Beirut is like no other place in the world. On one of my trips there, the hotel I was staying at had a Sunday afternoon club—drinks, girls in bikinis, guys with nipple rings, techno music blaring out of the speakers. You would have thought you were in South Beach. Just as I got comfortable and forgot I was in what had been a war zone a few years earlier, I saw three armored tanks roll by, and I suddenly remembered—I was in Beirut.
Things work differently there. The beauty of Beirut is how resilient its people are. The Lebanese would tell us about the civil war they had that lasted for years, followed by the occasional wars and skirmishes and standoffs with Israel. Everyone had stories. One of our promoters was a woman about my age who relayed to me how Bill Cosby once saved her life. Back in the 1980s, in the midst of the civil war, she and her family always made sure to watch The Cosby Show together. One night, when the fighting escalated, they went to an underground bunker near their house to avoid the bombings. At a certain point her father realized that it was time for The Cosby Show to begin. He told the family to leave the bunker so they could all watch together. A few minutes later, a bomb fell on the bunker; her life was saved by the Cos. As a comedian, I had big shoes to fill in Beirut.
Double-O Maz
The Lebanese are known for partying. In the Middle East and, for that matter, around the world, you will always see them owning nightclubs and restaurants and organizing parties. I think the country has known so much war and strife that the people have just gotten used to it. At some point they decided they could either be dragged down by the conflicts or rise above and celebrate life. The Lebanese have chosen the latter. I was told that during their civil war, they would plan in advance where to set up parties in case fighting broke out in the main part of town—much different priorities than in your amateur war zones. Typically, when the bombs start flying, people go into bunkers and hide until it’s over. Not in Lebanon. Instead of hiding, the Lebanese simply move the party into the mountains.
The first time I was in Lebanon the Lebanese Parliament was having trouble agreeing on a new president. This was a political emergency, but if war wasn’t going to halt the parties, a minor issue like this wouldn’t either. One night at our show at the Casino du Libon (yes, there are casinos in the Middle East) a former Miss Lebanon was in the audience.
“In Lebanon you guys say, ‘We have agreed on a Miss Lebanon,’ ” I told the audience in welcoming her. “ ‘Who needs to agree on a president? Let’s party!’ ”
The crowd erupted in applause. They were proud of their lust for life and not worried about their political situation. After all, when you’ve seen years of war, a little disagreement over who’s going to be in charge of planning future wars is no big deal.
One of the more politically powerful groups in Lebanon is Hezbollah. Hezbollah, which translated means “the Party of God,” is a Shiite Muslim organization whose main supporter is the country of Iran. I was born in Iran, so to someone who is a member of Hezbollah I would be considered an ally. Being Iranian in Hezbollah territory is a good thing, and even though I have an American passport it still says where I was born in the passport. This came in handy at the airport in Beirut, which is run by Hezbollah.
Whenever the passport control guys would see I was born in Iran, a little shimmer would come into their eyes. They’d give me a knowing nod as if to say, “Welcome brother! I am sure you have brought us some bazookas from your country of Iran. We will make the drop when the time is right.” I did not want to disappoint, so I would smile back and mumble in broken Arabic, “Salaam alaikum,” which means “hello.” But my “salaam alaikum” was meant to also convey, “Yes, I have the bazookas. I will make delivery as soon as you stamp my passport and let me in.”
I don’t know why passport control in almost every country is set up to make you nervous. Do these guys watch episodes of Homeland in preparation for work every day? For whatever reason I always feel nervous and, depending on where I am, I try to show my allegiance to them and their country in any way possible. When I land in the United States it’s a hearty, “What’s up, sir? Good to be back stateside.” I can even muster up a southern drawl if need be. In Lebanon, “Salaam alaikum, habibi!” (“habibi” means “dear”). When I’m in Sweden: “Hello my fancy blond friend. Big fan of the Swedish Chef and Björn Borg!”
The first time I went to Saudi Arabia, I had to be prepared to lie to the guys at passport control. They did not allow live public performances in Saudi, so you were not permitted into the country on a performer’s visa. We basically had a prince who supported what we were doing and instructed us to tell the passport guys that we were consultants coming in to consult on something. I was never briefed as to what, exactly, we were consulting on, but it was something big, and very important, and we were going to consult the hell out of it. As I approached the passport guy, I could feel the back of my shirt getting drenched with sweat. My nerves were getting the best of me. What if they figured out my real reason for being there and arrested me? I had heard on Fox News that they cut off your hands for stealing in Saudi Arabia. What would they do if they found out you were planning on telling jokes? Illegally! Maybe they would cut off my tongue. Maybe they would cut off my tongue and hands so I couldn’t hold a microphone again! I felt like the guy in the beginning of Midnight Express when he’s trying to sneak heroin out of Turkey. Except I was trying to sneak jokes into Saudi Arabia.
I hate lying to authorities to begin with, and this was Saudi Arabia, where said authorities were probably just waiting for fibbers so they could make an example out of me. I could see the headline: “Iranian-American Jokester Attempts to Make Joke Out of Anti-Joking Laws.” I was just hoping they would see the American passport and not bother asking too many questions. As I approached, there was a British guy on the other side going through passport control at the same time. When the Saudis saw his nationality, both my passport control guy and the guy doing the paperwork for the British guy perked up and said in broken English, “British?”
“Yes,” the man answered.
“James Bond!”
“No, I’m not James Bond.”
“Yes, yes, James Bond!”
“No, no. Really, I am not James Bond.”
“Yes, British. James Bond.”
I don’t know why these guys were so impressed to see a British dude, but I encouraged it. I figured if they were busy being starstruck by a fake James Bond—who was wearing prescription glasses and carrying a leather dossier—then they’d let me slip right through. I could have easily pointed out the un-James-Bond-like qualities of this guy: “Bond has twenty-twenty vision and would never carry a case like that. He also has better teeth than this guy and is well built. This guy is too skinny to be Bond. He looks more like Mr. Bean.”
Instead I smiled at my passport agent and agreed with him. “James Bond,” I said.
He understood. “Oh yes, James Bond.”
I even started speaking in broken English to blend in. “Yes, yes. I say him James Bond.”
As the agent looked longingly at the retreating double agent, he quickly stamped my passport and let me through. Saved by 007!
Conversely, the worst experiences I’ve ever had going through passport control always occur in Kuwait. For some reason every time I’ve gone there, they’ve detained me and asked extra questions. I don’t know why, but I’m told that Kuwait does not get along with Iran. So a typical experience at passport control in Kuwait, for me, might go like this. The guy will see my American passport and say,
“American? Great!”
Then he will look inside and see the place of my birth,
“Born in Iran? Wait! What is your father’s name?”
“My father passed away. His name was Khosro.”
“What is your grandfather’s name?”
“Well he passed away even before, but his name was Jabbar.”
The whole time I’m thinking, How far back are we going with this thing? Is this passport control or Ancestry.com?
One time it seemed like Inspector Clouseau would keep going: “What is your great-grandfather’s name? What was HIS great-grandfather’s name? And his? And his? Has anyone in your family ever been named Moishe? I knew it! You’re Jewish!” Fortunately, he just looked at me and simply said, “You wait. I be back.”
Whenever they say that to me—“You wait. I be back”—I always get nervous and start fidgeting. I had not done anything, but I also didn’t know what kind of crap my grandfather might have been into. I thought Clouseau might come back and say, “Your grandfather has a parking violation from ninety-seven years ago. He was parked in a handicap camel parking zone. It is way overdue. You owe us two million dollars!”
Ironically, whenever you’re leaving a country, the folks at passport control and security don’t seem to be as concerned. I remember leaving Kuwait once, and the same country that had given me a full interrogation coming in didn’t even care what I had in my bags as I left. I put my backpack on the conveyor belt and went through the metal detector. As I went through I noticed that instead of observing the contents of my bag, the security guy was busy checking out the ass of the lady who was in front of me in line. I could’ve been walking through with a Kalashnikov and he could have cared less. He was more concerned with getting a peek than stopping me from hijacking a plane. Who knew that all al-Qaeda had to do to hijack a plane was start working with Kim Kardashian.
Anyway, back in Lebanon, passing through the Beirut airport I was Iranian-ing myself up as much as possible. “Salaam! Salaam!” Hand to my chest in respect with a slight bow and a smile. A look in my eyes as if to say, “I’ve got the weapons. I’ve got plenty and plenty of weapons.” The whole time I was sweating, praying they did not look me up on YouTube and see all my jokes making fun of the Iranian leadership. “Do you guys have WiFi at the airport? Because if you do, I just recommend that you never watch anything on YouTube. You can never trust anything you see on there. All doctored videos. Total American propaganda.”
Funny Shiite Coming Sunni
Lebanon is a country of contradictions. You have so many different political factions and religions that it would take a Ph.D. in political science to understand them. Fortunately, I had a few months of Ph.D. education under my belt. There are Christians and Druze and Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims and a million other groups in Lebanon. This makes it particularly hard when you’re a comedian who likes to work the crowd and build jokes around the audience.
Now here’s a little secret for comedy fans: A lot of times when we do crowd work, the jokes we seem to come up with on the fly are jokes we’ve used a thousand times. But sometimes that can start to feel a bit hacky, so I actually like it when I’m given something unexpected from the audience. I did a show one time in New York and a guy in the audience was named Osama Hussein. Yes, this poor fellow had the first name of Osama bin Laden and the last name of Saddam Hussein. What are the chances? That’s like being named Adolf Mussolini during World War II, or like being a Red Sox fan named DiMaggio Mantle. The only way it could’ve gotten worse is if his middle name were Kim Jong-il—Osama Kim Jong-il Hussein. So obviously, when Osama Hussein comes to your show, you’ve just been gifted five minutes of new material by the comedy gods. Just the time it takes to inspect his ID to make sure he’s legit takes a good two or three minutes.
In Lebanon, this doesn’t always happen. That’s because there are a lot of Christian Lebanese and they do not have the types of names that will help with your act. One time I was in Beirut doing a show on top of a bar. That’s not a misprint—I was performing a stand-up comedy routine on top of a bar where patrons drink alcohol, just like in the movie Coyote Ugly. I had just done some shows in Saudi Arabia the night before, where drinking is strictly prohibited, and now I was in Beirut, where not only was drinking allowed, but they had me standing in front of a hundred bottles of alcohol telling jokes. Before I went up, the club manager asked if I wanted anything to drink.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any tequila?” I inquired.
The Lebanese are proud people. The manager responded confidently. “Of course we have tequila. Why wouldn’t we have tequila?”
“Would you happen to have Don Julio?”
The manager, feeling challenged: “Of course we have Don Julio. Why wouldn’t we have Don Julio?”
“Can I have a double shot of Don Julio on the rocks?”
Manager, now cocky: “You will have a whole bottle!”
“No, no,” I said, worried. “I don’t need a whole bottle.”
“This is Lebanon. You’re getting a whole bottle!”
And so a bottle of Don Julio was designated as my personal bottle for the evening and brought to me in the manager’s office, where I was feeling fairly smug about things. Eat that, Bill Cosby.
Now, I don’t like being drunk onstage. If I ever drink during a show, it’s usually one glass that I will sip during my set. But this was Lebanon and I was telling jokes on top of a bar, so things worked differently. I went onstage . . . I mean I went on a bar with my glass of Don Julio, leaving the bottle behind. At a certain point I decided to riff on a joke about how hard it is to travel being a Middle Easterner and asked a guy in the audience his name. I was expecting Ahmed or Mohammad or Ali—something I could work with. Instead the guy had the most common name ever.
“Joseph.”
“Joseph? As in Joey?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Is that a made-up name?”
“No. It is my given name.”
“Oh, okay. Then your friend there, what’s his name?”
“Anthony.”
“As in Tony?”
“Yes.”
“And the guy next to him?”
“Vincent.”
“As in Vinny? What are you guys, the Sopranos?”
“No,” he said without a hint of a smile. “We’re Christian.”
Buying time, I reached for the tequila and took a sip. I hadn’t noticed, but I had worked my way to the bottom of the glass as I struggled to turn the joke. Soon enough, a waiter showed up with another glass. I think the manager saw that I was struggling a bit and decided to send me more inspiration. Besides, this was Lebanon, and it was my bottle for the night; he wanted to make sure I finished it.
There I was with two double glasses of Don Julio warming my belly, standing on a bar in Beirut, trying to figure out my next move when I noticed a group of women in the corner laughing, talking, and completely ignoring me as if I weren’t standing on a bar with microphone in hand.
“Excuse me, ladies. What’s going on here?”
They were screaming and yelling. “Bachelorette party!” one of them shouted, indicating I should stop bothering them.
“Bachelorette party? We have a stand-up comedy show going on.”
More hollering. “Whatever, dude.”
“No, ladies, this is an advertised show. These hundred and fifty people staring up at the bar have paid to see me perform. You have to keep it down.”
“Woo-hoo!” they hollered. “Keep it down!”
“No, you’re not supposed to yell ‘Woo-hoo, keep it down’ at me. I’m telling you to keep it down.”
More screaming and shouting, and I’m on the verge of losing control.
“Why is the bachelorette wearing a penis balloon on her head? This poor girl is getting married. She’s got many years of humiliation ahead of her. Don’t make her wear the penis balloon.”
“Penis balloon!” they hollered. It was clear they did not understand why I was standing on the bar. Everything I said, they repeated. They thought I was leading them in cheers instead of performing stand-up.
Another sip of tequila. A new glass arrived.
To recap: For a comedian who does Middle Eastern jokes, names like Joey, Tony, and Vinny can really throw you for a loop. Add to that the fact that you’re performing on a bar, sipping your third glass of a double tequila, and engaging in call and response with a bachelorette party, and it can cause real confusion. Was I in Beirut or Las Vegas?
Making things worse, a man who was the chaperone for the bachelorette party approached the stage—which, have I mentioned, was just a bar?—and asked me in broken English when I was going to be finished telling my stories. It seemed the women were getting restless and had heard enough of me babbling into a microphone. They wanted dance music to get the party started. He actually interrupted me midjoke as 150 people were watching my set.
“You. When you finish?”
“Excuse me?”
“When you stop?”
I checked my watch. “I’ve got another half hour. This is a comedy show. They paid me to perform tonight.”
Obviously a professional in his chosen field, he was prepared to work through such trivial roadblocks. “You sing?”
“Do I sing?”
“When you do some songs?”
“I’m not singing. Me do comedy. Ha-ha. Jokey joke.”
“Not funny.”
“You barely speak English. How do you know I’m not funny?”
“I know. You not funny.”
Great, half loaded on tequila in front of a less than ordinary crowd, I run into the Lebanese Simon Cowell. “So you’re a judge of comedy in a language you don’t even speak?” I asked. “Go over there and sit down next to the girl with the penis balloon on her head so I can finish my show.”
At this point he didn’t look too happy with me. I’m not sure if he understood what I was saying, but he seemed upset. He was holding a small bowl of cashews and popping them into his mouth, just crunching the nuts slowly and staring at me. I didn’t know if he was going to pull out a gun and shoot me or if he was blitzed out of his head even more than I was.
Trying to lighten the mood, I asked, “What’re you eating?”
“Nuts.”
“Throw me one.”
He reached into the bowl and tossed a cashew in my direction. I was at least five feet above him and the cashew sailed high overhead in what seemed like slow motion. This was risky; in fact, it was the tequila talking. If it had hit me in the eye, or I had somehow reached for it and lost my balance, I would have ended up looking like an idiot. Even worse, I could’ve fallen off the bar and ended up in a Lebanese hospital. But I kept my composure and somehow snapped the nut out of thin air with my mouth—like a seal at the circus. The audience was impressed: a roaring round of applause. And the chaperone, head hung in defeat, waddled back to the bachelorettes. Bill Cosby NEVER did that!
Making Hezbollah Laugh
I was being exposed to all the different religions and people of the country and at some point someone thought it would be a good idea for me and the Axis of Evil comedians to set up a meeting with Hezbollah leadership and film it. We were in the middle of a five-country tour and had been filming the whole thing to come out with a “behind the scenes” documentary that we would air on Showtime Arabia, a cable network that showed Western programs. Our meeting with Hezbollah would be part of this new format. I guess having three Middle Eastern–American comedians meet with Hezbollah would make good television, right? What nobody thought about was the fact that the United States considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization and would probably not encourage three of its citizens to set up a meeting and film it—even if we were comedians. I can imagine the State Department representative discouraging us.
“Hezbollah is a terrorist organization.”
“Yeah, but we’re comics, so it’s cool.”
“They are a TERRORIST ORGANIZATION.”
“We just want to talk to them. Maybe tell a few jokes.”
“THEY ARE TERRORISTS! THEY WILL KIDNAP YOU!”
“We understand that, but do you think they will laugh at our jokes? Kidnappers have to laugh too, right?”
The person making the introductions told us that our “fixer” would meet us in the parking lot of a grocery store to take us to the meeting with Hezbollah. Anytime you hear the word “fixer” in the Middle East, there is cause to be nervous. In Los Angeles, where I live, a fixer is someone who comes to your house and fixes the washing machine. In foreign countries, a fixer is a guy who is connected and can get you into seedy situations. As we waited for our fixer, I had a feeling he wouldn’t be showing up with a tool belt.
The other comedians and I were waiting in two cars in a grocery store parking lot; the fixer was running late. The more we waited, the more nervous I became. I kept thinking of the opening scene of The Insider with Russell Crowe, in which the Al Pacino character sets up a meeting with Hezbollah and they throw a burlap sack over his head and rush him to the rendezvous with guns drawn. I felt like we were about to be given the same burlap sack treatment. I told one of the Axis comics that this is how every bad kidnapping movie begins—with the victims waiting in a parking lot, in the back of a van, to meet the bad guys. What had seemed like an interesting idea when we were first presented with it was beginning to feel like a really, really bad idea. Also, it was a sunny day. The last thing I wanted was to not be able to enjoy the great weather because I had a burlap sack over my head.
Eventually our Hezbollah fixer showed up and he wasn’t what I expected at all. I was expecting a guy in Fidel Castro military fatigues, maybe with a couple of sidekicks carrying Kalashnikovs. Or maybe a guy in a full Muslim dishdasha with some prayer beads in his hands. You know . . . the outfit. Instead, our guy looked like an employee right out of Ed Hardy—designer jeans, T-shirt, gelled hair, even a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He told us to follow him to Hezbollah territory where we would meet the “main guy.”
The only thing worse than the fixer in these situations is the main guy. The van I was in followed the fixer’s car; one of the guys from our team who was an Algerian Shiite rode with the fixer. The closer we got to Hezbollah territory the more our driver, who was a Christian Lebanese, kept complaining in broken English. “This no good. This no good.” It’s never a good thing when a local is telling you that he’s getting nervous. It would be the equivalent of me driving some guests around Los Angeles and once we got to a bad strip mall, just completely freaking out: “This is the worst stretch of shopping in California! There are just no good restaurants for miles! We could starve and die. Or eat something full of saturated fat!” You’re the local. You’re supposed to keep your cool. But our driver wasn’t holding back. Even when he spoke Arabic, which we didn’t understand, we could make out that he was nervous.
“Blakha blakha blakha BURLAP SACK blakha blakha blakha HOSTAGE!”
Meanwhile, ahead in the fixer’s car, our Algerian friend quickly figured out that the fixer was also a drug dealer, reaching this conclusion when the fixer offered to sell us drugs. I think the fixer did not completely understand who the hell we were. He’d just heard “Americans” and thought we’d probably want to buy some drugs from him. Or maybe he heard “comedians” and thought we would want to buy some drugs from him. Either way, he had drugs and was offering to sell us some.
I’ve come to learn that our fears of people in other parts of the world are usually a bit overblown. The real thing that most of our “enemies” want is simply to have some of our money taking up space inside their pockets. I remember when the “War on Terror” originally began and the military was looking for Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan. There was a newspaper article about how the U.S. military had given a satellite phone to a warlord and told him that if he saw bin Laden he should use the phone to call the military. The warlord had agreed, and no sooner had the U.S. military packed up their Humvees than the warlord set up a phone system where his tribesmen could use the satellite phone to call their families in other countries and he would charge them to use the phone. The U.S. military had thought this guy was interested in catching bin Laden like they were, when he was just interested in setting up a for-profit long distance phone service. We wanted justice, he wanted to be AT&T.
So let’s recap: I, a born Shiite Muslim who’s not really religious, am in one car with Aron Kader, one of the Axis comedians whose father is Palestinian and mother is Mormon. We are being driven by a paranoid Lebanese Christian who thinks we’re going to get kidnapped. Another Axis comedian, Ahmed Ahmed, who is Egyptian and Sunni Muslim, is in a second car with another Christian Lebanese driver who’s freaking out as well. A third car has our Algerian Shiite Muslim friend with a Hezbollah fixer who’s trying to sell him some hash. There’s a country of Jews just an hour away and a warlord in Afghanistan selling airtime. Meanwhile, somewhere there’s a State Department guy who thinks we listened to him. “Good thing they took my advice and didn’t go to meet up with Hezbollah. If they had they would be in grave danger at this very moment. By my estimates they would have had their hands cut off by now and be watching as they were fed to goats.” All caught up?
Aron Kader and I were beyond nervous in our car. In the other car our Algerian friend was making excuses to get us out of the potential drug deal, as we got closer and closer to our meeting spot in the heart of Hezbollah territory. We were in a busy neighborhood with shops and families walking around as dusk arrived. There was probably no real reason to be afraid, but the buildup, combined with our nervous driver, had us completely paranoid. The fixer told us he was going to take us into some building where we would meet our guy. That’s when our Algerian friend called the whole thing off. He told the fixer that we were running late for our show that night and that we would try to set up another meeting on another day. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.
As we all sped away in our van, our Algerian friend, who was now riding with us, told us why he had gotten nervous—he started thinking that the guy we were meeting might have been more of a low level criminal than a member of Hezbollah’s political party. He didn’t want us to go to this meeting and end up getting kidnapped not for political reasons, but for a ransom. So our meeting with Hezbollah was called off. Part of me was relieved, but part of me was bummed. We were on the verge of telling Hezbollah some jokes. We were going to make them laugh. We were going to make it on Hezbollah’s Top 10 Comics to Watch list. We were going to bring peace to the Middle East. At the least, that must be worth a development deal for your own TV show: Hezbollafeld.
Later that night when we did our show I was nervous. I figured we must be on Hezbollah’s radar now that we had stood them up. And who knew how they took being stood up. Maybe it was a huge insult. “No one stands up Hezbollah! How dare they? The comedians must die!” Also, and more importantly, given that Hezbollah’s biggest financial supporter is the government of Iran and the fact that I did jokes making fun of the Iranian regime, I was worried about doing those jokes in Lebanon. As I performed in front of a thousand people in Beirut, I began to pace quickly back and forth onstage when I got to the jokes about Iran. I figured if someone from Hezbollah had been sent to shut me up with a bullet, they would have a tougher time hitting a moving target. For good measure I pondered doing some jokes that would require me to do somersaults as well. I don’t know if anyone was sent to kill me that night, but I finished my set with no bullets flying and all appendages intact. It’s always a good show when no one gets shot or maimed. Especially you.
Finding Out I’m a Hooker
When you perform in Beirut, you have to go to a government office a few days into your trip and they ask you if the promoter is treating you right. I’ve never experienced that anywhere else, but I’m guessing it’s because there are a lot of shady promoters and the government wants to make sure that they’re not taking advantage of acts that come to Beirut. When our promoter told us that one of us comedians would have to get up at nine o’clock in the morning to go to this office, I took the responsibility. They told me that even when Phil Collins came there a few years earlier, one of his bandmates had to get up early in the morning to make this trip and confirm that Phil and company were being treated properly.
I was a big fan of Phil Collins as a kid—even before I knew I was going to be bald like him. I always thought I would lose my virginity to the song “In the Air Tonight.” I know it’s cheesy, but what a great song to lose it to. Especially if you can time your orgasm to the drum solo. I don’t remember what song I lost my virginity to, or if there was even any music playing in the background. And if I was able to control my orgasms to time them to any drum solo I probably would be in a different line of work. At any rate, the fact that Phil Collins had been expected to check in with this office made me want to do it, too. Granted, Phil had sent some roadie from his band, but still, we were kindred souls. Two artists who had visited Beirut. Two bald brothers on a journey to entertain the world. Two guys who could’ve shared the sanctity of a drum solo had I been able to control my bodily functions with a bit more accuracy.
I figured I would go into this office, sign a piece of paper, and then be on my way. However, once I entered, I was surrounded by a bunch of women who looked like Russian prostitutes. I asked the promoter what band the prostitutes were with and she told me that they were brought into the country as “dancers.” I thought, Wow, these dancers are dressed in their full skimpy dance outfits at nine o’clock in the morning. That’s commitment! But then my promoter explained that basically, they were prostitutes who had to enter the country under another title so that they would be deemed legitimate. They even had to come to this office to confirm that their promoter/pimp was treating them kindly. I felt cheap. Did this make me a joke-telling hooker?
Hooker or not, Lebanon is a beautiful country, and Beirut is an amazing place because of the spirit of the people. From time to time there is fighting. Sometimes it’s with Israel, sometimes with Syria, and sometimes with themselves. One time when I was scheduled to perform in Beirut some street fighting broke out—and by street fighting I mean different political factions actually shooting at each other in the streets. I contacted the promoters to tell them we had to postpone the shows. When word got out that we were rescheduling, I received an e-mail from a fan who was obviously tougher than me: “Maz, why did you postpone? We were ready for you. You should come. It’s just a little street fighting. If you move fast enough they won’t shoot you. Next time don’t be such a pussy!”