What kind of places did you perform at? Does Saudi Arabia have comedy clubs?

 

No, that first show of mine could have been busted at any second. They have this group of people called the Haya. They all have long beards, and they are really ignorant. Whenever people throw parties or whenever guys and girls are hanging out together and these guys come in, it’s all over. They grab you, they take you to jail, they call your parents, and they mess everything up. At any second these people could have rushed in and stopped our shows. So we chose really remote areas away from the cities to do our shows, and then we realized we could do shows in places like the Italian Club, which is actually part of the Italian consulate.
Over time, [the authorities] started to accept stand-up comedy. They started to realize that people need something to do on the weekends. People aren’t making fun of the government necessarily, and they are not going to change the system. The government is afraid of people becoming too advanced and coming together; they don’t want them to be too Westernized. But now stand-up comedy is coming to be sponsored by big national companies. It’s become legit.
I imagine they are still not allowed to criticize the government or the royal family.
No, but the thing is, whenever a business is successful, the royal family wants in on it. They say, “We’ll give you some money and take this business from you.” That’s kind of what happened with comedy. The first production company was called Smile Productions, run by a British guy named Peter Howarth-Lees. And then the prince came into it and started a company called Luxury Events and just took over. It’s always like that.

A promo for Luxury Events.
What kind of crowds showed up to these performances?
At first it was a lot of expats. But then more and more it’d be locals, Saudis, guys and girls. And there would even be some religious people. I remember doing a show where one of the comedians, a Saudi friend of mine who calls himself “the Cool Terrorist,” was doing some jokes and really pushing it in terms of profanity, you know? There was one guy in the front row who looked to be very religious with the beard and everything, and his wife was completely ninja’d out with just her eyes showing. After his performance, my friend felt so guilty, he actually went up to this religious man and said, “I apologize for my use of language. I hope I didn’t offend you.” And the guy was like, “Look I have a long beard but I really enjoyed it. I thought it was awesome and I wish you the best.”
So how did you come to leave Saudi Arabia? One thing I don’t understand is that you were born there, but never had citizenship.
It doesn’t matter if you’re born in Saudi Arabia, it doesn’t matter how long you live there, it doesn’t matter if you work there, or if you go to school there. You’re still considered an expat. I have friends who are American and live in Saudi Arabia, who are married to Saudi women and have children with them, but they still don’t have residency permits, which are called Iqamas. If you don’t have an Iqama or a job that sponsors you in the country, you just gotta get the hell out. It’s crazy.
I was sponsored by my job at an English-language teaching institute, which was fine, and then they started to pay us really late. So I quit and n found a job at a university. And when you change jobs you need to go to your previous company to transfer your Iqama—but when I tried to do that they said that I ran away, so I couldn’t get any of the money that they owed me or a new permit or anything. They just completely screwed me over. And this is actually quite common, especially among the people from India or Pakistan or Bangladesh; the guys who do the manual labor. They all get screwed over this way. Once this happens to you, you have no rights. If you have money in your bank account, you can’t access it. I couldn’t even sell my car that was in my name.
There were lots of things going on in my life at the time. I had fallen in love with a Saudi girl and had been with her for two years, then she told me that once she graduated college her dad was going to force her to marry someone.
So I was in this phase where I really didn’t care about anything. I was illegal, I couldn’t marry my girl, and she was going to marry someone else very soon—and on top of that, I got kicked out of my apartment building because this guy who was staying on my couch called my neighbor’s wife a bitch.