Another reason to love Riz Ahmed

Riz Ahmed – actor, producer, writer, rapper, activist, overall person extraordinaire - won an Oscar last Sunday, for Best Live-Action Short film “The Long Goodbye,” which he co-wrote and also starred in.

I haven’t seen it. In fact, I haven’t seen a lot of his work. Even 'Sound of Metal' – for which he made history last year after becoming the first Muslim to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of a hearing-impaired drummer.

But I’m still a huge fan. At the risk of sounding like a hipster, I have admired Riz long before it was cool to do so and long before he even did any of the things he’s known for today.

The first time I saw him: It was 2012 and I was attending an event titled ‘British justice for British Citizens’, held by families of four British men who were in prison in the UK and were going to be relocated to the US, under the US-UK extradition treaty. The event was to call on the UK government not to extradite them.

Riz was there to read some poetry written by one of the prisoners and to show his support for the cause (I do think if I had had the courage to speak to him that day we could have been best friends.)

I thought he looked familiar - it had been two years since he starred in the hilarious 'Four Lions' which Wikipedia aptly describes as a “British political satire black comedy film,” in which Riz and three fellow extremist Muslims are trying to hatch a terrorist plot but things keep going wrong.

It was also the same year in which he starred in 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' – an adaptation of the book by Mohsin Hamid. This was one of those rare cases where the movie was so much better than the book – only partly because of Riz looking great both clean-shaven in a business suit in the first half, and with a beard and Shalwar-Kameez in the second half (which no doubt served to show his transition into reluctantly becoming a fundamentalist.)

Formed in 2014, Ahmed is also one half of the hip-hop duo Sweat Shop Boys. My favorite song is 'Fast Lava', in which he raps:

They put their boots on our ground, I put my roots in their ground, I put my truth in this sound, I'll spit my truth and it's brown.

Another favorite is 'Where you from':

They ever ask you Where you from?, Like, Where you really from?, The question seems simple but the answer's kinda long, I could tell 'em Wembley but I don't think that's what they want, But I don't wanna tell 'em more 'cause anything I say is wrong.

Riz is a child of Pakistani immigrants. As is evident from these lyrics, his own reality of struggling with racism and his identity as a brown, Muslim boy growing up in a white majority country dominates a lot of his work.

Even in his speech at the Oscars, he said: “This is for everyone who feels like they don’t belong. Anyone who feels like they’re stuck in no man’s land. You’re not alone.”

The second time I saw him: I signed up to be an extra for a scene in a film called 'Mogul Mowgli' that Riz starred in, being shot at the Electric Ballroom in London.

The brief was to bring a cool, fresh vibe. I’m not sure that I did, and I still haven’t seen the film. But I fully intend to. That’s not the point anyway, I was there to see Riz MC perform and it was great.

I follow his career closely and read all his interviews because he’s brown and Pakistani, and seeing someone with the same heritage as me just makes me happy. (It’s also why I was elated when Fawad Khan made it to Bollywood. I would have seen those films anyway but he was in it and he was one of us and that made it special. Ofcourse that elation was short-lived but that’s a point for another day but the point is representation matters – and that’s why I’m so happy Marvel has a Muslim superhero with a Pakistani background.)

There are many more reasons to love Riz. A New York Times story from 2018 reported that he spent his Sundays in one-on-one study sessions with a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of Islamic art and that he listens to 1970’s Qawwali-inspired Iraqi disco.

His production company Left Handed Films bagged four Academy Award nominations this year, including three for the animated documentary sensation 'Flee' about a refugee from Afghanistan.

Riz also does mainstream Hollywood roles, case-in-point 'Rogue One' and 'Sound of Metal' – but all the while promoting stories of refugees, immigrants and Muslims.

It only makes sense then that he will be starring in a film based on another one of Hamid’s books – Exit West – which is also about immigration and being a refugee (it is being adapted for television by none other than the Obama’s into a Netflix movie.)

He is also behind a fellowship that focuses on Muslim artists in the US and UK at early stages in their careers, offering grants of $25,000 and career development support.

The list is endless, as apparently is his stamina for work.

The third time I would have seen Riz was at a show in London that got cancelled due to the pandemic. But I’m sure my time will come. Until then I’m going to wait and watch what he does next – I know he will not let me down.

The article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Business Recorder or its owners