Palestinian American Amer Zahr is on a mission to heal through humour. In 2015 he started bringing fellow Arab American comedians from United States to perform stand-up across occupied Palestinian cities including Nablus, Bethlehem and Ramallah.

Seven years later, Zahr’s now annual Palestine Comedy Festival is still going strong. “Laughter is therapy,” he told Reuters after last week’s festival gig in Jerusalem. “We need to show world that Palestinians love to laugh, we love life, we love art.”

Zahr and his line-up of seven other comedians performed at city’s Dar al-Tifel al-Arabi school, established by a Palestinian educator in 1948 and where organiser Hani Kashou said 350-ticket event was a sell-out.

Their jokes ranged from comic riffs on being questioned by Israeli border guards to puns stemming from mispronunciations of Arabic by people growing up straddling their twin Palestinian and American identities.

Bilal Sharmoug, who closed show, joked that reason he was big was because, growing up, he conflated word for “bon appetit” in Arabic sahtein with sahnein, meaning “two plates”. Poking fun at stereotypes of Arab traditions also struck a chord. When comedian Reema Jallaq talked about being a “shibsheb survivor”-referring to cliched image of Arab mothers throwing slippers at their children to discipline them-Mei al-Bakri, 14 said she laughed especially hard. “That was my favourite joke,” she said as she stood beside her mother. “It was a great show,” said Nihaya Ghoul Awdallah (70) from Jerusalem. “We thank them so much for bringing a beautiful smile to our faces and for allowing us to release our worries, our sadness and difficult circumstances that we are in.”

Line-up in festival’s first year included Egyptian American Emmy-nominated actor Ramy Youssef and Palestinian American comedian Mo Amer, whose semi-autobiographical Netflix series was released on streaming service last week.–Agencies

Published in The Daily National Courier, September, 02 2022

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