I am Iranian. How are you? How are you? It's
Iranian. Okeydokey. It's Iranian. Hey, Habib. Don't worry about it. I'm
Iranian.'

And Arab. Arab talk a lot faster. Arab talk faster. Arab talk a lot faster.
Arabs talk like they just did some cocaine. They're talking, `How are you?
How are you? How are you? How do you do? (Foreign language spoken) How are
you?'

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: Now, earlier we were talking about subjects that are difficult to be
funny about, and Maz Jobrani, you're kind of like in the middle of one of
those situations now, because you're Iranian-America and conflicts are
really--conflict is really escalating between the United States and Iran. So
how are you dealing with that, if at all, as a comic and as a person?

Mr. JOBRANI: Terry, actually it's interesting because I think about that on
a daily basis because I have family there and obviously, you know, I was born
in Iran, and I love that country and I love the people of that country. And I
also am American. I love this country. I love the people of this country.
And so every day I hope for a peaceful solution, and one thing, a reporter
once asked me, you know, `What are the similarities and differences between
the lead-up to the war with Iraq and now this what might be a lead-up to war
with Iran?' and I said, `Unfortunately, the similarities are too much.
There's too many similarities.' And I said, `The one difference would be if
they actually gave diplomacy a shot.' And it's very frustrating, and it's hard
to make it funny because, you're right, I do get very passionate about it, and
I want to talk about the serious issues and bring it to the attention of the
audience. I find myself now more taking a few seconds, or maybe, you know, a
minute to get into some sort of a positive message, some sort of a serious
message in the middle of my act, and then once in a while I'll hear the
silence for too long, and I go `Ooh, I haven't told a joke.' So then I'll
just--I'll, you know, I'll kind of change gears and then sprinkle a joke in
there to go back to where I have to go. But I try now to consciously put a
message out there that Iranians are good people, that most Iranians are, you
know, very good, very productive people, and I put that out there as much as I
can. I just wish that there was some sort of peaceful resolution so the
people of that country don't end up having the same tragedy...

Mr. KADER: Yeah.

Mr. JOBRANI: ...happen to their country that is happening in Iraq.

Mr. KADER: And, I almost want to say this, Terry, is that, as a comedian,
it's almost like we're taking a poll every night just in the room...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. KADER: ...and you kind of take the temperature of where, you know, where
we're at as a culture. And after you do enough shows in enough different
cities, you start to get the vibe of what everybody's kind of feeling, and I
think, in general, we, you know, take the politics seriously. We like to read
the paper, and we kind of get addicted to it, and we have our opinions, but
it's so hard to know where they're going to be cynical and where they're not.
Because, in general, people are very cynical about the Middle East. They
don't believe that the people are capable of having a democracy or that--and
there's a lot of cynicism out there and, as comedians, we're definitely
cynical. But it's difficult to have a cynical take and to make fun of it, and
then have people, you know, like, you know, just regular Americans react to it
with apathy and cynicism at the same time. It's a really weird kind of
situation that we're in because people really have no idea what to think.
There's no clear answer out. It's just, you know, a very convoluted time.

GROSS: So, let me get back to the subject of what you all do professionally,
acting and comedy. Now that you're all getting better known as comics, is it
affecting your acting career? Are you getting more opportunities beyond the
terrorist roles?

Mr. AHMED: It just sort of--we just kind of got on the map recently as our
Axis of Evil tour so it's, you know, I've definitely...

Mr. KADER: Inshallah.

Mr. AHMED: Inshallah. God willing. I definitely get a lot of, you know,
e-mails and people in the industry response, `Hey, we saw you in this,' or...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. AHMED: `You did great in that.' But as far as roles are concerned, you
know, I'm trying to develop and pitch ideas that are more mainstream for
Middle Eastern Americans and Muslim Americans. As far are being cast in
things...

GROSS: Mm.

Mr. AHMED: ...you know, I'm still being considered and cast for stuff that's
not outside of the box, you know, the sort of stereotypical parts. But, you
know, you take those parts for exposure and to get a paycheck, and if I don't
take them, they're going to give it to a Mexican guy.

Mr. KADER: Right.

Mr. JOBRANI: Terry, I--this is Maz--I actually--I made a conscious...

Mr. AHMED: Thank you for that late laughter.

Mr. JOBRANI: Terry, I made a conscious decision not to take any terrorist
parts and also anything that's negative in a way--you know, there was a movie
that was--there was an audition for a movie that came up where it's kind of
like a "Crash" type film, and they have all these families, and the Iranian
family is living in America, and there's these two brothers--one's a lawyer,
one works for like the INS and--or whatever, ICE now, and they--the lawyer,
who's Americanized, brother, he commits an act of an honor-killing where he
kills his younger sister who was sleeping with a Mexican guy. And I didn't go
out for that because I said, first of all, I don't know if this has ever
happened in America where an Iranian family has committed an act of an
honor-killing, but I said, even if they had, even if you can point out to this
incident happening in America, I said, we have so much negativity out there,
negative image out there, such a negative image out there that I don't support
that. You know, we don't need anything else, even a little drop where someone
can go and subconsciously watch a movie and leave the movie going, `See those
Iranians, they're crazy, you know. Did you see what they did?' And so I've
made a conscious decision not to make those parts.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. JOBRANI: That said, I do, you know, I played a cab driver on that show
"Knights of Prosperity," an Indian cab driver, which, I don't mind doing that,
which is--that's a stereotype, but it was a comedic stereotype and also it's a
character--I know those people. Like, I know Indian cab drivers. And also
the character was written with more depth.

Mr. AHMED: Also, going back to what you were talking about earlier, getting
opportunities and stuff, there was an opportunity that I got, speaking in
regards to Vince Vaughn, who you interviewed...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. AHMED: We did a comedy tour that he produced and hosted called "Vince
Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show," 30 cities in 30 nights, and we went from
Hollywood to the Heartland, all through middle America and the South. This
was right after "Wedding Crashers" came out and we did--he hosted this comedy
show with me and three other comedians in front of like 2,000 people every
night. There was rarely, if not, you know, any Arabs or Muslims in the
audience every night, so it was funny, like, to see people, to get laughs from
just middle America. But they shot it as a movie, as a documentary film
that's going to be released, hopefully this year, but it really shows, you
know, that a Middle-Eastern person can--funny's funny, basically, is what I'm
trying to say.

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. KADER: Yeah.

GROSS: I want to you all for talking with us, and I wish you all really good
luck. Thank you.

Mr. KADER: Thanks, Terry.

Mr. JOBRANI: Thank you very much.

Mr. AHMED: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: Ahmed Ahmed, Maz Jobrani and Aron Kader of the Axis of Evil Comedy
Tour. Their Comedy Central special comes out on DVD this week. The next
stops on their tour include Boston, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale and Atlanta.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, Maureen Corrigan reviews A.M. Homes' new memoir about
meeting the birth mother who gave her up for adoption. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Maureen Corrigan discusses "The Mistress's Daughter"
TERRY GROSS, host:

In novels and short story collections such as "This Book Will Save Your Life,"
"Music for Torching," and "The Safety of Objects," A.M. Homes has earned a
reputation as an unsentimental writer known for her emotional precision. Now
she turns that skewiness on her own life story. Homes was given up for
adoption before she was born, and, in her new memoir, "The Mistress's
Daughter," she describes the sometimes traumatic experience of being found by
her birth mother. Book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review.

Ms. MAUREEN CORRIGAN: The scene is the lunch counter at our neighborhood
organic supermarket where my eight-year-old daughter and her friend, both
adopted, are chatting about whom they feel closer to, their mother or their
father. I'm eating my sandwich a few stools down, being cool, letting them
have their space, and listening like a bat. The girls cast their votes for
their currently favorite parent, and then my daughter, with the worldly wisdom
of the slightly older kid, tells her friend, `I guess if you're not adopted,
you always feel closer to your mother because you come out of her belly.' Her
friend nods. That's when I rush in, idiotically trying to deromanticize
biology and score a goal for my team. I tell the girls that that's not true.
That a lot of biological children feel closer to their fathers. The girls'
attention wanders back to their mac and cheese. I've fumbled. Too back the
organic supermarket doesn't serve gin and tonics. I could use one.

The myth of seamlessness, of perfect connection with the mother. You don't
have to be adopted to yearn for it. But if you are adopted, you surely yearn
for it with a special intensity. The writer A.M. Homes did. Even after
meeting her biological mother and being severely disappointed, she still sort
of yearns. As anyone who's read her fiction might expect, Homes' new memoir,
"The Mistress's Daughter," is an unflinching, smart and intensely compelling
book. It's about Homes' particular search for origins as an adoptee, but it's
also about something larger. Dare I say universal? It's about the mystery of
identity and the comedy of errors we all embark on when we attempt to locate
our true selves. Will biology take us there? Genealogical research?
Therapy? Religion?

Homes' odyssey begins when she's 31, staying at her parents' house, her
adoptive parents' house, for the Christmas holidays. Her adoptive mother, in
tears, breaks the news. Homes' birth mother is looking for her and has sent a
message through the lawyer that helped handle her adoption saying that she
`would be willing to hear from her daughter.' Homes' drives herself nuts
trying to deconstruct the restrained language of that message. She grew up
knowing that she was the product of an affair between a young woman and an
older, married man with children. She also came to realize that to be adopted
is to be adapted, to be amputated and sewn back together again. Whether or
not you regain full function, there will always be scar tissue. Homes peels
off some of those scabs when she begins corresponding with, and then talking
to, her birth mother over the telephone. Homes postpones meeting her birth
mother. She's too flooded with emotion, too shaky. And her birth mother
stalks her, even surprising Homes at a bookstore where she's giving a reading.
When they finally formally meet, Homes, who grew up in a lefty household of
educators and activists, finds that her birth mother reminds her of Dusty
Springfield. She's arrayed in rabbit fur and small talk, her hair piled up in
a post-beehive bun. Homes' birth mother is needy, even scary, but she's also
poignantly childlike. In one of their phone conversations, she asks Homes if
one day they might have a portrait painted of "the two of us." That dream of
mother-daughter seamlessness again.

Though they're less charged, Homes' meetings with her birth father are also
surreal. He comes off like a minor member of the Rat Pack, swaggering and
chipper, and talking incredibly about his penis at their first meeting. He
makes Homes take a DNA test to prove their relationship, and then says he's
going to introduce Homes to his family, her family, her half-brothers and
sister, but he never makes good on the promise, keeping her existence a
shameful secret. She outs him in this memoir, sparing nobody's feelings here,
including, of course, her own.

"The Mistress's Daughter" can sometimes be a hard book to read, especially
hard if you're an adoptive parent, but the ending is a kick. After the deaths
of both her birth mother and her adoptive maternal grandmother, Homes said she
felt impelled to have a birth child of her own. The daughter she eventually
gives birth to ends up reminding Homes of her beloved grandmother, to whom, of
course, she was not connected genetically. It makes no sense. It makes
complete sense. In "The Mistress's Daughter," Home's unsentimentally attests
to the undeniable power of blood and to the random miracles of affinity.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She
reviewed A.M. Homes' memoir, "The Mistress's Daughter."

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.