MIDDLE EASTERN COMICS DISCOVER THEIR ROOTS AND A POST-9/11 AUDIENCE

FOR DEAN OBEIDALLAH, the most annoying thing about growing up half-Palestinian in Lodi was that his neighbors weren't sure where Palestine was.

And they couldn't place his father's accent.

"We never had any trouble," said Obeidallah, whose mother is Sicilian. "I'm nostalgic for the days when there was just confusion instead of suspicion."

Life may have gotten tougher for Arab-Americans since 9/11, but it's provided material for comics like Obeidallah.

"Every culture has horrible people that give it a bad name, but that's what's come to define us," said Obeidallah, 35. "Part of what we do is dispel stereotypes."

He jokes that every ethnic group in America seems to have its own month, except Arabs.

"What do we get?" he asks in one routine. "Orange alert."

Obeidallah had been working in stand-up for nearly a decade, but after 9/11, an Arab comic seemed like a novelty, and his career picked up. The same was true of Maysoon Zayid, a fellow Palestinian comic raised in Cliffside Park.

"Dean and I were getting all this publicity, and we were like, there are so many other talented people, how can we get them to be seen, too?" says the twenty-something Zayid.

They founded the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, which recently celebrated its third year. With five nights of sold-out shows -- from live theater to a tribute to Jamie Farr, the Lebanese-American star of "M*A*S*H" -- it was a bigger draw than ever this year.

But the centerpiece of the festival is two nights of stand-up, held at Manhattan's Improv Comedy Cub. The audience, mostly Arab-Americans themselves, cheered when comedians gave shout-outs like, "How many Lebanese in the house? Jordanians -- how many Jordanians? How many people named Mohammed?"

Comic Aron Kader wanted to know if there were any Palestinian Mormons, like himself. To his disbelief, one man in the audience raised his hand.

There were plenty of jokes about anti-Arab paranoia. "My family was thinking of turning in my father, not because he did anything, but just to prove how patriotic we are," cracked comedian Nasry Malak, an Egyptian.

But the comics' immigrant parents, and Middle Eastern politics and culture, also were milked for laughs.

"Ma, you have to stop with the falafel," whined Syrian comedian Helen Maalik, recalling her embarrassment during grade-school lunch period. (Her mortification deepened when her mother spread peanut butter and jelly on a pita).

Zayid, a Muslim in a T-shirt reading "Hookah that's hot," told a joke in Arabic, suggested to her by her dad, and made light of the fact that she has cerebral palsy.

"Whenever we go anywhere, my friends always want me to drive. I'm like, 'Doesn't it bother you that I can't even hold a glass of water without shaking, but here I am behind the wheel?'"said Zayid, the first comedian to perform stand-up in Palestine.

According to Obeidallah, as time has passed since the 9/11 attacks, the comics have been focusing less on the "everyone-thinks-I'm-a-terrorist" schtick and more on their identity as Arabs.

"So many Arab-Americans have gotten more in touch with their roots since 9/11," said Obeidallah, who has also performed in the Middle East.

"I never felt the need to learn Arabic until now. But I thought, if I'm going to go out and explain who we are to other people, I better find out," he said. "It's an amazing phenomenon. Everyone I talked to, instead of shying away from it, they embraced it."