The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Jameela Green Ruins Everything by Zarqa Nawaz

Episode Date: May 11, 2022

Jameela Green Ruins Everything by Zarqa Nawaz “I think we got off on the wrong foot, with you telling me I had to be killed and then me getting all upset about it. Let’s start again. My name is Jameela, and I’m a writer. What do you do, besides . . . assassinations? Is that a hobby or more of a full-time thing?” Jameela Green has only one wish: to see her memoir on the New York Times bestseller list. When that doesn’t work out, she decides that her best next step is to make a deal with God, so she heads over to her local mosque. The idealistic new imam, Ibrahim Sultan, is appalled by Jameela’s shallowness but agrees to assist her, on one condition—that she perform a good deed. Jameela reluctantly accepts his terms, kicking off a series of unfortunate events. The homeless man they try to help gets recruited by a terrorist group, causing federal authorities to become suspicious of Ibrahim. When the imam mysteriously disappears, Jameela is certain that the CIA has captured her new friend for interrogation and possibly torture. Despite having no talent for this sort of thing, Jameela decides to set off on a one-woman operation to rescue him. Her quest soon lands her at the center of an international plan targeting the leader of the terrorist organization—a scheme that puts Jameela and count-less others, including her hapless husband and clever but disapproving daughter, at risk. A no-holds-barred satire about the international cost of the American Dream, Jameela Green Ruins Everything is a compulsively readable, darkly comedic, yet unexpectedly touching story of one woman’s search for meaning and connection.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks it's voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here live with another podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in thanks for being here hey we just want to announce we just blew through somewhere in the last 48 hours. We blew through another

million, another million downloads. Holy freaking crap. You got our YouTube channel. It's 24 million views over there. Almost 24 million views. I'm sorry. I got to get the almost in there. It's been cranking for 12 years. What can you say? Hey guys, thanks for tuning in. We certainly appreciate you. Let's add another million to that like next week go to grab your friends just take their hand look deeply into their eyes and say subscribe to the chris faust show go to youtube.com for us as chris faust hit the bell notification button goodreads.com for us as chris faust everything reading and reviewing over there all of our groups on facebook linkedin twitter the big instagram or not instagram the big linkedin newsletter and the big linkedin, 122,000 people there.

Go subscribe to that thing. Get involved. See what's going on. You can learn everything that's happening out there. Remember, the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you. So best kind of family there is. In fact, people keep sending me adoption notices. They want to be adopted by the family because evidently they're not liking what they have going on.

I'm just kidding. That's not really happening. Lawyers just make me say that. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get

a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book where refined books are sold. Tuning in, we have another amazing author on the book, and she is launching her amazing book that she has put out today, May 10th, 2022. The book is entitled jamila green ruins everything and it's

by zarka noah's she's on the show with us today she'll be talking to us about her amazing book why she wrote it and all the good stuff there in between she is also a frequent public speaker on islam diversity she created the series Little Mosque on the Prairie and the world's first sitcom about a Muslim community living in the West. The show premiered in 2007 to record ratings on CBC. The inspiration for the series came from her groundbreaking documentary, Me and the Mosque, which ultimately inspired the television series. She sold pilots to ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox, and written a best-selling memoir all the way to the mosque.

Both her books are out now, and she sold, let's see here, both her novel, Jamila Green Ruins Everything, and Zarka, CBC Gem web series, comes out this spring, and writing comedy. She lives in Regina, Saskatchewan, with her long-suffering family. How are you? Welcome to the show, Zarka. It's a lot, Chris.

And have I got all the pronunciations of everything there right? There's a lot of... Yes, Zarka rhymes with parka. There you go. All right. So we got everything right there. And all the way from Canada. When you say long-suffering family,

I need a little bit more data on that. I have four children and a husband. And they all feel like they have to put their needs behind mine, particularly when a project comes out. And God forbid if I need help with social media, which is all the time. Of course, the only reason left to have children really is tech support.'m telling you yeah and gaming you know my my my brother had kids i didn't i i just have dog dog kids they're the best kind of kids because they don't require driver's license and stuff and dating you know insurance that sort of thing so but my brother has a son who is really good

at video games you know those crazy flipping fingers those 12 year olds out there they're good and you know us old diet guys with bad eyes and bad reflexes like why are these 12 year olds killing me so i found out that if you have kids especially young boys you can have them go do your gaming like raids all the work for you you know and i'm like i would have had kids in fact i go down to adoption clinics and i i say are you good at destiny and call of duty sorry can't adopt you yeah we'll find some of you guys though good luck good luck anyway i'm just kidding i don't do that except on weekends anyway so let's talk about your amazing

book give me your plugs first so that people can find you on the interwebs. Sure. I am on Twitter at Zarka Nawaz, and I'll spell that Z-A-R-K-A-N-A-W-A-Z. And same with Facebook at Zarka Nawaz. And on Instagram, I'm The Real Zarka, because I think I managed to screw up using my real name, and then I couldn't convince them that I was that person. So then I had to change it to the real circuit. There you go. So what motivated you to want to write this book?

I had written a memoir called Laughing All the Way to the Mosque that had been released in 2014. And I, Chris, was convinced that it should have been on the New York Times bestseller list. And when I didn't make it, I became this very bitter, vindictive writer who would have to go to these other book festivals and see other authors beside me and see incredible success happening to them. And when you sit beside them and there's people lined up, you're thinking, oh, they're there for my book. And then you realize that it's the author beside you and you only have three people in front of you. And then I started getting more and more bitter and vindictive about the whole publishing game.

And so then I decided I was just going to write a story about a woman who just does something horrible in her life because she's so mad and angry at the world for not giving her the success she deserves. That's what the book is about. It's about a bitter, horrible, and blissful woman who's just driving her family batty because she just does these cookie things because she figures life owes her and it has not come through. And on top of it, she's Muslim and she prays five times a day

to God. So she's talking to God like, what gives? Let's take a look. More success than me. So this is not fair. So she has it in for God, right? So she's really God. So she goes to the local imam and she's like how dare god not listen to me it even says in the quran if you're good and do good things

you'll get what you want and of course the imam is his young poor innocent imam from egypt who's just arrived who cannot understand these weird western muslim and their coercion of god and he's like listen i think that you are spending too much time being selfish and horrible. Maybe you should take care of people besides yourself. And he convinces her to look after a homeless man. And she's really upset about that. And so she doesn't want to look after the homeless. She figured it's their fault that they're homeless.

And, you know, they live on the streets. It's good use of taxpayers' money at night because no one's using them. And, you know, like, why should we be helping them? So he's appalled by her behavior, makes her go out, and they meet a young homeless man, Barkley. And from there, a series of unfortunate events happen. I don't want to give the whole book away, but it helps Jamila realize, you know, she goes on a bit of a hero's journey

where she has to come full circle about her relationship with herself and her faith and her community and her family. So it's one of those redemption stories. Ah, everyone loves a redemption story. It sounds hilarious too, at least the way you're portraying it in your comedy. It's a good story, yeah. It's very're portraying it in your comedy.

It's a good story, yeah. It's very funny. It's a satire. Yeah. So did you, it sounds maybe a bit of a projection from your experience there? Did you base that on it? Yeah, I totally based it on what I was going through. It took like six years to write, and

my own publisher who had published my memoir had actually turned the book down. Oh! Which is really upsetting. That makes it more angry. I was so angry. I was like, what the? Well, for those people who don't know about publishing, if you've never published a novel before,

you don't get an advance because the editors and the publishing house doesn't believe in you. Because they'd be like, they don't know if you can sell anything. So they're like, no, you have got to write it first for free. And if we like it, then we'll buy it. And so it's called working on spec. You've got to spend years and years working on a novel for now. And that may or may not get published. And so that's what happened. They're like, yeah, we know you can publish a memoir. If you want to write another memoir, I'm like, no, I'm done with the memoirs. I don't want to write another one. Go for a novel. And so they said no. And then I had to write it and rewrite it. And novels are hard. Like you think it's easy to do, but it's a craft and you have to master it. And I am a television writer by trade. A television writing is very different animal

than novel writing. Like novels, you go into people's minds and you hear their thoughts and feelings. You can't translate that into film and television. This is why a lot of novels don't make good television because most of them lived in people's minds and they were fantastic because you got to hear what they were thinking and feeling.

But TV doesn't do a good job at translating feelings and what people are thinking internally. They're good at plot and carrying story forward. So I had to learn a whole other type of writing when I wrote the novel. That's probably why books are better than movies. You know, everyone comes out of a movie and goes, yeah, it's a good book. And you're like, well, I can't.

But that does explain why that happens. You know, and, and, and of course, a lot of those thoughts and feelings, sometimes they have to try and express in movies or TVs, you know, outwardly in some sort of expression. And like, sometimes you, you can see it in the film where you're just like, that really doesn't deliver well, because you're clearly trying to deliver that as some sort of, you know, drama scene that you're created. They fictionalize. And I hate it when they do that in historical films. And you're like, why did you do that? And they're like, well, we had to fictionalize the whole, you know, the crisis point or the conflict. And you're like, that was really dumb. So, so you wrote this book. Did you have any Hollywood people you're thinking about when

it gets picked up for movies or anything do you have anybody that you were it's a good question i've had a lot of producers sleeping around but i've just i've decided because i'm a television writer and now a big thing that television writers want to do is they want to own their own ip and make things under their own production shingle and so i feel like given that it's this is a very sensitive subject because she goes to the Middle East and there's a lot of history about American foreign policy in the Middle East. We've got the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. You've got the two Gulf Wars and the whole issues of ISIS because this is a satire about ISIS and what were the political backgrounds that made this group form. And I feel like these are really deep things that you can do in books, but not necessarily translate, as you said, as well in television.

And I didn't want someone to make another film or TV show about Muslims as terrorists because we have enough of those. And I don't want to add to that. And though this book is a satire about terrorism, but it's also a satire about the origins of terrorism, how groups form and what are the political machinations behind the scenes. if i do make it i'd like to make it myself and make it here in canada so that's why i haven't sold the rights much much to my agent's annoyance all to those right i think you would be good at playing the part i think you should i think you should hold on to that that should be one of those things who is the gal who wrote the she wrote that greek thing my greek uh brother my greek wedding yeah didn't she she started it to herself and like there was nobody who could play that part but her it just yeah yeah it was just great the it sounds

like it's quite the funny a comedy bit i guess i won't be exposing anything because this is on the amazon thing here what was the name of the parody that you used for ISIS? I didn't want to call them ISIS, so I called them The Dominion of the Islamic Caliphate and Kingdom. They were called Dick. The original title for the book was The Rise

and Fall of Dick, which my kids loved. But close to publication, the editors were like, like no marketing is telling us that when we put that in google we get the wrong images they took it away from me i didn't even think of that i was gonna go with the joke i think gloria steinemore has that they're reserved the the rise and fall of Dick. Dominion of the Islamic Caliphate and Kingdoms. That's just hilarious. So they get into the CIA.

It really opens up a Pandora's box, and this goes on quite the travel. It does. It does. I mean, I had no idea how incredibly involved the CIA is in other people's lives. It's pretty crazy. Like, they take down government. They take down government. They take down leaders. In Afghanistan, at one point,

they decided they wanted to indoctrinate all these children and turn them into really violent, radical extremists. They had books published in Virginia and shipped to the madrasas in Afghanistan to indoctrinate little children. What the?

Because they felt, the American government felt at the time, the Russians, just like the Russians had invaded Ukraine, the Russians had invaded Afghanistan. They had come out of this humiliating 10-year loss to Vietnam, and they did not want another country to succumb to communism. So they were doing everything humanly possible. And just like today, they couldn't send in their own troops. So they were flooding the area with arms and weapons.

And it turned out they were sending books to little children to convince them to fight the Russians and how they had to become violent. And they were convincing them that jihad was part of their faith and they had to go and fight. And it was like I was reading this going, this is nuts, like a whole project, millions, $50 million to get little children to grow up and be violent. And then people wonder, like, what's wrong with the people in Afghanistan? You're like, well, a lot of things went wrong over the decades from, you know, a lot of people were recruited. There was one of the biggest worldwide recruiting efforts to get men to Afghanistan to fight the Russians. But, you know, like what happens when the fight is over and you've given them all these arms and military training and they're looking for a cause. And so a lot of destabilizations of countries around the area happened at that time.

And it's so interesting. It was fascinating reading this because I think that a lot of times, you know, with American foreign policy, we do not learn the lessons of the past and we keep repeating them over and over again in other situations. And then the same thing happened. So I thought, you know,

for the average person who just wants a beach read, they just want to read a spy thriller. They don't want to have to read about the history of the middle East. This is a good book because it doesn't feel like anyone's teaching you anything. It's just a really funny satire and just like little tiny nuggets of information are seeded throughout the book just to give you a sense of it.

And it's all true. Yeah. Happened. Well, this is funny. I mean, I love the way you, you put it all down.

The, yeah, the one thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history, as we always say on the show. Yeah, the CIA, the history of the CIA, I mean, they have pigs. I mean, you just keep going back. I mean, we create so many monsters. In fact, I believe tied in with those books was the money we were giving to Osama bin Laden to help him fight the Russians. And then once we cut him off, he's like, oh, yeah, revenge time.

He was an ally. He was a CIA ally. We do that all the time. We fund the worst people, and then they end up betraying us, and then they become the worst dictators ever or something. Pinochet, I mean, the Shah of Iran. I mean, you just pick your... Yes, all of those guys.

Yeah. It's always funny. Yeah. The interesting thing about the Iraq war is a lot of it started because, um, because, because, uh,

Sinan wanted to take his oil off of the dollar. There's a lot, a lot of what that was about with that thing, because the almighty us dollars is the currency of the world and they can't have people doing that. You know, that's what Russia has been trying to do for years and of course, China. But there you go. So it's good that you put some levity to the serious things and some of the dark things in our history. Anything more you want to touch on the book or tease out about the book, maybe a story or anything you think people find interesting? I just think that

it's a book that appeals on all sorts of levels. Like if you're someone who just needs, is having a really rough time in life and doesn't know how to go forward with their career or is really down and losing yourself to despair, it's a good book to read because it's just about hope

in going forward and not becoming obsessed with your own failures and how to get out of that. And if that's all you want to learn and read about, it's about that. If you're someone who's a person of faith and you're having a hard time connecting with the

whole issue of what does prayer mean, what does spirituality mean, there's those issues. If you just want to read about an international spy novel that's funny, this is the book for you. You want to learn about Middle Eastern history and the Russian invasion in Afghanistan and the two Gulf Wars, but you want to learn it in a light-hearted,

fun, accessible way, this is the book for you. It's a book on a lot of different levels, and it appeals to a wide range of people, which really surprised me. I hadn't understood it when I first read it. Another book, the book that inspired it was, I don't know if you heard about this. It was mailed to me from France.

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped in an Ikea Wardrobe. No. It's a really funny comedy about the history of migration law in Europe. But again, a comedy, you know, written from the point of view of a migrant who's trying to smuggle his way through Europe. And it was one of those books where you learned so much about a really difficult, serious subject that affects so many people. Yet it was so funny and so enjoyable. And it was written by a former immigration law officer yeah satire really is and comedy is the best way to deliver truth and

and and education to people and stories that that that people can adopt you know people go read the newspaper and sadly they they go blank it's like oh my god all this data and satire is a good way to make people you know even sometimes change their minds you're like wow i didn't really think about that differently but now that comedian says that that makes all the difference in the world you're right i mean comedy is a great way to communicate difficult subjects and have people lower their guard and say hey you know i laughed at that normally i would never laugh at something like that and then maybe examine the subject in a different way. It's a great way, too, to present, like you say, to ourselves, a mirror to ourselves.

Where it's like, hey, here's you in the mirror. And instead of something angry and mean like, you're an idiot. It's a funny way where you go, maybe I'm kind of an idiot. This is kind of silly what we do. Why are we doing this? So, yeah, comedy is a great way to do that. Do you see future books coming out of this or a series maybe? I'd like to adapt it for television.

And then I'd like to find a way to make it into a series. I would love it if Jimmy Lai could have these adventures with this poor, innocent Iwan from Egypt. He doesn't quite understand the West or Western Muslims and constantly gets him into and royals him into all her adventures. So this is how television series are made is that you find a relationship that can keep going that some sort of

adventurous stories that can keep going with the protagonist who keeps making mistakes. You want a protagonist who never quite has it together and is someone who forever makes the wrong decisions because of her personality. That's the difference between, say, a novel and a television series. There's a novel the person is expected to change

and become a better person. But in a television series, they stay the same, right? Like if you watch Modern Family, he isn't suddenly becoming smart and logical and making sure he doesn't make the mistakes that he always mistakes. He always does constantly in every episode. smart and logical and making sure he doesn't make the mistakes that he always mistake that he always does constantly in every episode so you i feel like this character is someone who's angry enough

and bitter enough and vindictive enough that she would continue continue her imaginations and her long fantasies as she goes through life yeah well i mean you can't ever resolve it and fix it because then you'd you know you'd have a the the story would be over in like two episodes or something. So, so yeah, you'd, you'd have that. So you can't have that. You gotta, you gotta constantly, you gotta have the slow moving car crash. That's, that's stuff we all enjoy in life and everything. Do you feel like the character, you know, there's a lot of people that are really kind of selfish, entitled and narcissistic today. Have you been on Instagram lately? Did you feel like maybe that's, it's a lot of people that are really kind of selfish, entitled and narcissistic today. Have you been on Instagram lately? Did you feel like maybe that's it's kind of speaking out a little bit about some of that behavior?

Yeah. I mean, the trouble with Instagram and social media is that we only put our best foot forward and we present this shiny, perfect version of our lives. And so that makes everybody feel very sad about their own life when they see everyone else's wonderful Instagram life. I think there have been a lot of studies on this, Chris, that being on social media makes you sad. Some actually make you happy. And it's best to disconnect and just connect with the real people in your lives and limit how much we go on social media and constantly examine each other's lives. Because it doesn't give you a real true reflection of, you know, the type of lives each one of us is living. Yeah, there's always, I mean, I've been on social media since the beginning of Twitter

and stuff. And yeah, the joke's always been that, you know, you know, these people don't lead the lives they lead. And, you know, you see a friend of mine sent me a picture from Australia and she showed these girls posing in front of trains and stuff in outfits for their Instagram just about getting hit by trains all the time because they're on the tracks

busy posing it's always funny how much work you see some of it and you're like you must spend half your day doing that and you have like three kids and a husband like you have a lot of time on your hands. You know, you'll see all the back posing that they're doing, and they're like, yeah, it took like three hours to do that, and a professional cameraman, and then God knows how much of Photoshop.

You know, I'm a photographer, so I do Photoshop. So I can look at some pictures and be like, yeah, that was probably an hour or two right there. Yeah. So it's funny. Commentary on our life and times in the human race. Anything more you want to plug out on the show? Well, for those people who've never seen Little Mosque on the Prairie, it's now airing on Amazon in the U.S. Because I know a lot of people love that show in Canada.

It's a comedy about a Muslim community that can't afford a mosque. And so the church, the local church can't afford rent because all the people have left. So they rent out the basement to the mosque. So it's a mosque and a church in a little tiny town in Mercy, Saskatchewan. So it's now on Amazon. I know on the last interview I was doing, people were complaining that these new shows are only like a season, two seasons, and then disappear. But this one is six seasons, 90 episodes. Completely.

It was back in the days when there were 20 episodes a season. So if you want to see a really fun, lighthearted family comedy, it's called Little Mosque on the Prairie. And it's on Amazon. I know in Canada, it's free. I think in the U.S., you may have to buy one of those subchannels. Probably. Probably. Something like that. But that was the last show that I did. And it was you may have to buy one of those sub-channels. Probably. Probably. Something like that. But that was

the last show that I did, and it was hugely popular. It was one of the most popular shows that we had in our country. So if people are interested, it's now available in the United States. There you go. You know what would be funny? One of my favorite Canadian comedies is Trailer Park Boys. Oh, yeah. I love that show. In fact,

I think people think I'm Ricky. Is Ricky the one who doesn't drink? One of my friends is like, you're Ricky. And I'm like, screw you. But you know what would be funny is a Muslim trailer park board. I don't know. One day. Maybe.

I don't know. I just love that show. It's funny as hell. So thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate you coming here and being with us today, Zarka. Thank you so much for having me. There you go. Give me your plugs, your dot coms one last time

so people can find you on the interwebs. I'm at Zarka Nawaz on Twitter and Facebook and The Real Zarka on Instagram. There you guys go. Order the book up today. It's hot off the presses. Just came out today. You can order it.

Kindle, audiobook, hardcover, paperback, audio CD, everything. Jamila Green ruins everything. I love the cover. And get the big order. Wherever fine books are sold is where you can order them. But remember, stay away from those alleyway bookstores. You usually either need a tetanus shot or you might get shipped in them. So just be careful.

Go to the fine bookstores. Thanks for tuning in, guys. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss, all those crazy places those kids are playing on the interwebs that Chris Voss shows up. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.