Arab-Americans: On Netflix, Mo Amer Plays “Mo Najjar”

Using Satire to Ease Misery of Immigration

Mohammad Ali Salih — Washington

08 October , 2022

Comedian Mo Amer, who filmed his new Netflix show, “Mo,” in his adopted hometown. Credit: Netflix

In “Mo,” Amer plays the semi-autobiographical character Mo Najjar, whose immigration woes force him to work under the table to support his family. Credit: Netflix

A flashback scene from “Mo” depicts the family as they’re about to leave Kuwait for a new life in Houston, Texas. Credit: Netflix

In scenes with his girlfriend Mexican-American girlfriend Maria (Teresa Ruiz), Mo often speaks in Spanish. Credit: Netflix

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Last month, the popular Netflix TV network broadcasted a first of its kind — a Muslim Palestinian American presenting his life story to a world-wide audience of about 225 million who subscribe to this California-based production company with $30 billion annual revenue and 12,000 employees.

The series was applauded for being one of the first major American television shows to portray a Palestinian-American refugee as the protagonist. Review-aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 100% rating for being “frequently hilarious while possessing an absorbing sense of place, Mo is a thoughtful depiction of the immigrant experience that is light on its feet.”

Mohammed Amer (41-year-old) was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents who sought refuge there from Israel’s occupation of their land, and later sought refuge again in the US when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Amer, who rose to fame as a comedian, joked about “Three Hells”: Israeli’s occupation, Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait, and, to a lesser degree, the US bureaucracy that “tortured” him for years when he applied to be an American citizen.

His jokes about the US immigration bureaucracy are endless, particularly when he was a standup comedian before the “Mo Najjar” series on Netflix. His comedy routines not only made fun of himself as a naïve immigrant, but also targeted the immigration and naturalization department, which has been known as probably the most complex — and ineffective — federal government agency.

As in this joke: “I had [before becoming an American citizen] what’s called a refugee travel document. Inside, in huge letters, it says: ‘This is not a US passport.’ An immigration officer once looked at it, took it away for 20 minutes, came back and informed me that it was not a US passport.”

Although trying not to dwell on politics, he couldn’t escape it during about 20 years of being a comedian in view of the reality of US politics and culture, particularly for being a Palestinian and a Muslim, and especially after the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001.

In a recent interview with the Washington Post he remembered those days: “Things started to go very wrong. It wasn’t that I didn’t get bookings — a lot of people thought I was Mexican anyway — but emotionally I was having a tough time. It was hard for me to hear how Arabs were being talked about.”

Then, there was the name of Osama bin Laden: “In a Walmart, I lost Osama, my young nephew, and stated running from aisle to aisle looking for him, but, I couldn’t at all shout his name,” then the punchline, “Do you know how many people in Walmart were carrying guns?”

Amer talked about grappling with the issue of combining his ethnicity with his comedy. “The whole pigeonholing thing about being Muslim and funny … I try to avoid it, I’d rather just be a comic who is also Muslim.”

Despite not wanting to be boxed in, he sometimes refers to his religion. In YouTube videos, he tested Americans on the street about their knowledge of Islam. Some people thought that the Islamic fasting month was called “jihad” or “February.” However, Amer is adamant that his ethnicity should not curtail his comedy: “I definitely don’t feel restricted, I really feel no boundaries.”

Most of the time, Amer avoided politics as he found rich sources in other fields. At first, he focused on the most universal topic of all — teenage life. He found himself doing standup jokes to American troops in Japan, Korea and Guam as well. The irony was that he found American soldiers “the best audience. We forget that soldiers are among the most well-travelled people in the world. They understand the references I make.”

They, and many other Americans, surely understand “falafel” “pita” and ‘hummus.” And that was why Amer suggested to Netflix to locate his show, “Mo,” in Houston, and to have “Mo” enjoying pita and olive oil with friends while sitting inside a Middle Eastern cafe smoking a hookah. As an employee in a grocery store, he offers women bites of pita bread with “my mother’s olive oil.”

In subtle ways, Middle East food became his “weapon.” It is an Arab custom of offering food, and, in times of crisis, eating to lessen the effect of the crisis. In the morning, “Mo’ woke up to his mother’s large plate of hummus and pita next to his bed. Now, his girlfriend of Mexican origin moved from baking tortillas to baking pita bread, and from making refried beans to making hummus.

Once he shouted obscene words in a grocery store when he saw hummus with chocolate, and also when he saw a hamburger inside a pita bread. In Houston restaurants, he carried his mother’s homemade olive oil in a small bottle in his pocket and on weekends took the family to an olive farm, to feel connected to Palestine, if for no other reason.

The show follows fictional “Mo Najjar” as he and his family navigate the exhausting adaptation to American life — also the fruits of its diversity.

He speaks Arabic at home, Spanish with his Mexican American girlfriend and English to his audience.

He found that creating “Mo” was a therapeutic procedure as it mostly followed his life events. “I was very excited to pick it apart and figure out what we wanted to fictionalize to push this story forward,” he said.

But, after almost 30 years in America, he still wonders: “When is the world going to be ready for me? When am I, as a Palestinian, going to be allowed to have a show that has this kind of narrative?”

He answered: “You will never know, but you better be prepared.”