'Mo,' the Lovable Face of an Unloved People

A television series that follows the eponymous Mo, a Palestinian refugee seeking asylum in Houston, Texas.

Image via Netflix

In American film and television, Palestinians are the perennial villain. They’re the terrorist, the hijacker, the suicide bomber. The primary villain in season one of Homeland, which may be the most popular spy-thriller series of all time, is Abu Nazir, a Palestinian terrorist and al-Qaeda commander. If we expanded the search to include Arabs and Muslims in general, we’d be here all day. Season 2 of Mo, which released earlier this year, could not have come at a better time.

Created by Mohammed “Mo” Amer, a Palestinian-American comedian, Mo is a fictionalized version of Amer’s life as a stateless person in Houston, Texas. Amer’s charm, which sparkled as friend and heckler in Ramy, is on full display here. Mo meets the basic requirements of any comedy—it’s funny and fun—but it distinguishes itself as a rarity in American media by giving viewers a glimpse into the lives and culture of Palestinian people.

Palestinian culture

In Mo, Palestinian culture is a central character. The food, the language, family, and Islam. We see Mo’s mother make olive oil from scratch, a ritualistic, labor-intensive process that serves as a metaphor for the Palestinian experience. It’s no wonder Mo reveres his mother’s olive oil. It’s not just food. It’s the fruit of the earth from which they’ve been barred, imbuing a simple food item with holy meaning.

Mo blunders into increasingly zany misadventures, like the proposed cuckolding of a diplomat who holds the keys to the resolution of an intractable problem that is keeping him from his asylum court date, but the series is at its best when characters are just shooting the shit.

One scene in particular stands out. It takes place in a cafe with food and hookah, a regular meeting spot in the series. Two fixtures of this location are Mo’s friends—one is Palestinian and the other is Jewish. At one point, they get into an argument about the origins of hummus and whether or not an Israeli chef is appropriating culture. It’s funny seeing them rant and quip about hummus, but it’s memorable because the banter never gets nasty, in spite of its implications.

Citizen of nowhere

Mo and his family have been waiting decades for their asylum petition to make its way through the courts. Without citizenship or residency, Mo isn’t able to pursue legitimate work. He works under the table as a phone repairman and peddles bootleg designer items from the trunk of his 1970 Ford Fairlane. He can’t leave the country to see his family in Palestine, and moves in perpetual fear of ICE. He lives in permanent limbo, an experience that applies to many noncitizens in the U.S., not just asylum seekers.

A flawed Mo

It would be easy to portray Mo, who faces personal hardships and family tragedies, as a saint, but the showrunners don’t fall into that trap. Mo has his peccadilloes, like dragging his feet with his girlfriend, Maria, and turning to “lean,” the prescription-grade cough-syrup-based drink, in order to cope with his situation. The human foibles are especially important here, as too often Muslims are portrayed as militant purists and religious automatons, instead of flawed human beings who are trying their best.

Muslim culture, though depicted with respect, doesn’t emerge unscathed either. Mo’s mother, Nadia, and her sister judge Maria for not being a Muslim, judgement that is spotlighted when Maria wears a low-cut black dress to a funeral. Mo’s family is also critical of Mo’s decision to drop their current Muslim lawyer in favor of a non-Muslim lawyer, even though the Muslim lawyer proved time and again to be inattentive and irresponsible.

Just like the titular character, Mo isn’t perfect, but it’s better that way. Imperfect is real.

The softening of Arabic

The first Muslim-majority country I visited was Morocco, 20 years ago. I’m ashamed to admit the sounds of the Adhan (call to prayer) ringing through the streets unsettled me. It sounded ominous. In the movies I watched, movies like Black Hawk Down and The Kingdom, if you heard the Adhan over mosque loudspeakers, you were behind enemy lines.

A product of the media I consumed, I long thought Arabic to be a harsh, aggressive language. It took a comedy-drama by a Palestinian American for me to realize something that in retrospect seemed so obvious: Arabic seemed harsh to me because I always heard it in the context of violence and destruction, when Muslims and Arabs were shouting and threatening. The portrayal of Muslims and Arabic in film and media inculcated me with a negative association I didn’t even know existed.

Watching Mo, I had a completely different experience of Arabic, which was peppered in throughout the series. In Arabic, the characters of Mo pray, gossip, jab, and address each with terms of endearment, like habibi. I found the language tender and soulful and funny.

In one scene, Mo recites the Adhan over the loudspeaker at a mosque. There’s context that adds another layer of meaning, but I don’t want to spoil it. Suffice it to say that the recitation is sad and hopeful and proud—it’s beautiful.

The (de) humanization of a people

In a week that saw Israel announce its intentions to seize and occupy all of Gaza indefinitely, which should come as no surprise, I can’t help but reflect on the demonization of Palestinians that paved the way for this moment. I wrote about this demonization a couple of months ago, within the context of the detainment of Rumeysa Ozturk and Mahmoud Khalil, drawing parallels between the hate speech leveled at Palestinians and migrants:

“The summary detainment of Ozturk and Khalil is a product of two lethally effective propaganda campaigns: the demonization and dehumanization of immigrants and of Palestinians. Every unspeakable act committed against a group of people throughout history was preceded by a smear campaign. They’re traitors. They’re criminals. They’re terrorists. They’re animals. Because once you erase their humanity, you can justify anything. And if you can justify anything, you can get away with everything…”

The inverse is also true: If you humanize, celebrate, and provide context of a people, it’s much harder to justify their persecution and suffering. I can’t imagine anyone watching Mo and not rooting for him, a refugee, an asylum seeker, a Muslim, and a Palestinian.

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Watch two seasons of Mo on Netflix.