And Then the Internet Died

February 3, 2008 – 6:16 am

Technology is great. Until it betrays you like a character from a sinister Shakespeare play.

A few days ago, walls were punched in frustration and hair was being pulled out all across the Middle East. The Internet had simply failed. Sites were either not loading at all, or else loading at the approximate speed of the dreadful dial-up era. Entire businesses were said to have stopped functioning.

I don’t know about you, but I felt as though I had been transported back into a primitive Dark Age. I opened the curtains half-expecting to see a street full of carts pulled along by donkeys.

Things are better now; for me and my ISP, at the very least. I am no longer pulling out my hair. But my fingers are still twitching from the initial shock. Any momentary lapse in my browser’s functions has me wanting to crawl under my desk, whimpering in horror at the thought that “ohnoohnoohno, it is about to start again.”

So, what happened? Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in current affairs, humor, science & technology | Comments (0)

The Evil-Doers of Comedy

December 2, 2007 – 8:38 am

Recently, I was lucky enough to get the chance to speak with Ahmed Ahmed, Aron Kader, and Maz Jobrani of the world-famous Axis of Evil Comedy Tour in Dubai. And by “speak with,” I mean interrupting their lunch and rather blatantly stealing Maz Jobrani’s chair (I suppose this is my chance to apologize – and I do, I really do).

Natalia: I see that you guys aren’t stabbing me with a fork for having to do this during your meal, and I thank you for that. How do you find Dubai?

Aron: I love it. It’s very, very opulent. My relatives in Jerusalem live humbly – no dirt floors or anything, but a very simple life, and this is a big contrast.

Maz: People here get our references.

Ahmed: Dubai is very modern. It’s a beacon of light, in this sense.

Maz: It’s not exactly perfect. But there are problems everywhere you go, right?

Natalia: So, I’ve done my research or so I hope. I think I can see what you guys have in common. The Middle Eastern heritage, the desire to challenge stereotypes, the dashing good looks. How are you different?

Aron: Different fashion sense. Ahmed is the one who wears the hats…

Maz: Are you writing this down? Because he’s joking.

Natalia: [momentarily feels like a dingbat] Let’s talk about racism against people of Middle Eastern origin in the United States.

Ahmed: It’s huge. There’s nothing funny about being Middle Eastern in America right now. I’ve been called a “sand-nigger,” etc. But comedy about stereotypes is like therapy, in that sense.

Maz: I think American co-exist well with each other, all things considered, but there are still issues of prejudice you can’t escape, which is why laughing with people is important, which is why this tour is important. It shatters stereotypes. Someone once told me: “I had no idea that you people even laughed.” We are portrayed as completely humourless and that’s not even the worst of it. You know, my mother has been told, “go back to your country, bitch.” She had an accent, and people with accents seem threatening. This is beside all the stuff you would get at school, as a kid. Kids are brutal. But there are always people who have it worse than you. Like the gas station attendants, think about the crap they get on a daily basis.

Ahmed: American racists are lazy too. Someone started targeting Sikhs after 9/11, because of the turbans. Sikhs aren’t even Muslim. It’s like the Joe DeRosa joke about American people thinking that Egypt has oil. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in current affairs, dubai, entertainment, humor | Comments (6)

Woes of Arabia

September 25, 2007 – 12:21 pm

(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

“So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people. Greedy, barbarous, and cruel…”

The first time I heard the above quote by Peter O’ Toole, playing T. E. Lawrence in the epic film by David Lean, I was outraged at the racist tone in this sweeping denunciation of my people – filmed on my turf, in Wadi Rum, no less. How arrogant, I fumed. You see, I always believed that any generalization of whatever nature is by definition prone to mistake, the larger the subjects under judgment, the less accurate the statement is likely to be.

Indeed, any sentence that begins with “ The Arabs are this…” or “The Africans are that…” is at the outset condemned to fallacy. To think in such terms, although very tempting as a simplification of complex phenomena, is nothing short of a foolish dive into the abyss of falsehood. Not only because these pronouncements of opinion are manifestly racist in nature, and we are not supposed to be racist in this epoch of political correctness, but more so because these opinions are most likely to be plain wrong. To lump a vast group of individuals, with different characters, upbringings, abilities, tastes, minds, environments, etc., and treat them as one unit by affording them uniform descriptions and predicting for them common destinies is an invitation for error. Racism is bad not just because it is immoral, but chiefly because it is based upon gross intellectual dishonesty. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in humor, islam, society | Comments (0)

Motorcycle Diaries Part V

August 13, 2007 – 11:57 am

(This article was first published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

Before I reveal to you my ambitious proposition to end human strife and achieve world peace, allow me first to share with you an unusual personal condition from which I’ve been silently, yet painfully, suffering for at least two years now. Today, I believe the time has come to speak out and seek counsel, and perhaps even find a cure. Although I know this is not a help-line for my ailments nor is it the right venue for such private complaints, I still feel the need to blurt it out in public. Maybe, just maybe, I would feel a little better somehow by talking about it. So please excuse my selfishness if you can, but here it is, my mysterious disorder: I cannot read, hear or watch the news anymore. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in entertainment, humor | Comments (0)

Motorcycle Diaries Part II

August 16, 2006 – 12:01 pm

(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

Vroom… vroom, roared the Harley before its engine was turned off outside the pharmacy on duty in Geneva one quiet Sunday morning a few years ago in September. The six foot ‘quelque chose’ rider dismounted the daunting machine, took off his intimidating German helmet, neatly tucked it under his left arm, and walked slowly inside the drugstore.

Click…clack, he steadily thumped his way across the aisles in his huge boots and leathery attire. Elderly Sunday morning shoppers could not hide their disquiet at the site of this unusual visitor with his menacing looks, but pretended to mind their business. With the dark sunglasses carefully hiding hung-over eyes, but betraying weekend stubble, disheveled hair and an overgrown goatee, he placed his helmet on the counter. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in egypt, entertainment, humor, islam | Comments (0)

There Are No Gay Arabs

July 26, 2005 – 12:15 pm

“There are no gay Arabs,” a Saudi friend of mine once said to me over lunch, causing Pepsi to shoot out of my nose.

Now, before I write anything else, I’d have to stress that I like to think myself aware of certain cultural differences that lead to misunderstandings. For example, if any of my high school friends from sunny Charlotte , North Carolina , saw two men from Amman kissing each other on the cheek in greeting, they might instantly decide that some sort of homosexual innuendo has just taken place. Obviously, the Ammanites would have an entirely different view of the situation.

Affectionate behavior between people of the same gender is viewed differently by different eyes. A careful observer needs to have a variety of “eyes” for a variety of occasions. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in humor, islam, jordan, society | Comments (1)

A Rebel’s Guide to the World – Part 2 (weirder, angrier & uncensored)

March 31, 2004 – 11:40 am

My dreams always haunt my sleep in two opposite but equally strange extremes.

Sometimes I have these totally unintelligible hallucinatory visions that I wake up actually believing I must have severe brain damage to be able to come up with such convoluted shit.

On the other extreme, sometimes I make so much eloquent sense inside a dream that I wake up thinking I could have hardly been asleep at all. I compose long articulate sentences, remember things I couldn’t recollect during the day, solve mathematical problems, even compose original musical tunes. And I wake up remembering every single detail. Come to think of it, this also could be the result of severe brain damage.

Anyway, last night I had one of the latter, elucidated kind. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in current affairs, humor | Comments (2)

A Rebel’s Guide to the World

September 18, 2003 – 11:46 am

What’s the point of writing yet another political article seeking to change the world, I would say to friends who ask me, when the world has proven to be such an unchangeable place.

But I guess I’ve had it with the status quo. I’m fed up with the things that don’t make sense in this world. Things like using Latin expressions left right and centre, such as ‘status quo’. Why do people borrow words from a language only a few people understand and no nation in the world speaks? Is Latin to language and academia what French is to etiquette and food; thrown about to sound fancy and ‘sophistiquée’ – where ‘sophisticated’ would have sufficed nicely and delivered the same meaning? I say, ipso facto, that this bona fide habit when abused ad infinitum is prima facie a non sequitur act per se. How does that sound if not pretentious and downright silly? Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in current affairs, humor | Comments (0)