Palestinian Comic Manages to Find Humor at Israeli Checkpoints

Omar Karmi

NABLUS: Mohammed Faqih is in trouble. His oldest son Ayman is about to start college and he doesn't know where to get the money to pay for his son's studies. His dilemma is a common one among Palestinians in the West Bank, where poverty is rampant and the economy in ruins. But unlike most Palestinians, Faqih, 41, plans to use laughter to make his fortune.

Faqih is a comic impersonator, and while there is little official work for a comedian in the Occupied Territories, there are plenty of opportunities for performing at venues where audiences are guaranteed to be captive: checkpoints. "Like everyone else, I spend a lot of time at checkpoints," Faqih told The Daily Star, sitting in his father-in-law's house in Nablus. "I have two wives and two families, one in Bethlehem and one in Nablus, so I travel back and forth all the time. It was around the start of the Intifada that I realized my talent could be useful at checkpoints.

I was driving to Jerusalem with a friend who had forgotten his Jerusalem identification card, and we were stopped by soldiers at the checkpoint. They wouldn't let us pass." As Faqih recounts the incident, he slips into his one-man-show routine. Speaking fluent Hebrew, he was able not only to impersonate the reactions of the other passengers in the car, but also of the Israeli soldiers, as he, in a flawless impersonation of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, admonished that "we are doing everything possible to seek peace between us and the Palestinians." General puzzlement turned into hilarity, particularly among his fellow passengers, as he went from Sharon to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat: "Jerusalem is ours and if you don't like it, tough!".

After doing a few requests, the soldiers allowed him and all the passengers, including his friend without identification, through without further ado. The incident taught Faqih that there was room for him to exert his profession during the Intifada. Prior to this, he would perform regularly at weddings, universities and schools around the Bethlehem area. He experienced such success that he quit his job as a sports commentator at the local TV station to concentrate on comedy.

However, it gradually tapered off with the outbreak of the Intifada. "I realized that by making people laugh, I could achieve things. When I make people laugh, both Israeli soldiers and Palestinians, I can see that it facilitates communication between them. They start treating each other like humans."

While Faqih's impersonations span the whole spectrum of Middle Eastern political figures - from Saddam Hussein to Sharon, Arafat, Jordan's late King Hussein, its current leader, King Abdullah II, Osama bin Laden and Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin - he is staunchly apolitical. He refuses to use his characters to deliver any political message. The comedy kicks in when he sets the scene. The centerpiece of his show is King Hussein's funeral, an act that lets him impersonate a myriad of characters.

Whether relating a checkpoint episode or remembering a personal anecdote, Faqih inexorably slips from narrative into performance, effortlessly skipping between characters and scenarios.

Once during Ramadan, while being filmed by Danish television, Faqih and the TV crew were unexpectedly stopped at a makeshift checkpoint along with dozens of detainees. He takes particular pleasure in telling this story, because the incident resulted in Faqih making everyone laugh, getting one of the sharpshooters on the hill overlooking the checkpoint to stand up and give him the thumbs up, and securing the release of all the detainees.

Then there was the episode of the bored Druze soldiers outside Nablus who, at a time of total closure, let him and his son pass after he delivered a few of his impressions, on the condition that they would come back the same way.

During another period of full closure, he was able to convince an Israeli soldier to allow a man who had hurt his hand to get through to seek medical attention, though he himself was not allowed through. "I do what I can," he said. "My talent is to imitate people and make people laugh. If that helps relax people and alleviate tense situations, then that is a good thing."

He has been featured in Al-Quds newspaper, the Palestine Report, the Jerusalem Post, and the foreign press contingent, all of which - while looking for fresh angles from which to report the ongoing conflict - have covered him numerous times. The problem with TV however, is that when the cameras are rolling, Faqih's magic does not always work. "The soldiers don't like to be filmed, and they certainly won't allow themselves to be filmed laughing, so the effect doesn't often come across. I need a hidden camera," he said.

Yet despite all the attention, Faqih maintains that he is not getting through to the audience he really wants to reach: the larger Arab audience, particularly Palestinians and Arafat. "My biggest dream is to do an impression of the president in front of him," he says. He remembers how the Jordanian comedy duo, Hisham Yunis and Nabil Sawalha, after performing their own similar brand of humor before King Hussein, managed to take their show on the road - something that significantly promoted their careers.

Faqih hopes that some day his show will benefit from the same turn of events.