COMIC MAYSOON ZAYID SPINS HER ARAB SITUATION INTO AMERICAN COMEDY

When Maysoon Zayid takes the stage, she knows the audience has probably never seen a comic like her.

So she states the obvious right from the start.

"I'm a Palestinian-American virgin from New Jersey with cerebral palsy. And if you don't feel better about yourself now, you really should ..."

With that zinger, Zayid loosens up a crowd - which might not otherwise know what to expect from this wild-haired woman with an Arabic name and shaking limbs.

"I get these things out of the way, so they know who I am," Zayid says. "And I always laugh because I wonder when I'll stop saying I'm a virgin."

Onlookers learn a few more things about Zayid after listening to her for awhile: She's brassy, tough and opinionated - not exactly traits most Americans associate with Muslim women.

But Zayid slaps away stereotypes with every giggle and guffaw. And she's giving other entertainers of Middle Eastern descent the chance to do the same at the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, which she co-founded last year with Dean Obeidallah, a fellow comedian and friend.

The inaugural event sold out, leading to a monthly radio show on WBAI (99.5 FM) for Zayid and Obeidallah.

This year, the festival expands to four nights, starting today. It's a celebration of humor through original plays, stand-up sketches and film.

"Stop with the suffering," she playfully tells her fellow Arab-American artists. "That's so easy. Stop making the suffering films and suffering plays where people are killed. Start doing something funny that make people feel good and want more of."

That's not to say she hasn't seen her share of horror back in her parents' homeland.

Zayid's stand-up earnings pay for an art program she runs for disabled and wounded children in Palestinian refugee camps four months out of the year. The barbs in her comic routines come from personal experience: Two of her students have been shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in the last three years.

But Zayid's program does make a difference.

"When I do art and theater with them, they have an elevated status in their community, and the other kids want to be with them," she says. "Kids would literally be glued to windows wanting to get it. And that fosters friendship."

Since Zayid started doing stand-up in 1999, she's toured the world, including gigs in Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. Two years ago, she was scheduled to perform before 80 people in Gaza: "Then there was an invasion and I couldn't get to the show."

She acknowledges that her comedy is a political platform, and it can sometimes be controversial.

She's called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a war criminal, though she notes that she's just as tough on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. And Zayid is very clear on one point: She might poke fun at Israel, but never at Jews.

"Judaism isn't Zionism," she says. "I live and work in a society of all three Judeo-Christian religions and I have respect for all three."

Zayid says she never sacrifices a punchline for proselytizing, either.

One of her favorite bits involves her fear of racial profiling at Newark Liberty International Airport, and ends with a wisecrack about being shipped to the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"Which is not a bad thing," Zayid says, "because I hear there's a lot of single Arab men."

She adds, "Comedy is first, everything else is second. It's about getting people laughing. The day I stand there preaching to you like Dennis Miller - who is so not funny anymore because all he does is preach - then I'm not a comic anymore."

"Stuck" in Bergen County

Zayid grew up in Cliffside, N.J., the youngest of four daughters born to Palestinian immigrants from Deir Debwan, a West Bank village near Ramallah. She and her sisters spent every summer there, while their parents stayed home and worked.

"Some people put their kids in camp," she says over a recent lunch of tomato soup and pasta at a Midtown Manhattan cafe. "We were put in Deir Debwan."

Now, Zayid favors Chanel lipstick, trendy tracksuits, Jon Stewart and Adrien Brody. She still lives in Bergen County with her mother, Ribhia, a hematologist; her parents divorced when she was 18.

"Arab girls aren't allowed to move out before they get married, so I'm stuck," she laughs.

Zayid was engaged once, but her fiance broke up with her "in a text message," she says. "How 'Sex and the City.' " (On that TV show, one of Carrie Bradshaw's beaus once famously dumped her via a Post-it.)

Like many performers, she's vague about her exact age, putting it between 25 and 30. "Too old to be unmarried, too young to be dead," she deadpans.

And she hasn't let her cerebral palsy slow her down.

"It doesn't hold her back at all," says Obeidallah, 35, who visited the Middle East for the first time this summer with Zayid.

"She goes through check points in the West Bank and to refugee camps. I'm able-bodied and I was scared going with her. She had to promise my mother I wouldn't get killed."

The only concession Zayid makes to her disability is a stool she uses during performances; her condition prevents her from standing for long periods of time.

"Yes, I'm a sit-down stand-up," she chuckles.

Professionally, Zayid didn't start out looking for laughs. Comedy was a detour from the serious acting world, where she struggled after getting a bachelor of fine arts degree from Arizona State University. After almost three years of auditions following graduation, Zayid's biggest role was as an extra on "As the World Turns."

Frustrated, she figured she'd never make it in show business without a hook. So she chose humor.

"I thought about it and said, 'I'm ethnic, I'm disabled and I'm not a supermodel. There's no way I'm going to break into TV,' " she says. "All the eccentrics, Whoopi Goldberg, Roseanne, Gilda Radner, they all broke in doing comedy. Because they weren't cookie cutter Jennifer Anistons and Angelina Jolies. This was their way in."

Zayid jokes that her father, Musa, must have thought she was a stripper when she first started to do stand-up, because she was always working at night. After nearly five years at the mike, he's yet to see her live in a New York City club.

"My dad's gone to the pilgrimage in Mecca," she says. "I'm not bringing him to some bar with a bunch of drunks in New York."

That doesn't mean Musa hasn't caught his daughter's act. He was her guest at an Arab-American awards gala in May, where Zayid was part of the evening's entertainment. Muhammad Ali and Queen Noor of Jordan were among those who offered praise.

Still, Musa Zayid knows that being a female Muslim comic isn't easy. Islamic conservatives think his daughter is too forward, and her humor has offended some non-Arab audience members.

"They want to see the Muslim woman wear a scarf and going to mosques," Musa Zayid says. "I tell her, don't be so much radical, making these jokes. I worry they might hurt her, because they don't like the way she jokes. In this time right now, even if you tell the truth, they don't want to hear it."

"Maysoon's not what many people would think a Muslim woman would be, because a lot of people's knowledge is from footage on television of Afghanistan," agrees Obeidallah. "She intentionally works that in a way to dispel that image, the one of the oppressed Muslim woman."

'Law & Order' and balance

Another way Zayid and her festival colleagues are transforming that image is by selecting plays that showcase Arab actors in a non-Arab roles.

Zayid, for example, will star in "Grenade" on Sunday and Monday nights . The play, written by Yousef El Guindi, is about a girl who breaks up with her Italian boyfriend after she finds a grenade in his glove compartment. The title might evoke visions of terrorists or Middle Eastern conflict, but the grenade turns out to be the boyfriend's dopey defense against road rage.

"People assume 'Grenade' is about Arabs, but when you see the piece it throws you for a loop because it's totally not," Zayid says.

She's challenging Hollywood to expand their Arab and Arab-American portraits on screen, too.

Zayid kicked up a fuss during filming of this season's premiere of "Law & Order," in which she had a small, nonspeaking role. She objected to another character's line about an Arab blowing up a synagogue.

"I said, if you're going to have a negative Arab stereotype, you're got to reinforce it with a positive one," she says. "Have an Arab lawyer. How about an Arab cop? Something!"

She also refused to send her resume to Steven Spielberg. The Oscar winner is working on a movie about the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, where Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinian militants.

"Why do we need to foster hatred?" Zayid says. "Spielberg's the biggest director in the world, and they requested my head shots. But I was like, 'Are you kidding me?'"

Zayid's activism has generated some well-meaning advice from her mentors. But that doesn't mean she's listening to them.

"I've been told by some great, great, great comics that I respect, 'Baby, step away from the Palestine thing. You're not going to go anywhere with this. You need to be careful. People don't like it. It's a ball and chain,' " Zayid says.

"But I say, no, no way. I can't."

Arab-American Comedy Festival

The second annual New York Arab-American Comedy Festival kicks off today and runs through Wednesday. Some highlights from the festival include:

"Theatre Night" premieres six original comic works, including "Grenade" by Yousef El Guindi and starring Maysoon Zayid. (Oct. 10 and 11)

The New York Improv Comedy Club hosts the festival's "comedy night." Ronnie Khalil and Najla Said are among the "New Faces of Arab Comedy," while Zayid, Dean Obeidallah and Ahmed Ahmed are some of the top Arab-American comics in the "Headliner Showcase." (Oct. 12)

The festival's closing party includes a tribute to Arab-American actress Kathy Najimy, who is of Lebanese descent. (Oct. 13)

To find out more about the festival, click on arabcomedy.org.