By Chris Bergeron/Daily News staff

FRAMINGHAM — Two Pakistani Sikhs wearing turbans walk into a convenience store and get mistaken for Islamic terrorists.

Sensible precaution or ethnic profiling?

For Egypt-born filmmaker Raouf Zaki, it’s a comic gold mine.

He’s turned post-USA Patriot Act paranoia into a short movie about the stereotypes muddling relations between Arabs and Americans amid the war on terror.

Raised in the Middle East and now living in Framingham, Zaki, 37, recently finished shooting “Just Your Average Arab,” which finds hope and harsh realities in the darkly comic misadventures of people like himself.

“I’m not trying to be preachy. But I hope I can find comedy in all this tragedy,” he said in his Tripp Street studio in south Framingham.

Zaki owns RA Vision Productions, a digital film production company in Framingham, which among other things transfers videos to the Internet. He has made documentaries with PBS, the Animal Planet and human services organizations. He filmed one for Lebanese television about the mother of a victim of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Zaki co-wrote “Just Your Average Arab,” which he co-produced with Chris Smalley.

His newest film’s premise mixes “24”-style political anxiety with a plot twist worthy of “Will & Grace.”

As a stream of nervous Middle Easterners enters the store, suspicious FBI agents hidden in a van across the street snap their photos and monitor their conversations.

In the screenplay co-written by Zaki and Gary Chafetz, the store owners, Ahmed and Khalil, aren’t members of a terrorist cell.

In reality, they’re secretly offering lessons in the “Arab American Survival Guide after 9/11.”

Together they coach nervous Arab-Americans on how to change their names, looks and accents to avoid scrutiny from people who think everyone from the Middle East has an olive complexion, eats falafel and sympathizes with Osama bin Laden.

Abdullah becomes Abe and Habid Al Dick becomes just plain Dick.

When people ask where they’re from, they’re told to answer, “I am half Polish, quarter Irish, quarter Italian.”

Ahmed tells Arabic newcomers to patronize McDonalds instead of “Kababs R Us” and avoid clubs with belly dancers. To explain their accents, they’re told to tell nosy Americans they were “Army brats” who grew up overseas.

Zaki shot his 20-minute film in several days in Framingham using a mix of professional and amateur actors. After editing and post-production work, he hopes to show it in film festivals and on public television.

“When people see me with my camera, I can’t tell them I’m a shooter,” he joked. “Hopefully I can educate them through humor.”

The film’s comic premise moves from broad humor to social insight, back to satire and ends darkly in a scene of dashed hopes.

Midway through the class on extreme assimilation, the Arabs’ spirits sag after they’re urged to deny their heritage. To boost their pride, they recall their peoples’ inventions like algebra, almanacs and astrology.

They decide to counter media stereotypes about Islamic terrorists and oil sheiks by making their own reality show, “Rich and Famous Arab Americans” that would spotlight celebrities like Doug Flutie, Paula Abdul, Tony Shalhoub and Casey Kasem.

Yet their attempts come to a bitter end when Ahmed, a struggling actor, is offered by phone a part as a terrorist in a Hollywood movie and his posturing with a toy gun arouses FBI suspicions.

Saddled with their own prejudice, the FBI rushes to arrest the Arab-Americans when they leave the store disguised as Britney Spears, Santa Claus, Mother Teresa and a Rastafarian in pathetic attempts to “blend in.”

By his own account, Zaki doesn’t fit prevailing stereotypes of a “typical” Middle Easterner.

Born and raised in Cairo, Egypt, he is a coptic Christian who learned Arabic, French and English before coming to the United States at 17 to study.

After graduating with a film degree from Boston University, he moved to Montreal to work for Canada’s National Film Board. He produced an award-winning short, “Shoot the Bird,” about a man who falls in love with his avian companion. He returned to the Bay State to work as an audio-visual coach in the French Library and Cultural Center in Boston.

After working part-time in video production, Zaki founded his own company in 1998, which specializes in “all aspects of video production” for private and corporate clients. “I always wanted to pursue my ambition of making films full time,” he said.

While riding the MBTA, Zaki met his future wife, Hana, a Lebanon native who was working as a biomedical engineer. She now works with him in his film company. “He made me switch careers,” she joked in their studio in an old warehouse.

Zaki is seeking $2.5 million funding for his most ambitious and personal project, a feature movie “Desert Story” about a revealing relationship between an American paleontologist and her local guide to be shot partially in Egypt.

He plans to film scenes in the “Valley of the Whales,” a site containing petrified skeletons of whales and other sea creatures dating back to 30 million years ago when the Mediterranean reached into upper Egypt.

On her first desert journey, the American woman becomes a symbol for Westerners sorting out complex Middle Eastern realities, he said.

Zaki described the movie as “an Arabic-American love story.”

He’s hopeful “Just Your Average Arab” will garner the critical attention and funding to help him make “Valley of the Whales” which would involve filming in this state and his native land.

Zaki’s studio contains small statues of ancient Egyptian deities Anubis and Isis, a poster of movie star Omar Sharif, photos of his two young children, an American flag and lots of film equipment.

Four years after the 9/11 attacks, he hopes his film “raises cultural awareness” about the dilemma faced by Arab-Americans who feel their loyalty to their new home has been clouded by their origins.

He feels the time is now right for a subject that “wasn’t appropriate” right after the 9/11 attacks.

“My inspiration was to make a film about cultural differences. Arab-Americans are in a position to enlighten Americans about their own culture and people,” he said. “I think comedy can be very important in raising cultural awareness. This is a great country.”