Sometimes you have to ask yourself: How did I get here—sitting in Saudi Arabia, listening to Louis C.K. do jokes about Barely Legal magazine?

Honestly, I thought it would be funny. The instant I heard about the Riyadh Comedy Festival, I pleaded with the editor of this magazine to send me. Despite a series of legal reforms over the past decade, Saudi Arabia remains one of the most conservative Muslim societies in the world, while Louis C.K. is famous for his foul mouth and his record of masturbating in front of a succession of unimpressed women. A match made in heaven!

My boss suggested that I take a male chaperone, which would allow me to move more freely in a place that remains deeply segregated by sex. Sadly, my husband declined to use his precious vacation allowance on the trip, and my 80-year-old father would rather stay home in England and watch cricket. And so my long-suffering editor, Dante, stepped up instead. Our presence would be a test of how much Saudi Arabia has really changed: I’m on my second husband; Dante is on his first. Both of us have freely and sometimes enthusiastically committed what are technically capital offenses under Saudi law.

Listen: Saudi Arabia gets the last laugh

The editor in chief, clearly beginning to enjoy himself, urged us to stay at the Ritz-Carlton. That’s the very luxurious but also Shining-like hotel where Saudi Arabia’s crown prince imprisoned his rivals in 2017—room service was included, plus a bit of light torture—completing his ascent to absolute power. The trip would be like something out of Hunter S. Thompson, our boss said, with one difference: no drugs. Our being beheaded by sword, the usual method of execution in Saudi Arabia, would be bad publicity for The Atlantic, and leave the magazine down an editor at a time when we are already shorthanded. We had, he implied, plenty of writers to spare.

Fayez Nureldine / AFP / Getty The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Louis C.K. was one of dozens of prominent comedians who had agreed to play the festival. Most are Americans, and many, like C.K., have had previous encounters with left-wing cancel culture. Kevin Hart, who quit presenting the Oscars over past homophobic jokes. Aziz Ansari, the subject of one of the more unfair #MeToo incidents. Dave Chappelle, whose jokes about trans people prompted protests at Netflix. Plus a whole bunch of independent podcasters whose material would never make it onto Saturday Night Live. Louis C.K.’s co-headliner would be Jimmy Carr, who got into medium trouble in Britain for a joke about killing Gypsies and rather larger trouble for engaging in an offshore tax-avoidance scheme.

What could stand-up comedy look like in a theocracy? Would enough crude jokes about incest, pedophilia, and anal sex really usher in Western liberal democracy to Saudi Arabia? Ahead of the Riyadh event, I had already enjoyed weeks of watching comedians scramble to explain why they had agreed to perform for a brutal authoritarian regime. The podcaster Tim Dillon said on his show that he’d accepted $375,000 to “look the other way,” and, in any case, “there are so many beautiful things that have happened as a result of forced labor.” (He flashed up a picture of the pyramids, which are located in a completely different Arab country, to underline the point.) Saudi Arabia—showing an unexpected grasp of comic timing—promptly canned him from the festival. Dillon said that his manager had told him, “They heard what you said about them having slaves. They didn’t like that.”

Jim Jefferies—an Australian comic best described as a Temu Ricky Gervais—stepped on the same rake. Referring to the killing and dismemberment of the regime critic Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Jefferies told the podcaster Theo Von, “One reporter was killed by the government. Unfortunate, but not a fucking hill that I’m gonna die on.” People could criticize golfers or soccer players for taking blood riyals, but not comedians. “Basically, we are freedom-of-speech machines being sent over there,” he said.

Sorry, I’m getting an update regarding freedom-of-speech machines: They will not be sent over there. Jefferies disappeared from the lineup, too.

The festival is an outgrowth of Vision 2030, the grand Saudi project to prepare for the kingdom’s post-oil future. The old Saudi brand was “austere theocracy,” but the new one is “fun, fun, fun, but still with beheading.” The Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo was