Photograph by Graham Tolbert
Ali Sultan
On a recent Friday evening, I met the comedian Ali Sultan while salsa dancing at the Fallout Arts Initiative, a creative space and gallery in Whittier. Around us, a crowd of MCAD students and men in snakeskin pants shimmied, quick-quick-slow. Sultan did not exude expertise on the dance floor: He has taken lessons intermittently, he said. But with my hips involved in a move reasonably described as White Dad on Chardonnay, I was in no position to judge.
Sultan appeared at ease in the room, which made sense, because he had orchestrated the whole event. Earlier in the evening, he’d delivered a tight 10-minute set against a backdrop of artfully distressed brick walls and diaphanous drapes, his routine bouncing from world religion to Walmart, from ice-skating to institutional racism. Over the last few years, the Yemeni-born comedian has established himself as one of the top standups in the Twin Cities, where he has lived for more than 15 years.
Photo courtesy of Sultan
Ali Sultan age 14
Ali Sultan, age 14, in immigration papers. Before coming to America, he lived away from his mother, in Ethiopia.
“I love it,” he said. “Every second feels like do or die.”
Still, Sultan has found that the craft of comedy leaves plenty of time to dabble and explore. “At most it’s an hour a day,” he said. “What am I going to do with the rest of the hours?” Hence that night’s beautifully weird mashup: Comedy followed by salsa lessons—why not?
In the year since quitting his day job, Sultan has, in fact, produced an outpouring of creativity. He’s a frequent guest on both local and national comedy podcasts; he writes and produces videos for his website; he books Comedy & Salsa events; he workshops new characters. (A year ago, comedy rooms around the Twin Cities met “Joe Freedom,” a Trump-supporting Middle Eastern man who was very eager to prove his patriotism—and perhaps hide his immigration status.) Late last year, Sultan developed a showcase for diverse voices in standup called POC (People of Comedy), which he’d like to take on the road.
All of this bustle goes beyond the five or six sets he performs every week. “It’s not even an ambitious thing,” Sultan told me. “It’s just the hunger.”
After dining out on local accolades, Sultan has started to attract A-list attention. Kevin Hart featured Sultan on his Comedy Central show, Hart of the City, and Wanda Sykes picked him for an unaired slot on her series, Unprotected Sets.
Yet at the same time that Ali Sultan is gaining national name recognition, he’s bringing a new star with him: Mona Shamsan, Sultan’s podcasting cohost, who also happens to be his mom.
Photograph by Graham Tolbert
Ali Sultan and Mona Shamsan
Earlier this summer, I met up with Ali Sultan and Mona Shamsan at her apartment in Loring Park, joining their standing Monday-night dinner appointment. Soon after I arrived, Shamsan covered a rug with a gorgeous spread of Yemeni and Ethiopian dishes—copper pots and steaming ramekins and stone bowls hot from the oven. As we sat on the floor, they talked me through the intricacies of preparing saltah (meat stew with vegetables and fenugreek) and shafoot (flatbread soaked in tangy yogurt and herbs).
For the past year or so, Sultan and Shamsan have been recording a podcast called Stories with My Muslim Mom—a roving series 20 episodes deep—that shares tales from their lives in Yemen. It doubles as an exploration of their experiences as Middle Eastern immigrants in the MAGA era.
“I see people walking down the street looking at her with pity,” Sultan says on an early episode, referring to the fact that Shamsan wears a hijab. “Like she’s this oppressed person.” His voice rises then into laughter. “She’s the baddest motherfucker you’ll ever meet,” he says, before course-correcting: “Sorry for cursing, Mom.”
Photo courtesy of Sultan
Ali Sultan at New York Arab-American Comedy Festival
Sultan performing at the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, in 2014
Oppressed is not a description one would naturally apply to Shamsan. Her gentle demeanor belies a steely core. She grew up middle class in Ethiopia, decamping for Yemen in the 1970s after communists came to power and seized her parents’ property. There, Shamsan recalls, she trained as a midwife. She divorced her husband, then carved a space for herself as a single mother in the Middle East.
In her thirties, with the economy tanking and regional conflicts fracturing the country, she concluded Yemen, too, had become dangerous. Shamsan made arrangements for the care of her two children and set off solo, ultimately reaching the United States, where she claimed political asylum.
Her foresight has been tragically realized in the present day: A multisided civil war grips Yemen, with widespread famine and cholera ravaging the population. Last month, the sponsors of the fighting—Saudi Arabia and Iran—nearly drew the U.S. into a regional war.
What followed Shamsan’s flight from Yemen is a story familiar to immigrants the world over: an experience of lengthy separations and sacrifices. Sultan stayed in Ethiopia for several years with his aunt, while his older sister waited in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, Shamsan worked to establish herself. She resided in Maryland before settling in Minnesota to work as a nanny. By the time she was able to bring her children to the U.S., in 2003, four years had passed.
At dinner, when I asked Shamsan what their reunion was like, her tone turned briefly melancholy. “Mixed feelings,” she said, looking at Sultan. “I realized how long I was separated from him.”
These stories and many more came rushing forth once Sultan began recording their conversations for the podcast. “She opened up,” he said. “The format allowed her to disconnect, to talk about things she wouldn’t normally talk about.”
•••••
Back in February, I watched Sultan perform in a sold-out show at Sisyphus Brewing, which has emerged as one of the best comedy rooms in Minneapolis. That hourlong set became his debut album, Happy to Be Here.
Sultan favors stories over one-liners. “No matter how much people laugh at a joke,” he said, “laughter itself is not memorable. It’s a point of view that’s memorable.” He notes how Middle Eastern immigrants are pigeonholed into declaring themselves Caucasian on the U.S. Census. He jokes that the whole thing is a loophole so Americans can pretend Jesus was white. In the same bit, Sultan envisions the rapture and American Christians staring in befuddlement as Jesus returns: “Why does he look so ISIS-y?”
And while his stories work on their own narrative merits, he frequently ornaments them with verbal craft. For instance, Sultan claims no one in Yemen knows precisely when they were born. He tries to pin down his mother on his birth year, and she sighs definitively: He was born when his uncle got diabetes. “Time is relative,” Sultan concludes, “and that relative is my uncle.”
There are subtle emotional layers lurking below this patter. At dinner in Shamsan’s apartment, Sultan and his mother had playfully bickered over how long they’d been separated before reuniting in America. Shamsan told me it was three years, while Sultan rolled his eyes.
Photograph by Graham Tolbert
Ali Sultan
Someone cast this guy on Dancing With the Stars.
“She brings the number down out of guilt,” he said. Time is relative indeed.
At the moment, though, time seems to be moving in one direction for Sultan and Shamsan: forward. Stories with My Muslim Mom has been continuing to evolve. What began as a venue to reflect on their lives in Yemen had expanded to include other immigrant stories. In Season Two, they brought on guests from Somalia, Pakistan, Guatemala, and the Philippines to tell their own migration tales.
Sultan is planning out his standup schedule into 2020. From his growing reputation, he has started booking headlining gigs around the country. Now he needs to find time to work on the TV pilot he’s developing. Oh, and a cooking show to be called Home Spice—a new platform to tell human stories through food.
This news recalls a bit from the album, in which Sultan likens his first taste of pork to a psychedelic experience. “Bacon was my mushrooms,” he says.
It seems like Sultan’s trip into the fun house of American culture is just getting started.
