Went to See Maz Jobrani Last Night

I took my wife and my son for their birthdays, which are a day apart later this month, to see the Iranian-American comic Maz Jobrani last night at Town Hall. He is very talented and very funny. One of the things he does to great effect is bring the audience into dialogue with him as part of his show, and so–since part of this agenda is quite explicitly political, i.e., to use comedy as a way of calling out and breaking down stereotypes and other kinds of barriers between different kinds of people–he asks members of different groups to identify themselves in the audience: Iranians (obviously), white people, Arabs (making sure to specify which country they come from, to make the point, you know, that the Arab Middle East is not all one country), Jews, Latinos, etc. Perhaps my favorite joke of the evening resulted from this–not that it was the funniest, but it was my favorite.

He was talking to some Palestinian women sitting in the front and then–I don’t remember exactly who said what–identified some Jewish people sitting in the same row, more or less, but across the aisle. He asked them to wave at each other, which they did, and made the predictable joke about the peace process starting right there as part of the Maz Jobrani show. There followed some other patter and then he said, addressing himself to someone else in the audience, saying something like, “See, now, we need to start with a wave. Can’t go too far too soon; there’s just too much distrust.” Then he turned to the Palestinians and said, “Please, now, don’t go throwing anything at them; I don’t know what you brought with you, but don’t throw it. Not tonight.” And then he turned to the Jews and said, “And don’t you go taking her seat; it’s her seat. Okay?”

The audience exploded with laughter. It was not his funniest joke of the evening, but it was in some ways his most pointedly political, and he carried it off so lightly, so well, I was clapping as much in admiration as I was in laughter. It made me wonder what he would have done with us had we been sitting close enough: a Jewish American man, a Muslim Iranian woman and our son. It also reminded me, for some reason, of one of my favorite poems by the 12th century Iranian poet Saadi. Here it is in my tranlsation:

Everyone thinks his own thinking is perfect and that his child is the most beautiful.

I watched a Muslim and a Jew debate
and shook with laughter at their childishness.
The Muslim swore, “If what I’ve done is wrong,
may God cause me to die a Jew.” The Jew
swore as well, “If what I’ve said is false,
I swear by the holy Torah that I will die
a Muslim, like you.” If tomorrow the earth
fell suddenly void of all wisdom
no one would admit that it was gone.

Cross posted on The Poetry in the Politics and the Politics in the Poetry.