Egypt7000

My name is Mujahid. I am a stand-up comedian, and tonight, the Laugh Garage is my coliseum…

I arrive at 8:30. The show starts in thirty minutes, add to that the fifteen “Warm up” minutes the MC will perform, and I’ve got 45 minutes to get ready and go through my “preparations”. I actually don’t have anything special to prepare before the show. Well, one thing I do when I play this particular club is I always make sure I go into the adjacent convenience store. The shopkeeper is from Egypt. And due to the current events undergoing, our conversations always went in the same direction, more crazy shit happening in Egypt. Last night, I saw protestors on horse AND camelback charging at other protestors. Watching that from Sydney seemed surreal. I wondered if they thought that camels could dodge bullets.

The moment a comedian walks into a venue, he starts tasting the air. Are they a happy crowd? Can you get away with improvisation or do you need to do a tight set? A million questions, for an outdoor gig, we even look at wind direction, as it can either spread the laughter wide or make you feel you are speaking in the eye of the storm. A jazz trio plays Frank Sinatra and does a very good job of it. The mood seems positive and everyone is acting and dressing very relaxed. The type of audience is like a cat, you keep their attention focused on you the whole time like a dangling string. They don’t know why they cant look elsewhere as long as you keep dangling the string. And if they find something slightly more interesting then you have lost them and your momentum. All you can do then is wait for a big laugh and close the set. Your last joke is what you will be mostly remembered by, not the preceding fifteen minutes.

Fareed, the shopkeeper swears profusely in Arabic. If for anything, Arabic is the queen of swear languages. The possibilities are endless. It’s like a Middle Eastern Fusion kitchen. Anything goes with anything. For example, “If I catch Hosni Mubarak, I hump the dead peoples of his mother” Nice going, just get him madder… A barrage of insults hits me like giant flashlight on my face. In the Middle East we say if you ever get into an argument with an Arab, pray that he is not Egyptian! They have a mouth that won’t quit. My favorite Egyptian swear is called “Khaltak” or “Your auntie”. The idea is to listen to what the other person says, extract something rude out of it and just “Is your auntie” to the sentence. FOR EXAMPLE: “Ali! How is my favorite Palestinian werewolf?” Response: “The werewolf is your auntie!” Now that was an easy example. The Egyptian swear dictionary is not FIFA accredited. This means that there are no rules, and the field is twice as wide, but we will get back to that later. “Later is your auntie!”

The crowd is nice and warmed up. The MC did a great job. His role there is the Unknown Soldier. You are basically are a reconnaissance soldier, first charging infantry, and a human shield. You engage the crowd to prime the room so that the other acts can ascend smoothly. It is no secret in the industry that a good MC can sail 4 average acts safely and mostly painlessly to the other side while 4 great acts are forsaken if they have a rubbish MC. As he brings me on he throws the customary black joke. I grin, as I climb the stage I throw back what seems like a witty comeback. I am actually grinning because they don’t know that that whole thing was staged. The MC had warned me that he is doing that joke so I can use my comeback to double the time it would usually take to built rapport with audience. If you seem smart and quick from the get-go then you are halfway there. The Unknown Soldier does it again.

Fareed tells me of all the hardship that his family is going through back in Egypt. Having many Egyptian friends like in my case meant that since this debacle started I have heard stories that I can’t even repeat. In my moments of frustration, anger and anguish, I felt like a buying a plane ticket and going there. I didn’t don’t know what I would do once I got there though. I was a paramedic for three years so I could do that. With the bodies lining the streets, there would always be work for me I assume. I fantasized about picking up all my friends in a big convoy to safety, to freedom, to a better life. Then I realized that I could fly there but I had a snow ball’s chance in hell in making it out of the damn airport, according to the news. This thing would probably boil over while I am trying to find a cabbie that would agree to drive straight through road blocks. I saw the cities burn. I discovered then one the strangest pains in the world. To see a building you walked through for hours up in flames is an intensely sharp pain, like part of you is burning in that building, and you sadly certain that, no how well they rebuild the building or your soul, it will never be the same again. Every street on the television was sadly familiar. The café on the corner of Tahrir (Liberation) Square that made the best bean (foul) stew. The In-the-middle-of-the-city’s-biggest-intersection kiosk that sells magazines and tahini flavoured gum, and yes it’s as horrible as it sounds. Watching Egypt being eradicated so that it somehow becomes better was and still is like being forced to watch someone you deeply care being violated over and over again and all you can do sit there and watch. An Arabic writer, Ahmed Toufik, wrote a line about what to do when you are unable to save someone you love:

“I may not be able to save you, but do not worry, for l choose to die before you. For a life without you in it, is not worth living…” I felt like dying as I watched everyday struggling Egyptians who worked for $40 a month actually die. The regime was killing them and now the revolution is killing them. Some people have no luck.

First joke, bang! I got them in the palm of my hand. Like a snake charmer, I must keep playing and keep moving. You are a joke sniper, you only get one shot per joke, and then you have to keep moving between targets. So far, the first 6 jokes where like shots to the head –sorry Mrs. Griffin-. Time to bring out the big guns. In a comedy “battle”, small jokes like small arms, they go first and the “caliber” of your joke must increase with every shot. Your last shot must be the “money shot”. It has to be the BIGGEST of all your joke “bombs”. Like I said earlier, the only thing that anyone remembers from a fight is the knockout punch, so make it better than good. Make it phenomenal. I cruise through the rest of the set with no problems. I even have to stop a few times for applause. These are the nights that cemented our addiction the stage. Your comedy career does not really start until you “bring the house down” of your own merit. From then on, you are a “stage junkie”, waiting for the next “hit”, praying that every high will feel like the first time you were up there. I improvise slightly as the mood of the evening permits it. The new jokes work as well. You check the imaginary clock in your head and curse, saying the same thing every comic says at this very moment. “Damn! I could be up here forever…” Amen. I wrap it up with my biggest joke “bomb”. I wrote it years ago but like the collective will of the Egyptian people, we never really realized the power that was in our hands. I get constant applause, six years of work paying off. A few whistles and a hoot and I bow and walk backwards into to the darkness in the back of the stage. I instantly breathe a huge sigh of relief. That twenty minute skirmish can still sap a lot of your energy in the process. It didn’t matter. Mission accomplished.

Farid giggles mischievously when I tell him cynically that I think shooting a dictator like Mubarak would be a waste of a bullet because a criminal like him must given to the people so that they can teach him that payback is bitch. I also tell him jokingly that King Fahad of Saudi Arabia has reserved Mubarak a castle next to the castle of president Zain Al-Abdin of Tunisia so they can be neighbors and hang out together, listening to Fairouz. No, they are unworthy of listening to Fairouz, she is a queen of the people, the woman who once famously sang “The road to Jerusalem is down a barrel of a rifle.” No, these two idiots can sit there reminiscing to the old days while listening to “Smack That” by Akon.

I wave goodbye to Farid as I leave the shop. That conversation was a good twenty minutes. He looks happy to see me every time and seeing him being so stoic and relaxed, yet instantly cursing like an Arab sailor reminds me of where I come from and there is still hope. Assuming that 80 million Egyptians will have 5 percent of the population classified as geniuses, then this means that there are at least 4 million intelligent, gifted, and free thinking Egyptians out there just waiting for a chance to make right. The ones on the streets are just the tip of the iceberg. “Your auntie is an iceberg”.

To my brothers and sisters in Egypt. The kindness and compassion that you have engulfed me with when I visited Egypt last year I have never felt elsewhere outside my home. Believe me when I say that, if it meant repaying your kindness, I would be more than willing to trade places with you right now. We are thinking of you every day and every night. You are often in our dreams but always in our prayers. Your quest for democracy and free thought is our quest. With your actions you remind us all that life is simply a matter of which bridges to cross and which bridges to burn. You also remind us that it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees. I salute you. We salute you.

My brother Fizo and the Asmar Family, Mousa and his family, Kareem Kamatcho and his family, Arafa, Ahmad, The families of Haytham, Eman, Ahmed Jo, Ahmed Moenis, and Al-Nahda National Schools, Class 11AS, 2000.Please be safe. Ali… your mom is my auntie…