Toward 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.
“But Maz, why do you have to be there? Do you deliver the baby? This is the woman’s job, not ours. She goes in the room, has the baby, and then you see him afterwards.”
That’s how a lot of people think of Middle Eastern men—that we are these macho guys with submissive wives—whereas I’m a modern Middle Eastern man who’s grown up in the West and who feels it’s my responsibility to be in the hospital room when my wife goes into labor, mostly because I’m the main reason she’s there to begin with. Also, I want to see the baby the moment he is born because, like other men, I’m curious if he’ll have my eyes, and I must be sure he’s the same color as me. My father missed my birth. He was out of the country with my uncle who was very sick and needed medical attention in England at the time. Given that I was the first boy of the family, my dad often told me how proud and happy he was when he got the news. A good friend who happened to be a colonel in the Iranian army called him and told him that he’d had a son. My father replied, “Take his balls, place them on your shoulders, and consider yourself promoted to a general!” It sounds much more poetic in the Turkish dialect that my father spoke, but the point is that he was very happy to have a boy. And before any testicle rights organizations begin protesting this book, I just want to clarify that he didn’t really mean for his friend to cut off my balls and place them on his shoulders. He was just trying to say that I was so special that by placing my balls on his shoulders his friend would become a general. Okay, that still doesn’t sound right. Let’s forget that story.
Anyway, I was so into the upcoming birthing experience that I did the un-macho-est thing that a Middle Eastern man can do—I enrolled my wife and me in Lamaze classes. Biggest waste of time and money and macho-ness ever! If your wife asks you to do this, tell her to take your balls, put them . . . No, don’t do that. Just spend that money on a nice dinner when she’s pregnant and enjoy one of the last peaceful moments you will have together. Because once that baby arrives, you won’t see each other for a long time. No sleep, no romance, no breathing together. Just poop, puke, and burping—and that’s just your wife.
The day my son was born—a day that I was mercifully not a seventeen-hour plane ride away—the only thing my wife used her breathing for was to yell at me before she kicked me out of the hospital room. Women in labor tend to take it out on their husbands and rightfully so. We just sit there staring at them while they’re doing all the work and then when the baby arrives we tell people that “we” had a baby. “We” didn’t do crap. She did it all. In order to help the process, though, we hired a doula. The doula and I played good cop/bad cop with my wife. I was the bad cop because no matter what I said or did, it resulted in my wife yelling at me.
“Honey, you want some water?”
“GET OUT!”
“How about a massage?”
“GET THE HELL OUT!”
“Okay, I’m just going to take a walk around the emergency room and see if anyone wants to hear some jokes. Let me know if you want to hear any because I could really cheer you up.”
“YOU WANT TO CHEER ME UP? GET THE HELL OUT! YOU DID THIS TO ME! YOU’RE LUCKY I CAN’T STAND UP. I WOULD KICK YOUR ASS, JOKEY-MAN!”
“I love you, too, dear. Keep up the good work.”
The doula, on the other hand, was the good cop. Anything she said my wife listened to.
“You want some water?”
“Yes, Doula.”
“How about a massage?”
“Yes, Doula.”
“You wanna hear some jokes?”
“You’re a comedian, too? You’re so amazing, Doula! Please, do tell. I could use some cheering up!”
As I was going in and out of the hospital room trying to appease my wife in the midst of thirty-two hours of labor, it occurred to me that maybe the Jordanian driver knew what he was talking about when he told me to stay out of the room. Ultimately, my wife had a C-section and I was in there to see my son born. It was magical and gross all at the same time, like the first time you French kiss. “Oh, wow! She’s got her tongue in my mouth. It feels like a snake. A wet snake that’s probably still covered in its last meal. And some phlegm. Yuk!”
Ironically, I returned to Dubai for some shows a year later and ran into a guy who had seen me at the launch for the real estate development company in 2008. He said he had invested two million dollars in the company and within a year it had gone under. He told me that all he got from his investment was the comedy show. He said that was the most expensive comedy show he had ever paid for. I gave him a hug and told him that next time he should just call me directly. I could save him money and do the show for just one million.
Dubai grows so fast that it often seems like hotels open before they are ready. If you ever see pictures of Dubai from the 1980s, there’s nothing there. Just a lot of sand and a few buildings. Now when you go there it looks like the skyline of Las Vegas, buildings among buildings among more buildings. A few times, the hotels I stayed at were brand new but little things wouldn’t work. The hot water would come out cold; the cold would come out hot; flushing the toilet would start the shower; turning on the shower would call room service; turning on the lights in the bathroom would launch an attack on Bahrain. I wondered if they just clipped the ribbon and figured they’d work out the kinks later. One thing you begin to see in the region is that when it comes to city planning, there aren’t a lot of rules and regulations. People get contracts based on relationships, then they just start building and figuring it out as they go.
“I’m building a two-bedroom condo, but it might turn out to be a thirty-story hotel, depending on when the bricks run out.” It’s gotten better now, but back in 2007–2008 the kinks were definitely still being worked out.
On one trip, the hotel we were staying at was built, but there was no road leading to the hotel. Our cab driver kept going in circles trying to get us to the front door. He would get us close and then the road would veer to the right.
“Turn left!” I would holler, seeing the hotel drift away.
“Sir, there are no lefts!”
“You mean it’s a one-way?”
“No, there is no road to go left. I have been trying to get to this hotel for a year and I can’t get there.”
I was not fully aware of how lax the rules were until I took my son with me to Dubai in 2010. At the time, he was about a year and a half old. It was one of my favorite trips as he, my wife, and I spent three weeks in the region. I was doing shows, and we had downtime in between to spend together. One day I took him to a playground inside the Dubai mall. He was running around, climbing the play structure, and having a blast. Then he found the slide. When you put your toddler on a slide in the United States, there are rules as to how they’re constructed. There are contractors, foremen, laborers—all who know how to properly install slides. Whoever makes these slides in the United States has to put something on the slide to slow the baby down once it gets to the end. Not in Dubai.
As I watched my boy slide down and get launched into the air, like a tiny, twenty-pound projectile, my heart sank. I chased after him and ran up to the people in charge.
“DID YOU SEE MY SON FLY OFF THE SLIDE? WHERE DID HE GO?”
“He is on the third floor, sir. Just take the elevator up. Once you get there, turn right because there are no lefts.”
“THIS IS DANGEROUS! IS THIS SLIDE PERMITTED?”
“Yes sir. But it’s permitted to be a seesaw!”
Bombing Big in Dubai
On one of my trips to Dubai in 2013 I arrived during Dubai Art Week. This is a cool gathering of artists and exhibitions from around the world. It allowed me to see a side of Dubai I hadn’t seen in the past. For once I wasn’t in luxury cars going from gigs to fancy after-parties; instead, I was walking around warehouses, checking out cool art and hearing acoustic guitarists play folk music. If you only watched FOX, you would not know that there is, in fact, a lot of art and culture in the Middle East, not just angry bearded dictators and ululating American-flag burners. People from all different backgrounds are exchanging ideas and getting together for festivals and events that we in the United States have no idea are happening. For example, did you know that they have an Arab Idol? Okay, not the best example of something cultural, but still, they have singing competitions.
I was scheduled to perform at a big fund-raiser during the festival. Always the clown, never the artist. As often happens at these events I went up last—and ate it! At the time, I was still the Eddie Murphy of Dubai—although other American comedians had gone out to perform and the market was beginning to get competitive. So maybe I wasn’t the Eddie Murphy anymore, but rather the Martin Lawrence. The point is that I was still looked at as an international star comedian whom they had brought in to perform at this exclusive event.
There’s nothing worse than grand expectations when it comes to performing. The best thing for a performer is when you do a set where no one knows you and they don’t know what to expect. That’s when you can kill and they come up to you after saying, “I had never heard of you before. You’re the funniest comedian I’ve ever seen!” You walk out thinking your career is going places. That random person said I’m the funniest person ever. I’ll probably have my own show on ABC next week! The opposite is the worst. When you show up at an event and everyone knows you. “Maz Jobrani! I am a huge fan. I can’t wait to see you. I have seen all your clips on YouTube and I paid two hundred and fifty dollars for tonight’s fund-raiser just to see you. You are my favorite!” That often sets you up for failure, because no matter what you do, you won’t live up to expectations.
I had been built up as the closing act. I was trying to psych myself up that I would do well and everyone would get his money’s worth. The night began with an amazing dance troupe that had been flown in from another country. These guys were doing Michael Jackson choreography and balancing themselves on lampposts. This one guy would just hold himself up horizontally, almost like he was floating on air. One of the most amazing things I had ever seen, and also one of the most intimidating. Right away I knew I was in trouble. These people had glistening abs. They were dancing around like their legs were made of rubber. The one dude levitated. I’m a comedian. I don’t levitate. If I’m lucky, I might jump up and down onstage at one point to drive home a punch line, but too much jumping might result in a pulled hammy. It was going to be a tough act to follow.
After the dancers there were speakers, a decadent dinner, an auction, dessert by a German chef and his crew of workers who prepared an amazing display as the German yelled orders with his thick accent. “Now add zhe shoooogah! HURRY UP!” A good five hours of the greatest entertainment I had ever witnessed, and then I heard the deejay nonchalantly summon me for the finale: “Give it up for Maz Jobrani!”
I got on the stage and I was staring down at two hundred tired, sugar-high, wrecked faces who had just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying art. I maintained composure and launched into my jokes. Right away I was flopping left and right, so I decided to do crowd work.
“I heard there’s Kuwaiti royalty here tonight. Where is he?”
Everyone looked uncomfortable as they pointed to a lady I recognized. I felt like an idiot because when I met her earlier, no one had said, “Maz, this is Princess So and So from Kuwait.” I guess they figured that I would know she was a princess, but I had no idea. All I could muster up was an, “Oh yes, of course. Hello Your Highness . . . Excellency . . . Holiness.” I never know what to call royalty, so I try to cover all bases.
My next target was an older Indian gentleman in the back of the room whom the auctioneer had spoken to earlier. This man was very dapper, and I figured he must be an artist of some kind. Since my wife is Indian I have some jokes about Indians and their names. I asked the gentleman his name and he replied. I couldn’t understand a word he said since he was so far back, and I kept asking him to repeat himself. Now the crowd was getting antsy. Finally I did my Indian jokes and got a lukewarm response. I later was told that this guy was one of the biggest stars in Bollywood. Think the Indian Morgan Freeman. So now I had insulted two famous people by not knowing who they were. I was really starting to seem like the stupid American in the room.
There were a handful of Lebanese in attendance, and they are usually good laughers. So my last attempt at saving myself was my tried and true arsenal of Lebanese jokes. Like how in Lebanon you can actually get a loan from a bank for plastic surgery. They have guys walking into banks saying, “Yes, hello, I am here for a loan. I was going to remodel my house, but I’ve decided to remodel my wife. We were going to add a bathroom, but we’ve decided to add some tits.” This joke would usually kill in front of a Lebanese crowd, but that night, in front of the princess from Kuwait, not a peep. Even the Lebanese had lost their will to laugh. And when the Lebanese aren’t laughing, you’re screwed. You just keep yapping away waiting for a spattering of chuckles to end on and get off. You sweat, you ruin your expensive suit, you question why you ever got into this comedy racket in the first place. Then you rush off, make your way to the bar, and find a few allies who enjoyed watching you squirm. You try to downplay it, but they remind you, “Hey, man, you did it the Dubai way. You didn’t just bomb. You bombed big.”