From awkward job interviews to bad timing for advertisers, join host Mariam Sobh as she looks at some recent headlines from a humorous perspective. Plus, she has an in depth conversation with Little Mosque on the Prairie creator Zarqa Nawaz on her new novel, and carving a path in the entertainment industry.
News with a Bite is written and hosted by Mariam Sobh. It is produced in collaboration with Todd Manley of EarSight Studios.
Learn more about Zarqa Nawaz's projects and get her new book here.
Mariam: Have you ever had really awkward job interviews? Sometimes it can be our fault. Okay. And I get that. Other times... it's the interviewer. The oddest job interview I had in more recent memory that was super awkward was for a public television station. And the woman that interviewed me asked, "So you're Muslim, is that something you were born into or chose later in life"? I was in shock! Old me would've just let that microaggression slide. Instead, I was like, you know what, I'm going to own this moment. And I told her I was uncomfortable with the question. She had the nerve to play victim. And said to me, "I'm just trying to get to know you".
Uh, okay. Sure. Why don't I just tell you my age, marital status, how many kids I have, ...where my family's from? Oh wait. But you already asked all that! And on that note, let's get this show started.
Kids Voices: Welcome to news with a bite session two.
Mariam: It's time for a little news Roundup. The winter Olympics will probably be over by the time you hear this episode.
However, right now, in this moment,
News Anchor: breaking overnight attorneys for Russian figure skater, Camilla valleyava says contamination from her grandfather's heart medication is the reason for her positive drug test.
Mariam: Russian figure skater. Kamila Valieva has been given the chance to redeem herself. Now wouldn't it be nice if life in general gave you do overs after you messed up.
Oh, you said the wrong thing accidentally? never happened! Now go back out there! I realize that doping isn't the same thing as misspeaking, but am I in the wrong profession? Should I have become an athlete in order to actually be able to exercise free speech? I could always blame it on doping! I was watching the super bowl commercials recently.
And I didn't notice anything that interesting I.... I mean, the commercials are cool, you know,
Avocado Commercial: I'm sorry, what are you doing? Adding avocados from Mexico. They're always good. Want some?
Mariam: I saw this commercial for avocados from Mexico and I was like, whoa that's interesting because the U.S. Has now put a halt to avocado imports from Mexico after a government official in the area, allegedly received a death threat. Bad timing advertisers! The Washington post reports, avocado prices are expected to go up and the supply will dwindle, as long as imports are on hold. No more avocado toast for awhile, because even that $12 piece of bread with tiny slices of avocado on it, that you felt made you tut tut and classy as you held it in one hand with a Starbucks cup in the other, as you walked down your own personal runway... will probably cost even more. Are you really gonna pay $25 for avocado toast? If you have a personal runway, AKA the sidewalk downtown, you will, you need to be seen!
Apparently the fun police are targeting Elon Musk. That's what he's calling them anyway. According to CNN, Tesla is recalling more than half a million vehicles that have the ability to play the sound of a goat or a fart from outside the car.
I can't imagine using your tech skills to play basic sounds ..Like come on a two year old can make fart noises, maybe try something cooler, like a voice that tells someone to back away from the car if they get too close, but that would make sense. Wouldn't it
Coming up we'll hear from author, actor and filmmaker. Zarqa Nawaz. But first it's time for a dance break. And this song is about the supply chain backlog. You know, when you can't get that one ingredient you really need,
Parody Song: Uh oh I’ve got breaking news
And before you start to chew.. Uh oh
Uh oh I forgot something to do
Now please don’t blow a fuse uh oh
I cooked a real nice meal
Felt like Gordon Ramsey
But I know that I’m not
I’m just ordinary
When the timer went off
That's when I realized
There was something I forgot Uh oh
I’m all out of salt
This is really bad
I planned to make a tasty dish
And now it will be bland
I’m all out of salt
Plain pepper just won't do
I worked real hard to make this good
And now you’re gonna spew
Oh oh oh oh I’m all out of salt
Oh oh oh I’m out of salt.
Uh oh I tried to find some online
But it won’t get here in time uh oh
Uh oh There’s not much more I can do
Maybe I should juice a shoe uh oh?
I cooked a real nice meal
Felt like Gordon Ramsey
But I know that I’m not
I’m just ordinary
When the timer went off
That's when I realized
There was something I forgot Uh oh
I’m all out of salt
This is really bad
I planned to make a tasty dish
And now it will be bland
I’m all out of salt
Plain pepper just won't do
I worked real hard to make this good
And now you’re gonna spew
Oh oh oh oh I’m all out of salt
Oh oh oh I’m out of salt.
Mariam: Zarqa Nawaz is a pioneer in her own, right. She started making films and parodies about the north American Muslim experience. Zarqa is a filmmaker journalist author, and soon to be featured actor in a new series she created, I'm really excited to have you on news with a bite. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Zarqa: Thanks for having me.
Mariam: I often look back at when I was younger before the internet was a thing as a minority, as a Muslim, there wasn't much support out there, especially if you wanted to be creative and you had to make your own path and push through. What was it like for you?
Zarqa: You know, i, I, I went to Islamic camps and conferences and it was always, you know, during summer camps, like Muslims need to tell their own stories.
Muslims need to get out into the media and be filmmakers and novelists and playwrights, but. Even though everyone said it, nobody was doing it and we didn't have role models. And it was still, we were still a hundred percent. Our parents were like doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor, and I, and I too had drank the Kool-Aid and I thought, yeah, that's a good idea in theory, but yeah, let's be a doctor because I had no role models.
I had no pathway. There was nobody to look at. And so I just thought, oh, those are like those sexy forbidden careers that are for other women, the normal women, the white women, not for brown Muslim women. And I decided to become a doctor and. I got all the way to university did a science degree. And it was at that point when I realized that I just didn't have the stamina to get nineties in physics and organic chemistry and calculus, like I just couldn't do it anymore.
And I was enjoying my arts classes. And I was enjoying creativity, but they just weren't there. They weren't baked into the pre-med courses. You had to take at least one art course. And I did, and I enjoyed it so much and I was getting A's in that course. Then when I didn't get into medical school, I was like, oh no, There's no plan B like literally no plan B.
I had no other idea of what I could do, but my mom did. And she was like, oh, finally, we can get her married because you know, your father has been so obsessed on this doctor path that he wouldn't even hear of her getting married. And, you know, my mom believed that there was nothing wrong with marriage and she, you know, she came from a generation where it was really important to get daughters married.
And so I realized if I didn't pull it together very, very quickly. I was going to end up being a housewife in Karachi because all the guys, my mom chose, of course, were these PhD students who are on these degrees where they would have to get their PhDs in north America and then go back and do two years of service in Pakistan.
There are many of these men and they were coming. Constantly. And I was like, oh no, I, I, I've got to pull it together. So that kinda got me out of my depression. And I was like, okay, sort yourself out. And so my best friend had always been talking about Ryerson and going to journalism school there. So I quickly applied.
It turned out that I was the only applicant with a science degree because everybody else had a BA and they thought that was remarkable. And I, you know, I made up some story that, you know, I wanted to stand out. From the crowd and get a degree that nobody else had because we don't have enough qualified people, writing science stories.
Not that I could possibly write a single one because I didn't understand anything I was studying and they let me in. And it was that point that I thrived and I realized, oh my God, this is where I belong. And that was perfect for me. And I started that journey in storytelling and from journalism, I moved into filming, because turned out that journalism really wasn't the thing that's gonna to scratch that creative itch that I had, it was storytelling, but I didn't want to now go back and take another degree. And then friends said take a take this course at the Ontario college of art. It's only three weeks and you make a short film and you find out very quickly if you can become a filmmaker.
And so I did, and I made a short film called barbecue Muslims, and it was a comedy based on the Oklahoma bombing. Which had happened in, I think 1995. And they had blamed Muslims initially, and then Timothy McVeigh got arrested and it was like this 180 and I thought, wow, like how could they be so wrong for so long?
And then in an instant it with someone else. So I did a comedy about how Muslims are labeled as terrorists, even against all odds against all evidence. And that got into the Toronto international film festival. And from there I realized that's where I belonged making satires about Muslims and political issues.
Mariam: That's really cool. And it's fascinating. Cause I didn't realize that you went into journalism. I always thought you just decided to do film. Like I knew there was something about like science, but then I thought you decided to go into film school. So that's really interesting. And I remember when I first saw presenting some of the short films you worked on at a conference, I was attending and I was just like, wow, this woman is out there doing her thing.
It was so inspiring. And to me it seemed impossible looking from the outside. What was it like for you from the inside actually doing this thing.
Zarqa: It was fun. And it was also hard because we didn't live in the, in, in the era of diversity and own voices and BIPOC, all those words, you know, representation had not been invented.
And so I was just viewed as, okay. That's interesting. But you know, no one's going to watch this and it was really hard to break in. I had written a feature film script. You know, I couldn't get anyone interested in it. I was making short films, but they weren't really being, you know, I, my colleagues who had made short films, they were getting deals with, you know, networks and producers and their careers were moving places.
But. There would be silence. Like I would put out a film and they'd be like, silence because people didn't know what to make of it or what to do with it. They're like, well, diversity hadn't been a thing and nobody was representing on television. It was very, very white. And so it was, it was kind of disheartening for me for awhile because I was like, wow, it doesn't matter how hard I work or how talented I am.
This industry is like closed. It was like a closed industry. And. Then the national film board approached me and they said, why don't you make a documentary about something that's important to you? And I thought, okay, let's, you know, maybe I need to go sideways in my career because I can't seem to be breaking through.
And I made a documentary called "Me and the Mosque" and it was about how a lot of Imams had come from overseas. And they had brought sort of this patriarchal culture with them and they were imposing it in the mosque culture, which prior to that had been more egalitarian with men and women praying in the same, you know, prayer space, but there had been no curtains or separation.
And then suddenly one day I came to the mosque and there was a curtain and. We were told by this Imam from Saudi Arabia, that this is the way it should be, but I knew this wasn't based in theology, but somehow he was convincing us that his traditions were theology. And so I wanted to break through in a major way to people and talk about this.
So I pitched this idea that I make a documentary about how. The, the faith has nothing to do with separating men and women in the mosque. And that it's more egalitarian than we actually know it is. So I made that documentary and the national film board of Canada said, well, you know, we're going to take you to the BAMF television festival where we're, you know, we're going to announce the documentaries.
And a friend of mine said, well, actually people go there to pitch television series. And I didn't know anything about TV. At that point, I thought I was going to be a feature film writer and direct. So she gave me a template of how one pitches a television series. And in my mind was this documentary that I had made.
And I thought to myself, what if an imam came from overseas? What if an imam, instead of coming from overseas, came from Canada, born and raised in Canada and say he came from Toronto and moved to Saskatchewan where I live to run a mosque and gave up his law career to run a mosque because he felt a spiritual calling, how would that affect the Muslim community?
And so I made up the log line and the characters. And the season arc and I pitched it and I was getting all this attention from production companies and from the CBC and they put it into the development and it was at a time period where in Canada. We didn't really have a strong history of sitcom success.
I mean, you know, people would make sitcoms, but they wouldn't get much attention because, you know, we just didn't have the millions and millions of ad dollars. We needed to get Canadian eyeballs on Canadian television because American shows pretty much dominated the airwaves. But this was 2006 that we were going to development and the media got ahold of this.
And you have to remember in 2005, there were the riots of the Danish cartoons in Denmark. And so people thought, oh my God, Canada is making a television show with Muslims and comedy. And they're not even starting with like a living room and the couch family. They're going straight for the mosque. And it's a comedy about Islam.
Like there's no way Canada will survive this. You know, Muslims will riot and flip cars and burn the place down. And so CNN and Al Jazeera and, and New York times everyone was rushing to cover us. So by the time we air it in 2006, We had record ratings, like the cbc hadn't had ratings like that in 20 years.
And I feel that we launched in many ways, the industry in Canada, because after that you saw these amazing shows come out and, you know, culminating in Schitt's Creek and Kim's convenience. And we suddenly had an industry. And even in Hollywood, I was asked to pitch television shows continuously, and I would sell pilots every year.
And in the. They never got made, you know, about a Muslim family. And to this day, no major network has done it. Only Hulu has done Ramey. So it's still the show that we're still waiting to see the Muslim family comedy, which I find really interesting, but, but a lot of other diverse shows started appearing like Superstore, Jane, the Virgin, modern family.
I think what little mosque on the Prairie did was it proved to Hollywood executives that you could make a show with non white leads and still have a ratings hit, and people would watch so that's what I think our legacy was for that show.
Mariam: I want to talk about some of your other projects too, that you're working on now. You have a new book, Jameela, green ruins, everything. And I read it, full disclosure. I received an advanced copy. I could completely see the characters as people I've come across in my life. And I wish there were books like that when I was growing up. What motivates you to write these kinds of stories?
Zarqa: Something will spark, like something will happen in the news or I'll read an article like Jameela green. I have to say that that was because of, it was 2014 and ISIS started. And I was really confused, like a lot of Muslims because there wasn't much written, you know, the media was like, oh, well, Muslims, they just do this sort of thing. You know, when they're left to their own devices, bloodthirsty, Jihadi groups, try to take over the world. Well, you know, what can we do? And, and it was like, no, There's more to it. And so I started writing this book about Jameela, who accidentally joins an ISIS group and follows their journey.
Mariam: You also have, uh, a new TV series that's coming out. Can you tell us about that?
Zarqa: The TV series is called Zarqa and it's about a Muslim woman who is recently divorced and trying to navigate her new life. She's trying to launch a wellness empire. She's trying to become the brown Gwyneth Paltrow and help white people, culturally appropriate products. And she says, why should white people make money off of essentially other cultures ?She wants in on this game.
And her ex is getting remarried at the same time. And it causes her a deep, a deep sense of, you know, am I still valuable? You know, how could he love someone else, even though we had decided not to continue our marriage and how she processed it as pain and disappointment and insecurity. So it's, even though I'm not divorced, I've talked to a lot of my friends who are divorced and, and they say just when, when there is this pivotal thing that shifts in a woman, when she finds out her ex-husband is getting remarried and how she behaves going forward kind of defines who she is as a person. And I feel that this person doesn't take it well. And that's how it defines her as a person is that she always reacts badly to things, impulsively to things and emotionally to things. She has all these people trying to contain her, but in the end she always like does the wrong thing and has to learn her lesson the hard way. And we get to see incredible comedy going forward.
Mariam: It seems like a lot of the themes of the work that you do are about these women that are trying to accomplish stuff. And there's, there's obstacles, whether it's themselves or other people,
Zarqa: she is her own biggest obstacle.
Mariam: Do you feel like most of your work is, is based off of like your own personal experiences and.
Zarqa: Yeah. I mean, I draw a lot from my own. Like I do so many goofy things. Like I make mistakes and I'm constantly, you know, the errors of being double booked, promising and not delivering. And, um, it's just, it's truly, truly endless mistakes that I make. My work tends to be the first time you ever see it. It's first time you've ever seen a Muslim community in television. And then this book will be the first time you see, you read a satire about terrorism, which I think from some Muslims it's, it's really hard. And this TV show will be the first time you see a flawed, divorced Muslim woman, you know, navigating her post-divorce life and she's flawed and she makes mistakes.
We can't keep saying. You know, brown people are only one type of person. Like either like the evil one we see on TV or the really good one, there's this whole range of, of emotions. And we have diversity in our experiences and you can have bad hijabi people, women who wear hijab aren't perfect. They make mistakes and they can be bad people.
And why can't we see that? And I think for some Muslims, they just want us to be perfect and then people will love us if we're perfect. I'm like, they won't love you if you're perfect. Cause that's propaganda. They'll love you if they can relate to you and see themselves through you.
Mariam: I think that's part of the issue is, is, um, putting on like this facade, like this perfection and in the Muslim community, at least for me growing up, there was always a messaging of like, we have to be the best at everything and we have to put this image out and we have to not air the dirty laundry, because then that will give people ammunition against us. Right. So I'm just wondering if you feel similarly about that.
Zarqa: Yeah. And, and that's, my work gets me in a lot of trouble because I don't have perfect characters. And as a result, non-Muslims really gravitate towards the work that I do because they feel like they can relate to them.
The people who get mad at me are Muslims who wished they weren't the perfect character because they feel like I'm creating, um, ammunition. But I think it takes a couple of years for them to realize, oh, nothing terrible did happen in so many. non-Muslims come up to them and say, oh my God, you know, I really loved watching little mosque on the Prairie. Like it helped me relate.
Mariam: How do you handle that audiences that might not get what you're doing with satire and parody? Do you just wait for time to. Pass, and then they get it?
Zarqa: It's always too late. By the time you realize that your work is being misunderstood by a certain group of people, it's always too late.
So you got to just ride it out. Eventually it finds its audience. And eventually that audience, at least a part of it turns around and says, okay, you know, this wasn't as bad as we thought.
Mariam: Yeah, I think that's a great way to look at things, especially for people who are listening that might feel intimidated to produce any kind of artistic expression or go out of their comfort zone, because they're worried about what people might think or say it's always going to be something, but you just have to, I guess, stick to it and believe in what you're doing.
Zarqa: Yeah. And as a Muslim, my philosophy is always, I always pray to God. If this is something good and for the best, then please open the door and let me pass through and make it easy for me. But if it's something that's not good for me, please close that door and make it hard for me and impossible to pass. And because this book is being published and this web series is being made. I have to come to the inevitable conclusion that this is something that God has decided has more good in it than bad. And I am going to see these projects through.
Mariam: And that was Zarqa Nawaz Canadian based filmmaker, journalist, author, and actor .
News with a bite is written and hosted by me, Mariam Sobh it's produced by Todd Manley of ear sight studios. If you'd like to catch all episodes, make sure to add this show to your list, wherever you get your podcasts.