Over lobster in
As I set out for lunch with the Saudi comedian Fahad Albutairi, my phone suggests the restaurant is out at sea. Then again, we are meeting in
The interior of the Al Qasr hotel, connected to the restaurant where he has opted to meet, looks like something from a harem painting: camel statues, marble archways and ceiling-high doors carved from wood and gold. Outside, a long pier leads out into the Persian Gulf and the Pierchic restaurant, a circular wooden building with glass walls and stunning views of aquamarine waters, and the alienesque but iconic Burj Al Arab rising from the shore. Given the ostentatious setting and his laconic emails, I fret our lunch may be a stilted affair. But my anxieties melt the second Albutairi arrives, greeting me with a big smile and profuse apologies for being late. He is dressed in a grey shirt and frayed jeans, with black and grey striped socks poking up from his boots.
Albutairi, 31, was raised in the seaside town of Khobar, known for the laid-back attitude of many Arab coastal towns and an openness to westerners working at the nearby headquarters of oil company Saudi Aramco. His seaside upbringing fostered a life-long love of seafood, he says, which is why he chose Pierchic for our meeting.
He also grew up on a diet of Egyptian comedy films,
When our waitress arrives, I order a white wine while Albutairi sticks to sparkling water. A second server delivers a basket of bread and butter. “I’m not going for that,” he says, before describing his latest workout regime.
Albutairi’s epiphany came through watching some of America’s stand-up greats, such as
From those humble
With a trademark set of goofy thumbs-up and winks (which he also uses in face-to-face conversation) and well-honed comedic timing, he delivers Arabic monologues, often subtitled in English, in a way that takes delight in his society’s absurdities as much as it mocks them.
To the rest of the
He laughs, insisting he moved here for professional reasons. And anyway, he adds, many older conservatives liked the video, not detecting the irony. “A lot of people were actually using the video to show international audiences we don’t want women drivers. I loved the fact they were so confused. I’ll tell you why: because if we kept it mysterious, everybody is going to retweet, everybody is going to share it . . . They might only realise later on when it’s too late.”
His use of Twitter and
“No. No.” He shakes his head slowly and dramatically, and the waitress bursts into laughter. “If I was paying, then yeah. But since it’s on the FT, I’ll go for the grilled Canadian lobster.”
As she convinces him to add a side of mashed potatoes, I gape at the price -
Our orders taken, Albutairi says he only recently returned from
“I want to link this region to the global scene. People have already started doing that in
He comes off far savvier than the scrawny nerd with the shock of curly hair that first endeared him to fans, a look he says got him branded by an
His mother is supportive but it is his grandfather, a local writer, who is his biggest fan. His father and siblings are a tougher sell. “They’re like: we’re already dealing with a big ego, we don’t want to inflate it too much,” he laughs.
At this point we realise we have barely touched our appetisers. Albutairi’s carpaccio is sprinkled with petals, candied orange peels and an electric-blue goo. My scallops are buttery and tender, but I skirt around a dollop of foie gras.
When he first started doing stand-up in Saudi in 2009, it was so new that organisers were unsure what the reception among more conservative parts of society - or the morality police - would be to this western-inspired entertainment. They hosted the first shows in residential compounds and then moved into bigger tents in the desert to accommodate larger crowds.
Arabic stand-up itself was a new concept, and Albutairi and other comics who were starting out rehearsed and produced sketches together, finding ways to transfer American stand-up delivery into Arabic. “It was like walking around in a dark room and having people following behind and turning on the light at some point. And some doors you open and then you close immediately - like, OK, I don’t want to go in there. And for me that was: one, overly vulgar material, and two, overly political material. I really wanted a certain degree of popularity. I didn’t want to be shocking from the beginning.”
Pushing back on the country’s most extreme conservative practices is, he insists, actually more daring in a country where Salafi clerics have long dominated society. “A lot of people have been able to practise activism to a certain degree. Some of them did get jailed” - including, briefly, his own wife, a women’s rights activist - “but if it’s just political, there’s more room to get out with it . . . If it’s religious, that’s when it gets really, really tricky. There’s still a little bit of a struggle on a governmental level to a certain degree, but not as much as society.”
He learnt that through reactions to his show. The first episode to cause an uproar poked fun at the Saudi religious police for hunting down men who had gone out to sea to drink. Albutairi was deriding fake news long before it became an American media obsession, for example in a sketch mocking a Saudi video gone viral of a man insisting western countries are trying to contaminate food with chemicals that destroy male chromosomes.
Our waitress brings out the main meal. My sea bass is soft and flaky, perfectly grilled with green beans doused in pesto. Albutairi is wrestling with his lobster, which he approves of but notes is not quite as tender as the lobsters in neighbouring
Albutairi says his stand-up has lately been influenced by the darker style of American comic Louis CK, after his wife Loujain Alhathloul was arrested and jailed for 73 days for trying to drive into the kingdom. He recites the first bit he did after her release: “I say: ‘I haven’t done stand-up comedy for a while. I got married, kept busy with the marriage. My wife was pretty busy, too . . . being in jail.’ Because they all know. It’s the elephant in the room.”
But, contrary to the complaints of his Saudi critics, Albutairi is no cheerleader for American-style democracy and “self-righteous Americans”. “I get pissed off at people back home who push a no-change agenda, that we don’t know what we’re doing and should be a certain way to be good Saudis. But it’s also very frustrating to see Americans do the same thing,” he says. “A lot of people think
He sees the election of
As he is prying out the last piece of his lobster, I tell Albutairi that I was intrigued by his only sketch on the Arab Spring protests of 2011, when people thought democracy was coming to the region. One of La Yekthar’s recurring characters, a crocodile puppet, waves a lighter as if at a concert and tries to lead the audience in a protest against Albutairi. A protest sign in the background says, “No to armpit hair”.
He was never sure what to make of the Arab Spring protests. “Sure, we don’t trust our governments, but we don’t trust the population, either. I had just read something by
This question seems apt in the days of rising populism in
Our dessert arrives: “The Pearl” is a ball of chocolate and vanilla mousse placed inside a chocolate cage. I am not a fan but soldier on, and point out he has surely broken his calorie count. “I know,” he grins. “It was worth it.”
On our way out, we walk down the pier, through palm-shaded canals, to the hotel, and I feel we have opened up enough to share the reactions I received from friends I told about our interview. Some joked they didn’t believe Saudis had a culture. A Lebanese colleague quipped: “I didn’t think Saudis had a sense of humour.” (The stereotypes aren’t just for westerners.)
“That’s BS,” he laughs. “If anything, in the Gulf, we’re the troublemakers.”
Pierchic
Al
San Pellegrino x 2 - Dhs70
La Scolca Gavi - Dhs80
Dorado carpaccio - Dhs160
Scallops - Dhs210
Lobster - Dhs450
Sea bass - Dhs220
Mash potato - Dhs45
Pearl for two - Dhs120
Total (inc tax and service) - Dhs1,355 (£295)
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2017
