I'm Not a Terrorist, But I've Played One on TV Read Online Free Page B

terrorists,” I said.
    â€œThen who should play the terrorist? Would you want to see white actors in Arab face?”
    â€œOr Latinos,” I suggested. “They kind of look Middle Eastern.”
    â€œThey could pass,” Colbert agreed. “They could pass.”
    A couple years later I got the part of an Arab-American Secret Service agent in the movie The Interpreter, with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. This was a big win for me because I thought I had no chance in hell of getting the part. I auditioned for Sydney Pollack on tape, which means that you don’t even go into an audition room. You just film yourself and mail it in. Even when they called me and told me I had the part I thought that maybe they had picked another guy and gotten me mixed up with him. I know this happens with other minorities where people say all Asians look alike or all black people look alike, so why not with Middle Easterners? It’s even happened to me in the past where people haveconfused me with my fellow Middle Eastern–American comedian Ahmed Ahmed, who is Egyptian and looks nothing like me (meaning he has hair and a small nose). So I thought that maybe Pollack and friends had seen some other Middle Eastern actor and thought, Hey, they all look the same, so just call the dude named Maz. He’ll do.
    The first day I went to work on the film in New York I had a simple scene where I’m supposed to say a few lines to myself as I sit in my car, watching a suspect through binoculars. We did one take and Sydney Pollack’s voice came over the walkie-talkie they put in the car with me.
    â€œDo it again, but make it even more casual.”
    Take two and Pollack’s voice: “This time, try a little more emphasis.”
    Take three: “You’re trying too hard. Just throw it away.”
    Take four: “Breathe, relax, and say the lines.”
    At this point I’m melting, thinking, They’re going to fire me and I’ll have to go back to playing terrorists. I knew they had the wrong guy! They wanted Ahmed! I can call him right now! Maybe I’ll quit and become a chiropractor. I just hope no one’s taken the license plate CHIRODK.
    By take seven we got it. And Pollack even came around and was joking with me by the end. The really cool thing with The Interpreter was that there was actually a scene where I’m on the bus, following the same suspect I was watching from my car before, and the bus explodes. I get off just before the explosion and survive. So it was one of the first times I had played a character who not only wasn’t involved in the act of terrorism, but he actually survived it.
    It was a bright day in the Jobrani family.
    â€œYou not die!” my mother said. “You didn’t kill anyvon like I told you, but at least you not die. Remember, lights, camera, you go!”

Tehran, Iran
    I first saw Tehran as a very, very young child, less than one second old, in fact. Which is a drawn-out way of saying: I was born there. I don’t remember much because, like most babies, I was selfish and stupid and probably crying because one of my boundless needs was not being met exactly when I demanded it. I was born on Ashura, which is the day Shiite Muslims mourn the death of one of their prophets, Hussein. While I was crying in the hospital because I was being slapped on the ass, in the streets of Tehran people were crying because their prophet had been martyred years before. A day of crying—an inauspicious moment for the birth of a comedian.
    My earliest memories as a kid in Tehran were of soccer, orange soda, Mohammad Ali, Zorro, Spider-Man, and chocolates. Yes, my experiences were very similar to those of a kid growing upin America. Even back then, America had done a tremendous job of exporting its culture abroad. We did not have the Iranian equivalent to Spider-Man or Superman or any other superhero, so I drank up Western culture wherever I found it. In Iran,