Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Cinematic Comedy Salami Aleikum: Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany5 0 7 Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Cinematic Comedy Salami Aleikum: Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany Britta Kallin Georgia Institute of Technology Abstract: In Ali Samadi Ahadi’s feature film Salami Aleikum (2009), the director negotiates transnational conflict through humor and stereotypes. Ahadi exaggerates and simultaneously negates the stereotypes of men and women, East and West Germans as well as Muslims, Iranians, Poles etc� in Germany� Through their grown children, an Iranian family from the West German city Cologne meets an East German family that lives in a smalltown village where stereotypes of Muslims rage� The inter-ethnic couple at the center of the movie forges an exceptional bond that overcomes lies and disappointments in order to succeed as a possible diverse role model for the current and future Germany� I argue that the movie uses humor and satire to engage with the ethnic, religious and cultural integration of Muslims into Germany to offer the audience a way to engage with the serious topic of a peaceful integration of Muslims that has been challenged in public debates for years� My article also investigates the underlying theme of a search for a safe “Heimat” within German borders in which the parents and children of both non-Western German families feel at home� Keywords: Comedy, Gender, Islam in Germany, Muslims in Germany, Stereotypes, GDR Good comedy is social criticism. [ … ] For comedy is, after all, a look at ourselves, not as we pretend to be when we look in the mirror of our imagination, but as we really are� Look at the comedy of any age and you will know volumes about that period and its people which neither historian nor anthropologist can tell you� ( Jo Coppola, The Realist 2) 508 Britta Kallin The director Ali Samadi Ahadi had to leave Iran and come to Germany as a child. That experience has led him in his filmmaking career to focus on making documentaries such as Lost Children (2005) about child soldiers in Uganda and The Green Wave (2010) about the student uprising after the controversial election results in Iran in 2009 (see Reicher). By contrast, Ahadi’s first comic feature film, Salami Aleikum (2009), though still driven by his own experience, is a story about romantic entanglements and about the successful integration of the Iranian German protagonist Mohsen Taheri (played by Navíd Akhavan) into German society. The film shows Mohsen’s journey through united Germany from Cologne to a small East German town where he becomes stranded while on his way to pick up inexpensive sheep in Poland for his father’s butcher shop� On his way through the former GDR, he meets Ana Bergheim (played by Anna Böger), who becomes the love of his life. The film manages to capture its audience by presenting the Iranian German hero and the East German heroine in a caringly told romantic comedy� This article investigates how comic effects and ironic fairy tale elements in the film Salami Aleikum problematize intersections of gender, ethnicity, religious belonging, and cultural stereotypes. Simultaneously, the film intervenes in contemporary integration debates in Germany. Ahadi’s film also conveys hope and good humor about efforts to integrate immigrants, especially Muslims, into post-unification Germany by playing with outdated racial and religious clichés and ethnic stereotypes and demonstrating how ludicrous they are in contemporary culture� Broadly speaking, Ahadi does this by taking on deeply rooted gender, ethnic, and religious prejudices, exaggerating assumed German biases to comedic effect. Salami Aleikum ’s humor suggests that both frameworks of external identity formation—ethnic religiosity and traditional gender roles—belong to the past� The strict binaries of German and Muslim do not have a place in a post-unification Germany that wants to define itself as an “Einwanderungsland,” or immigration country. The film makes use of satire to analyze prejudices about religious differences between Christians and Muslims, an Othering of millions of people that has taken place after 9/ 11� Ahadi uses a range of clichés in order to show the actual overlap of categories of people presumed quite distinct, for example, between East Germans and Iranian Germans, and in so doing invites the viewer to see these two groups as equally belonging—or equally unwelcome—in contemporary German society� By drawing such parallels, Ahadi is suggesting that some non-Muslim Germans actually have a lot in common with Muslims� Consequently, in Salami Aleikum , the feeling of a happily integrated (a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious, and multi-lingual) community is very much part of the film, a feeling Ahadi conveys by not only depicting Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum : Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany 509 but exaggerating the ultimate place of belonging, a place where East Germans and those of Persian heritage work and live together in an imagined paradise in small-town East Germany� The public debate about the role of Islam in Germany warrants discussion to contextualize the film and understand the socio-political status of Muslims in Germany� After the attacks in New York on September 11, 2001, the political and social discourse around this population shifted (see Weber)� In her study on the shift of verbal references to Turkish Germans, Yasemin Yildiz asserts that ‘Turks’ or Turkish Germans in Germany have only recently been referred to as ‘Muslims’ rather than by their or their parents’ national heritage� She demonstrates how a shift in the German media has taken place, a shift from “ethnonational to religious framing” (465)� Yildiz explains that the shift took place around the year 2000 when the citizenship laws changed in Germany and that this shift was accelerated by the 9/ 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, which turned the media and many others in the Western world against Muslims (474)� She also comments on the usage of the term Muslim girl or Muslima, used often in media stories of women and girls to present them as passive, helpless victims of restricted freedoms and patriarchal violence� Yildiz observes that since the Othering of the largest ethnic minority in Germany could no longer take place with respect to different citizenship, the media magnified the religious difference instead: “… Muslims of the current German imagination have largely been created out of whole cloth by relabeling immigrants from Turkey� The same individuals long treated as ethnonational Others have thus become embodiments of a differently underwritten Otherness” (466). The Othering of Muslims applies not only to Turks in Germany but also to other national and/ or ethnic groups such as Persians, Arabs, Serbians, and Bosnians, to name but a few� Against this popular narrative of the foreign Muslim, essentially Other in German society, Ahadi's film mobilizes a Muslim narrative tradition of storytelling and community� In Salami Aleikum , Ahadi takes a humorous stance on self-‘orientalization’ and his humor, instead of trying to be politically correct, touches on exaggerations of migrants’ ‘Otherness’ through exaggerated ‘orientalization’ of Iranian German characters and hints at taboos about immigrants that have yet to be discussed in public debates in Germany� The Iranian tradition and customs in Salami Aleikum play with the history of storytelling in Arabian fairy tales and the film uses self-orientalization by showing the art of making Persian rugs that incorporate stories and storytelling through visual arts—such as movies and rugs—which in turn question the seemingly strict separation of storytelling histories in Germany and Iran. The film attempts to disarm exaggerated orientalism by asking the audience to laugh at it (cf� Dunphy 166)� Salami Aleikum , viewed against this backdrop, provides poignant as well as comical 510 Britta Kallin opportunities for reflection on community and belonging in Germany for its citizens and residents “mit Migrationshintergrund�” Ahadi reveals here the disconnect between the reality of the integrated Muslim as he sees it in daily life on the one hand, and the media image of the menacing Muslim who does not want to integrate into German society and accept German customs and laws, on the other. Ahadi’s film goes one step further, as well, and problematizes the gendered discourse around passive Muslim women when he creates a modern intercultural romantic couple whose relationship throws traditional gender roles up in the air� Current scholarship about the difficulties of inter-ethnic relationships illuminates how those relationships are portrayed in novels and films. In his analysis of fictional inter-ethnic relationships in literature and films, Brent Peterson asserts that very few films actually present a happy inter-ethnic heterosexual couple. “But succeed they [the comedies] must, for if inter-ethnic unions are to serve the goal of imagining integration, the narratives have to become comedies rather than tragedies. … Comedies … end with happy couples, and they allow us to explore the cost of success” (516). Ahadi’s film thus creates a prime example: the inter-ethnic relationship of the Persian German protagonist Mohsen and his East German counterpart Ana leads to a happy ending where not only the couple is happy but also their families support the couple’s union and each other’s interests� Scholarship on firstand second-generation immigrant filmmakers in Germany can shed some more light on the religious, cultural, and gender scripts Ahadi mobilizes in Salami Aleikum . Hamid Naficy’s notion of “accented cinema” sees similarities between films made by a range of exilic filmmakers. Naficy defines “accented cinema” as migrant films, such as exilic, diasporic, and postcolonial ethnic and identity films that are based on different types of relationships of the films and their makers to existing or imagined home places and their attachment to compatriot communities (222—25). Naficy uses the linguistic term “accent” to express that these films are not the standard ones made by the dominant group but that immigrant directors make them from perspectives on the margins� In his discussion of the hyphenization of identities (such as Iranian German, Turkish-German, or Bosnian-German), Naficy correctly emphasizes that “[d]iaspora, exile, and ethnicity are not steady states; rather, they are fluid processes that under certain circumstances may transform into one another and beyond” (17)� Salami Aleikum can indeed be considered an “accented movie,” to borrow Naficy’s term. But it is also a “postcolonial movie,” as Randall Halle has argued that recent European and German films in the age of global market economy signify a “transnational aesthetic” and that changes of national film productions have led to a transnational mode of filmmaking. “[I]f the national aesthetic relied on productions of national specificity, the transnational aesthetic aims for transnational communality” ( German Film 92—93, see Mani and Segelcke)� Salami Aleikum participates in the movement of accented cinema in Germany away from stories of immigrants in misery to stories of successful integration, love, and belonging� The East German town of Oberniederwalde in the film, for example, becomes a transnational community by the end of the film. Salami Aleikum exhibits Halle’s transnational aesthetic as it goes beyond the borders of Germany both in its storytelling when Mohsen’s father talks about his past in Iran—and geographically—during the Ana and Mohsen’s crossing of the Polish border� Halle asserts that to attain such a transnational aesthetic, artists first had to “develop a self-awareness” ( Europeanization 144): “[A]fter the initial insertion into the economy and subsequent decades of securing a stable existence and establishing a community, we witness the emergence of self-representation within immigrant communities” (145). Ahadi’s film demonstrates such self-awareness and self-representation in the roles of the Persian German characters when they talk about themselves as Persians and how they fit into German society, and the implied dichotomy, which still exists for citizens in Germany whose equal status and full acceptance are questioned repeatedly. As a film with a transnational aesthetic, Ahadi’s comedy draws on a number of cinematic traditions in US-American, Indian, and German film history. Salami Aleikum is made up of real-time shots as well as cartoon sequences, dream sequences, and Bollywood-like musical dance scenes, sung in Farsi and German� Films by directors not of traditionally German heritage, those whose families have roots in other countries and cultures, have gone through many changes over the past three decades. The arc of these films moves from depicting the miserable circumstances of immigrants’ lives ( 40 m2 Deutschland , dir. Tevfik Başer, 1986) to romantic intercultural comedies with well-integrated second and third generation immigrants� Islam as a religion has long played a minor role in such German films, but, until the release of films in the first two decades of the twenty-first century such as Im Juli (2000, dir� Fatih Akin), Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum (2009), Almanya: Welcome to Germany (dir. Yasemin Şamdereli, 2011), 300 Worte Deutsch (dir. Züli Aladağ, 2013), Muslim immigrants have often been portrayed negatively� In Arno Saul’s comedy Kebab Connection (2005), the Turkish German Ibo and the non-Turkish German Titzi marry in the end� Yet, as Peterson observes, Saul’s film does not mention “religion, education or current events, so neither headscarves nor the threat of terrorism halts the march toward a form of integration defined by an acceptance of German culture ( Leitkultur )” (525)� Over the past couple of decades, there has been a transition in how immigrants have been depicted, from the trope of the unfortunate and pathetic to an integrated Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum : Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany 511 512 Britta Kallin and positive Muslim, especially in the genre of romantic comedies� Similar to some of the films just mentioned, Salami Aleikum by Ahadi also proposes a different kind of narrative and posits a positive, non-threatening image of the integrated Muslim in German society� As an immigrant filmmaker, Ahadi can be considered a hybrid artist because though he grew up as a child in Iran and then was sent to Germany, he still embraces the Persian traditions of his family’s culture� The concept of “hybridity” in post-colonial research helps to identify the distinctiveness of minority groups (groups that are both set apart and that set themselves apart as minorities) that offer different views of the mainstream community and imagined nation. As Homi Bhabha and others have shown, there are no local cultures that are self-contained forces nor is there a global culture, but all cultures have evolved through contact and overlap with each other: “Hybrid agencies,” Bhaba writes, “find their voice in a dialectic that does not seek cultural supremacy or sovereignty� They deploy the partial culture from which they emerge to construct visions of community, and versions of historic memory, that give narrative form to the minority positions they occupy; the outside of the inside: the part in the whole” (58)� Ahadi does indeed give “narrative form to the minority position,” in telling the story from the margin of society where those whose Germanness and belonging are questioned tell their stories of initial rejection and ultimate integration� Mohsen is a hybrid character whose perspective opens up spaces that non-hybrid viewpoints have not been able to disclose� Therefore, hybrid art also opens up a space for dialog about the changing and developing German culture of the twenty-first century. The hero’s hybrid identity in the film bridges Persian and German culture by constructing a vision of a united community in Salami Aleikum . Deniz Göktürk calls for “addressing hybridity as a source of strength and pleasure, rather than lack and trouble…” ( Turkish 3) so that society can “move beyond dutiful performances of multi-culturalism and community bonding grounded in restrictive notions of cultural purity and rootedness” (ibid�)� Graeme Dunphy’s analysis of “hybrid humor” in transcultural comedy explains the difficulty of using ‘exotic’ stereotypes and clichés in a satirical manner, and the difficulty for authors, directors, and artists not to betray their country of origin: Hybrid communities are inevitably torn between a desire to highlight demarcation lines and a need to accentuate the potential for assimilation� Demarcation can be fostered by exoticising, fluidity of identity by rejecting the exotic. Humour, which in any case has a tendency either to underline or debunk stereotypes, serves as a highly effective tool to working out this dichotomy. (166) Mohsen’s hybridity and the humor with which it is presented is a successful strategy for the movie because it demonstrates that the son of a Persian couple can very well integrate socially, culturally, and linguistically into German society� Ahadi reveals his own hybridization, and his use of stereotypes leans towards the gentle inclusion and exaggeration of existing stereotypes about Persian Germans� The overlap with East German fears and needs shows the attempt to narrow the gap between the Western world and the funnily ‘exoticized’ clothes and customs, which play a role for Mohsen’s father but not necessarily for Mohsen� In her study on “Postcolonialism, Islam and Contemporary Germany,” Monika Albrecht has pointed out that part of this problem of hybridity and negotiating difference in Germany is that there are not enough postcolonial analyses of encounters between Germans and minorities in Germany, particularly the biggest minority who are of Muslim and mostly of Turkish origin� Many of those who came to Germany after WWII have now lived in Germany for decades and have started families whose multiple members bridge the cultures and have hybrid identities because they have both internalized the customs, language, and traditions both through the family’s upbringing at home and through their upbringing and education in German schools� Gender roles and expectations, portrayed by the popular narrative in Germany as vastly different in Muslim and European culture, provides fertile ground for illustrating a new, integrated (or hybrid) position for disasporic Muslims� In Salami Aleikum, Ana’s strength and height, her active presence in her romance with Mohsen, flips the discourse of the passive Muslima on its head. The movie does more than examine stereotypes of Muslims and other minorities: it also challenges gender stereotypes such as the weak female and strong male binaries (see Böger). If children and young adults stick to a widely accepted performance of one of these binaries they will be approved by society as they grow into adults� However, if people do not assume a single gender identity but change or slip in and out of a gender/ identity, that is depicted in films as either having a comic effect (such as a man playing a woman or vice versa) or as having a threatening effect. Those who do not adhere to the imposed and allegedly stable categories of “man” and “woman” are read as questioning the established status quo of gender categories (see Butler)� The protagonists Ana and Mohsen in Salami Aleikum do not strictly adhere to the traditional gender binary. Mohsen behaves like a woman and Ana behaves like a man. The film thus offers a critique of the stereotypes of the traditionally strong male and weak female and does so by presenting it to comic effect. The approach in the film does not necessarily arise from feminist ambitions but the director uses the gender dichotomy as a comic tool to elicit laughter and ease the tension within Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum : Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany 513 514 Britta Kallin the debate about the role and treatment of women in immigrant families and communities� The Islamophobic claim would be that women are inherently seen as inferior in Islam and by extension in immigrant communities that do not share liberal European values. The film does not present neglected and abused women who are treated as inferior� Mohsen’s mother, for example, is presented as a strong character who speaks up and occasionally makes gentle fun of her husband� Another plot line of Salami Aleikum revolves around mismatched romantic gender relations in which the woman takes on the man’s role� In the tradition of the comedy, however, this seeming mismatch is resolved by the traditional, heterosexual marriage of the protagonists� Ana takes on the more assertive role of the man and makes decisions for Mohsen and herself. The film ends on a high note with the marriage of Mohsen and Ana� The relationship between Ana and Mohsen in the film is both social commentary and comedy� Cinematic tragedies often depict Turkish German women who would like to choose a German man as a partner ( Die Fremde/ When We Leave , dir� Feo Aladag, 2010) or Turkish German men in homosexual relationships ( Lola und Bilidikid , dir. Kutluğ Ataman, 1999) but the relationships fail because of external pressures from their families� However, in Salami Aleikum the woman chooses an Iranian German man who turns out to be much better for her and more supportive of her than her East German ex-boyfriend who pushed his own goals and agenda onto her rather than helping her achieve her goals in life� The external pressures from Mohsen and Ana’s families turn from being initially threatening to unconditionally supportive� This shows that integration in the form of a successful and happy interethnic relationship is a marker of this genre of comedies� Recent comedies about inter-ethnic or inter-religious relationships often depict a male character with an immigrant background, and a female character who is a non-immigrant German ( Kebab Connection , Salami Aleikum , Fack ju Göthe )� Yet there are also a number of light-hearted and less well-known films with a female protagonist with an immigrant background, such as the comedy Meine verrückte türkische Hochzeit (2005, dir� Stephan Holtz), in which the bride is German and the groom is of Turkish descent, and Evet, ich will (2008, dir� Sinan Akkuş) as well as Einmal Hans mit scharfer Soße (2013, dir� Buket Alakus)� In those films, the intersections of gender identities, the immigrant experience, and religious affiliation play an important role in the way the Turkish German families enable the second generation to integrate themselves into German society by marrying a German man� Salami Aleikum encourages the viewer to question the negative stereotypes the media employs to create a debate around German national identity in a globalized world� A number of humorous scenes in Salami Aleikum center on the inversion of gender expectations as Ana takes charge of the situation by coming to Mohsen’s rescue. She lifts the car that falls on him, she picks him up and carries him off, and she offers to drive him to Poland to pick up the sheep. Similarly, Ana decides when they will first kiss and makes her move, and she drives to find a desperate Mohsen near the Polish-German border to bring him back to her home despite the fact that her ex-boyfriend Uwe makes her believe that Mohsen might want to sue her for letting the car fall on his leg� Ana is portrayed as a Pippi Longstocking-type character who has incredible physical prowess, even her hair is reddish� For his part, Mohsen’s gender inversion is demonstrated through female-connoted activities and characteristics, such as knitting, a domestic activity typically associated with women� Likewise, he is shown in moments of weakness as a result of which Ana has to rescue and help him, for example, when he does not know how to transfer sheep from the ground on a farm into his van and Ana does it for him by physically carrying them in one by one� Despite Ana’s strength, the film’s central character is the male figure Mohsen, and it is his family’s successful integration into German society that is at stake� There are explicit parallels between the integration of citizens of the ex-GDR after 1990 and the integration of immigrants in twentieth and twenty-first century Germany: both integrations were problematic socially, they served West German industrial needs, and both migrants and East Germans are considered inferior, feminized newcomers. While many political cartoons and films made after the fall of the Wall portray East Germany as the weak woman and West Germany as the strong man who rescues and/ or marries her as a metaphor for reunification of a stronger and weaker country, Salami Aleikum makes use of the same gender roles but upends expectations by showing a strong female East German woman and a weak West German (Iranian German) man (see Sharp and Morrison)� Yet, the “eastern” Persian character is feminized which contributes to the stereotype� While avoiding this East/ weak and West/ strong binary stereotype, a parody of the colonial or ‘ethnographic gaze’ by the white European—as Göktürk calls it—of the emasculated male foreigner is also depicted in the film to highlight that the character Mohsen is no threat to German society� Ahadi’s characters reflect on the complicated intersectionality of patriarchal authority, ethnicity, and national belonging in different ways for different characters� Mohsen’s father, for example, experiences a crisis of masculinity after moving to Germany when Mohsen’s father explains to Ana’s father how his displacement from his home country made him feel as if he were losing his more powerful position and patriarchal status within family and society� In his study on Transnationalism , Steven Vertovec writes of immigrant identity that women usually gain status after immigration and that “evidence also suggests Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum : Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany 515 516 Britta Kallin that conversely, men often lose status - potentially threatening their gender identity” (65). Vertovec explains the different status loss and status gain after migration for different genders. While women in general consider the immigration process from lower economic status and less freedom to countries with more economic stability and more freedom a success, their male counterparts usually consider the move to a more democratic and egalitarian society as paralleling a downward trajectory of their social position� Mohsen’s father, for example, lost his home and his professional and cultural status after he fled from Iran to Germany� While Mohsen’s father jokes about having been a student at the university in Iran, which he could not finish because he had to leave his home country, he now works as a butcher in Cologne� Even though he owns his own store in Germany, he lost the status that a university degree and military service confer. A reminder of this loss recurs twice in the film when he wears his military uniform to show his former military rank and former patriarchal powers� In his discussion of filmmakers who are not of traditional German heritage such as Fatih Akın, Thomas Arslan, and Kutluğ Ataman, Stephen Brockmann writes that successful films made by first-generation German directors were “not limited to Turkish-German cinema, as was proved by Ali Samadi Ahadi’s clever comedy Salami Aleikum ” (434)� Without doubt, Salami Aleikum stands in a tradition of a larger cohort of contemporary immigrant filmmakers and, especially, firstand second-generation filmmakers from Muslim countries, yet his film is also an extension of East-West German comedies such as Go, Trabi Go (1991, dir� Peter Timm), Sonnenallee (1999, dir� Leander Haußmann), and Goodbye Lenin (2003, dir. Wolfgang Becker). Ahadi inserts his film Salami Aleikum into this sequence of films that deal with German-German topics and makes his own statement about Geman-German relationships which he defines in the struggles that an Iranian German and East German couple has to overcome� Scholarship on Turkish German films and contexts helps to illuminate Ahadi’s work, especially scholarship focused on comedic Turkish German films. Turkish German comedy helps read Salami Aleikum because both entities’ approaches to using comedy to depict and further integration efforts are similar because Turkish German films also use intercultural couples that have gender parity as a means to portray successful integration. Karin Yeşilada has analyzed Turkish German immigrants in films and TV shows from the postwar years and concludes that light-hearted comedy “helps to create a bond between the artist and the audience, and with ethno-comedy this is even more the case, as laughing about others … is possible through laughing with them” (84)� In Salami Aleikum , humor is a shared experience between director, characters/ actors, and audience, and it unites all three groups through the silly and intentionally funny depiction of the characters, plot, setting, music, and imagery (see Schlote)� Even though humor can be racist and sexist, humor can also create harmony, as Constance Rourke, the author of American Humor (1931), asserts, for humor’s objective is to create “fresh bonds, a new unity, the semblance of a society” (cited in Mintz, 25)� The imagined society that is depicted in Salami Aleikum attempts to work through cultural differences and avoid the traps of discriminatory attitudes and behavior� The repressed stereotypes of Muslims as mean, otherworldly, destructive, aggressive, and totalitarian, which the villagers in the film have internalized, change so drastically during the film that most of the villagers eventually embrace many aspects of the Iranian culture including food, fashion, and lifestyle (see Sponholz)� Humor contributes to cultural awareness as well as the process of acculturation of minorities� According to Lawrence Mintz and Mary Douglas, humor allows “sentiments which are repressed or blocked in the official culture to surface and to be processed, often with positive benefits for social change” (ibid�)� Only those familiar with a culture or subculture and its language can understand its jokes� The Iranian German director manages to use humor as a tool to depict the changing of a minority’s status in the host country� In Salami Aleikum , Ahadi turns the “ethnographic gaze” around to show, as Deniz Göktürk has argued, “that supposedly settled non-immigrants can be mocked and unsettled, and themselves be incorporated into somebody else’s game. … Immigrant comedies at their best can train spectators in not taking themselves too seriously” ( Strangers 121). While the ethnographic gaze in Göktürk’s article refers to American and German audiences of clips by the Marx Brothers and the film Ich Chef, du Turnschuh (dir. Hussi Kutlucan, 1998) the concept can be applied to other audiences watching films made by minority directors. The narrator’s voice in the film describes the possibility that when East Germans and Persians work together something good will come of it� The sheep tells the story of two families who have lost their Heimat and the audience watches the development of both families in the process of searching for a new home. The conclusion at the end of the film, again narrated by the sheep, is that those who have lost their Heimat create a new one by becoming part of something new� In the case of Salami Aleikum , it is the dream of creating a new home in twenty-first-century Germany (see Ahadi, “Heimat”). Ana’s father realizes that he does not want to work in the garment factory but wants to set up a place that offers a glimpse of Persian life with baths, food, bazaar-like shopping areas, and quiet rooms with hookahs� To his customers, Ana’s father introduces his business partner Mohsen’s father as the past cultural attaché of the Iranian Shah to make Taheri senior even more “authentic” and “exotic”, while simultaneously negating the “authenticity” claim by implying that the show is merely a staging of actors� Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum : Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany 517 518 Britta Kallin Some of the storytelling features that Ahadi uses to combine Western and Eastern traditions in Salami Aleikum are fairy tale allusions� The director has repeatedly described the film as a fantastic, modern-day fairy tale: “Für mich ist dieser Film ein modernes Märchen. Ich habe Geschichten aus 1001 Nacht wie Ali Baba und die vierzig Räuber kombiniert mit Sandmännchen und dem Kleinen Muck ” (Ahadi)� Elements such as the physically strong, independent Ana as a modern-day Pippi Longstocking, as depicted in the humorous, gender-inverting stories by Astrid Lindgren of the 1940s, are intertwined with the traditional gender roles in fairy tales and upended: the female is the hero and the male is—almost—purely the object of desire� While the director Ahadi is male, he allows the storyteller in the film to be a female lamb as is familiar from fairy tales in 1001 Nights , which were narrated by a female storyteller� When Ana, for example, carries the injured Mohsen away from the car, the female narrator’s voice comments that Mohsen finally feels at home, “zu Hause.” In that instance, he falls head over heels in love with Ana� While in fairy tales it is usually the princess who awaits the prince’s kiss, here it is the man who is in awe of the confident, determined woman who rescues him and he passively awaits her next moves� The storyteller, a lamb that speaks German without an accent, eventually exposes herself as the omniscient narrator of the whole story when it claims in a woman’s voice: “Ich lege meine Keule dafür ins Feuer, dass diese Geschichte wahr ist,” mimicking the narrators of fairy tales who assure the audience of the truth of the story� In this case, it is not “meine Hand ins Feuer legen” but a lamb’s leg (see Mennig)� A Polish man who is caught trying to cross the German-Polish border illegally exclaims that although he may be deported back to Poland he is spiritually saved forever because he saw the holy family, referring to Ana, Mohsen, and the lamb, which in turn gives this threesome a satirical Christian overtone because the sheep plays the role of the Jesus Christ character and storyteller� Other fairy tale references occur throughout the film. When Mohsen admits that he lied to Ana, she unravels Mohsen’s possibly fifty-foot feet long woolen scarf. Knitting the scarf was a form of refuge for the teenager and young adult Mohsen. He compares the scarf to a diary and shows Ana that in difficult times he knitted the scarf really poorly, while in good times the knitting looks beautiful and boasts nice patterns� Here, the director draws parallels between the making of the scarf and the cultural tradition of making rugs in Persia� Cartoon sequences in the film tell this parallel story not through a verbal medium but through visual art� Moreover, both in the cartoon sequence as well as in Mohsen’s description, the scarf takes on a role of its own as if it were a scroll of paper, and then it mutates into a storyteller, the lamb, who tells Mohsen’s life story� In the cartoon scenes, the scarf turns into a roll of paper coming out of a typewriter on which the young sheep writes the story� Finally, the piece of paper transforms into a flying carpet. Parallels are drawn between oral and written storytelling and Persian rugs and woven wall hangings, some of which depict stories in their patterns� Other allusions to the fairy tales of the 1001 Arabian Nights include the child Mohsen riding on a flying carpet while his father tells him stories� In his imagination, Mohsen rides on a carpet with Ana, but the happy dream sequence ends abruptly when Mohsen sees Ana’s father� The child Mohsen loved the fairy tales of heroes and princesses that his father told him� In Salami Aleikum , the male protagonist was taught to believe in princesses, princes, and the happy ending of a love story and through parody the gender roles are reversed� The childhood tales seemed to comfort Mohsen but he later realizes their fictitious story lines. At this point, he still claims that unlike his heroes he cannot find happiness that comes close to that of those fairy tale endings and yet he and Ana eventually have a fairy tale ending to show how Persian Germans and East Germans can come together� Satire is used in Salami Aleikum to negotiate the transnational conflict that the plot line presents to the audience (see Bower)� The discursive strategy of Christians versus Muslims is both used and simultaneously deflated. Exaggeration is a means to examine conventions and meaning within German culture: Through exaggeration, Ahadi shows the fears of East Germans who have seen their livelihood and sense of identity taken away after the fall of the Wall and who display xenophobic sentiments� Ahadi also shows and explains the fears and internalized stereotypes that West Germans and immigrants who live in West Germany have about East Germans� Salami Aleikum displays a range of word plays and linguistic humor� Mohsen does not want to acknowledge that his father is a butcher and that he is supposed to get the sheep from Poland to slaughter them because Ana is a vegetarian� While father Taheri intends to talk about his business to Ana’s family, Mohsen continues his stream of lies and diverts attention by deliberately mixing up “Schlachten,” the slaughter of animals, and “Schlachten,” the battles that soldiers fight. Since his father will not stop talking about animal slaughter Mohsen intentionally pours water over his father’s pants who then changes into his Iranian military uniform that he wore as a sergeant decades ago� Inspired by this act, Ana’s father also changes into uniform, that of the East German Nationale Volksarmee (NVA or National People’s Army) that he used to wear as a soldier� Satirizing the NVA happened a lot in the media and public discussions after the fall of the Berlin Wall� Both men lost their home country for which they once served in the military� The fathers get drunk and exchange stories of old times in what they consider their lost identities and homes, or Heimat in Persia and Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum : Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany 519 520 Britta Kallin the GDR� While they are drunk, their verbal exchanges become increasingly funny because Ana’s father calls Mohsen by the Hebrew name of Moses, while Mohsen’s father first corrects him and then later calls his own son Moses as well� In addition, they use the word “Shalom” as a toast, confusing Hebrew, German, and Farsi in their drunken state of mind� Another linguistic play with the bilingual characters takes place when Mohsen’s parents meet Ana for the first time. The humor emerges from Mohsen’s intentionally wrong translation of what his parents say in Farsi� The German audience can read the correct translation in German subtitles of the mother’s Farsi sentence: “Hat sie dein Auge so zugerichtet? ” Yet, Mohsen incorrectly translates for Ana that his mother says she is delighted to meet his new girlfriend� Father Taheri comments in Farsi about the unusual height and size of his son’s girlfriend: “Um die satt zu kriegen, brauchst du ein Rind pro Tag,” and smilingly, he adds after a pause that one cow may not suffice to satisfy Ana’s appetite: “oder zwei.” In order not to offend Ana, Mohsen again incorrectly translates that Mohsen’s father is commenting positively on Ana’s ravishing appearance: “Mein Vater ist ganz hingerissen von dir und deinem natürlichen Wesen�” Here, the joke is on Ana who does not understand Farsi and thus is excluded from the Taheri parents’ laughter� Mohsen in turn becomes frazzled: he becomes increasingly entangled in problems because he gradually has to come up with more and more lies to explain his situation� The film challenges but does not debunk stereotypes. Ahadi eloquently shows the fears of immigrants who travel from West to East Germany when, for instance, Mohsen’s father takes a baseball bat along on the ride as a means to defend himself and his wife against an attack by East Germans� A funny moment occurs when a local East German offers to help Mohsen’s father who is looking for the way to Oberniederwalde� The East German is very helpful and gives father Taheri directions but the Iranian German does not understand what he is saying because he is distracted by imagining a possible xenophobic attack on himself and his wife� In a follow-up joke, he explains to his wife that he could not understand what the man was saying because East Germans do not speak German� Mohsen’s father tops this misunderstanding by mocking the internalized stereotype of foreigners who resemble apes or dogs when he describes his son Mohsen to Justin and Kevin as “einen Perser, Haare überall auf dem ganzen Körper … bisschen doof.” The misunderstanding revolves around the expression “der Perser.” At first it seems that father Taheri is looking for a carpet, “der Perser,” but he then clarifies this and explains that he is looking for a Persian man, “der Perser�” In a conversation with his wife in Farsi about their status as “Ausländer,” father Taheri claims, “Wir sind keine Ausländer - wir sind Perser.” Here, Mohsen’s father refers to the supposedly special status of Iranians within the hierarchy of foreigners in Germany because Iranians are allowed to have dual citizenship� It may also refer to Hitler’s claim that Persians are to be considered as belonging to the Aryan race and are part of the Aryan brotherhood (see Schack)� The comment about the “Perser” is not funny because of its reference to National Socialism but because of the internal dynamic of the movie in which the Iranian Germans are afraid of the East Germans� In Salami Aleikum , headscarves and religion are not relevant to the narrative of the inter-ethnic couple Ana and Mohsen. The film uses Islam as a racialized and cultural identity rather than a spiritual belief or religious practice and thus religion and faith play an insignificant role in the film. Ahadi does not make fun of religious aspects in this comedy but neither does he depict the Islamic religion and traditions as meaning much to Mohsen� Therefore, neither religious nor cultural behavior prompts conflict in his union with Ana. Salami Aleikum alludes to the September 11 terrorist attacks twice, first when the German border guard at the Polish border asks Mohsen for a special permit to import sheep from Poland into Germany, and second when the East German Uwe tells his friends Kevin and Justin that Mohsen might be the “Kalif of Köln,” leading a fundamentalist mosque, implying that Mohsen is a dangerous Muslim terrorist� The real-life caliph of Cologne, Muhammed Metin Kaplan, was one of the more visible Islamic fundamentalists before and after 9/ 11. Kaplan received much increased media attention in 2003—2004, including his face on the cover of Der Spiegel in 2004� He was born in Turkey but lived in Germany and issued a fatwa against an opponent who was found dead, after which Kaplan was deported from Germany in 2004� Allusions to the Islamic religion are played out in several scenes in the film. For instance, Ana’s father exemplifies misconceptions about Muslims by laying a small rug on the floor facing East and awkwardly explaining to Mohsen: “Wegen Mecca�” He assumes that Mohsen will pray three times a day towards the East� Mohsen is surprised by this gesture because he is not a practitioner of Islam. Similarly, after Ana and Mohsen drive off to Poland, Ana’s ex-boyfriend Uwe uses a stereotypical racial slur when he talks to his friends Kevin and Justin because he wants to control and end Ana’s relationship with the outsider and Muslim Mohsen: “Schleppen die Kanaken die Bräute ab? ” and “Das war ein Fehler mit dem Kanaken.” As a white man, Uwe assumes he can assert power over Ana. While the derogatory term “Kanaken” was initially used for people from the South Seas, it now refers to Turks and other ethnically marked, dark-haired men in Germany (Dunphy 152 ff.). The character Uwe embodies a white East German cliché of a Neo-Nazi, someone who is scared of the ethnic, religious, and cultural other. The film uses humor here to exaggerate and ridicule the fear of “Kanaken” and undo the negative connotations the term has carried for decades� Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum : Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany 521 522 Britta Kallin Uwe channels the stereotypical anxiety of the white, native-born German to defend himself against the implied threat of the dark-skinned Other and his assumed sexual potency and hyper virility� His taunt, “Der Fremde hat die Ana besprungen,” incorporates an expression that is usually only used of mating rituals of animals, and thus implies an identification between Mohsen and animals� Uwe is the one who emphasizes Mohsen’s Muslim heritage and shouts: “Mullah-Alarm” as soon as he sees Mohsen’s parents arrive in Oberniederwalde� Indeed, not only Uwe but several East German villagers voice their fears about foreigners and Muslims throughout Salami Aleikum � For example, Ana’s mother paints a picture of a clan culture (“die Sippe”), and Kevin and Justin think that the East German village will soon turn into Asia Minor (“Klein-Asien”), both of which are well-known clichés for immigrants from the non-European, Anatolian region of Turkey� Thematizing food as a vehicle for integration is part of a long-standing discourse� As bell hooks argues in her study Eating the Other : “ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (21, see Peterson 521)� Hooks reads the consumption of the ‘exotic’ food as something that colonialists have done to continue their domination of the colonized. However, in many films about integration of subaltern characters into a Western society, the exchange of food and the introduction of spicy food and dance traditions play an important role in bridging cultural values and norms and offering ways to ease intercultural and interethnic friendships such as, for instance, in Gurinder Chadha’s two films Bhaji on the Beach (1993) and Bend it like Beckham (2002)� In Salami Aleikum , the mix of Persian and East German cuisine supports and enables the integration of first and second generation Iranian German immigrants� In addition to the ‘exoticized’ foods, the Bergheims invite their customers to smoke a hookah that has become popular in Germany in the last decades, and that is also presented in the film as a sign of the peaceful integration of Muslim cultural customs into Germany� The Germans here embrace the ‘exotic,’ and the ‘foreign’ seems trendy and hip� The humorous irony that underpins the conclusion of the movie is that the arrival of Mohsen and his Persian family in Oberniederwalde is precisely the catalyst the village has needed to bring about economic recovery� Taunts and clichés are encapsulated even in the title of the film. Salami Aleikum plays with the commonly used greeting “Salam Aleikum” and its distortion into “Salami,” an Italian sausage made of all kinds of meat including pork, which observant Muslims generally do not eat� Likewise, Ana’s father initially refuses to give Mohsen a room in his Gasthaus and offers him only a dish of pig kidney that the Muslim is forced to eat in order not to offend the villagers. In a series of misunderstandings and mix-ups that follow, Ana’s parents come to believe that Mohsen’s parents are Persian billionaires and oil magnates who are going to buy the abandoned garment factory in the East German town and help the villagers out of their economic misery� Working under this false assumption, Ana’s parents change the menu and interior décor of their restaurant to welcome Mohsen’s parents with Persian décor and cuisine� Coincidentally, this menu change attracts more local customers and business improves� Ahadi highlights the areas where East German and Persian experiences overlap when he focuses on the difficulties of integration into a united Germany for those from the former East Germany and the integration of ethnic minorities into the former West Germany and united Germany. In the film, Ana’s hometown is at first portrayed as dark and threatening for Mohsen but turns into a colorful environment with Persian spas and a bazaar that offers to fulfill the East German dream of economic growth and the East German as well as Persian German search for a new home� In addition to the stereotypes of Iranians and East Germans, the film also includes and exaggerates other stereotypes, for example that of Poles� Mohsen and his parents, the Iranian immigrants from Cologne, are not really considered to be “Wessis” by the East Germans� Yet, the Iranian German family has internalized the West German stereotypes of Poles, who are, supposedly, a dangerous group of sneaky, unemployed thieves� Mohsen’s father warns his son not to travel to Poland: “Die Polacken stecken dich in die Tasche�” This expresses the stereotypical fear of Poles taking advantage of customers, stealing, and selling bad merchandise—in this case the fear that the sheep Mohsen is buying might not look healthy or be well fed� Yet, despite these warnings and after being rejected by Ana because of his lies, Mohsen flees to Poland while he is trying to figure out what to do next. When Ana finds Mohsen, it is the Polish German border that takes on its own meaning in the film when Mohsen declares it to be the most beautiful spot in the world after one of the sheep gives birth to a lamb which he and Ana care for� The border between Germany and Poland plays an important role by depicting a safe space for the Iranian German and East German characters (see Halle Europeanization 108-128)� The European borderlands that connect the former Eastern Bloc and West Europe can be read as an imagined space of freedom for those who do not ‘properly’ fit into German society. The director Ali Samadi Ahadi examines the integration of the ethnic, cultural and religious minority of Iranian Germans in Germany and emphasizes that there are various similarities between ethnic minorities and East Germans (see Foroutan). Ahadi’s film uses humor as a tool to exemplify a transnational aesthetic where the story takes place between a Persian family from West Germany and an East German family and a rural community� Ahadi plays with genre conventions of fairy tales and brings them into the 21 st century in order to create Ali Samadi Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum : Humor, Gender, and Muslims in Germany 523 524 Britta Kallin a sweet and gentle tale of the integration of a Muslim into German society� The film problematizes existing stereotypes of women, men, West Germans, East Germans, Iranian Germans, and Poles� Salami Aleikum interrogates the superficiality of outward appearances and uses switched gender roles, ethnicity and religion to scrutinize the underlying implications of clichés of racialized Muslims and to highlight that the integration of Muslims, a racialized religious group, is possible and beneficial for Germany. The group of Muslims is being integrated into a German nation that is changing daily. It offers the possibilities of overcoming sentiments of superiority or inferiority by exaggerating situations and structuring the storyline into a string of humorous episodes� Mohsen’s successful integration into the town Oberniederwalde is possible because he possesses certain characteristics that allow for this acceptance� He is friendly, he wants to work, he speaks fluent German, and he supports his girlfriend Ana by allowing her space to continue with her professional career as a car mechanic� Mohsen is not very confident and he does not exhibit overly masculine stereotypes but is characterized as feminine: he is physically weak, he knows how to knit, and he loves fairy tales� Mohsen is open to change and—just like his parents—is looking for a place to call home where he is accepted on equal terms� In an increasingly globalized world, the search for a place called Heimat or home and the wish to feel accepted by one’s local surroundings seems universal and takes the spotlight in feature films like Ahadi’s Salami Aleikum � Despite the successes of the Alternative for Germany party in local and national elections, the trend seems to show a rejection of the racism of the AfD by most Germans� The many demonstrations against PEGIDA, the #Unteilbar demonstrations and concerts, and the outpour on social media for a diverse Germany are proof of that. Questions of belonging and identity in Germany have become more inclusive over the past decades because most members of German society acknowledge, accept, and appreciate the existence of heterogeneous cultural, religious, and linguistic communities that already live within Germany’s geographical borders� German society is an expression of decades of Turkish, Arab, Southern and Southeastern European immigration (see Göktürk et al., Germany in Transit ). The film’s vital contribution to the debate about the integration of Muslims into German society is a humorous take that includes a discussion on gender and that opens a new set of possibilities that steer viewers towards an optimistic assessment of migrants’ struggles for acceptance and dignified participation and a positive outlook for the future of integration in Germany. The film succeeds in questioning gender expectations, national identity, cultural belonging, religious tolerance, citizenship laws, and migration trends within and outside of Europe� Ahadi’s film opens up space for public discussions about the intersections of those topics that are reflected and arranged, staged, and performed in contemporary postcolonial, accented, and transnational comedies like Salami Aleikum � Works Cited Ahadi, Ali Samadi. “Heimat ist da, wo man akzeptiert wird. Porträt: Ali Samadi Ahadi.” Sonja Ernst� Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung� <http: / / www�bpb�de/ internationales/ asien/ iran/ 40202/ ali-samadi-ahadi> ---� Salami Aleikum � Hoanzl, 2009� Albrecht, Monika� “Postcolonialism, Islam, and Contemporary Germany�” TRANSIT. 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