Sami Shah - I, Migrant: A Comedians Journey From Karachi to the Outback

Despite nearly being killed by a kangaroo and almost lynched and run out of town after his comedy was taken far too seriously, Sami Shah is very happy to be living in Australia. He has fronted his own satirical show on television in Karachi, worked as a journalist, and been a highly regarded newspaper columnist all dangerous occupations to be involved in when the combination of seeing the aftermaths of a devastating bomb attack and being the target of death threats convinced him to leave Pakistan. Under the terms of their Australian migration visa, Sami and his wife and young daughter were obliged to settle in a rural area, and so they moved to Northam in Western Australia.

Now Sami is battling a crippling addiction to meat pies, but at least is no longer constantly mistaken for an escaped asylum seeker from the nearby detention centre. He has also been the star of Australian Story, the subject of an article in the New York Times, and has performed countless comedy shows to ever-growing and appreciative audiences.

First published in 2014

Copyright Sami Shah 2014

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FOR ISHMA
FOR MOMMY AND DADDY
AND, ALWAYS, FOR ANYA

PROLOGUE

I saw my first kangaroo ten months after moving to Australia. Or, to be more accurate, I saw my first live kangaroo.

I had previously seen many dead kangaroos as I drove along the Great Eastern Highway, a vast curving stretch of blacktop connecting Perth to the town of Northam. Their bodies littered the side of the road, issuing reminders of the speed limit in a grisly mess of twisted necks and spilled intestines. Ive always wondered how they managed to get to the roadside so quickly, some of the corpses still bleeding when I passed. Is a driver who rams one legally required to get out of the car and pull the wrecked marsupial out of the way? Or do they always just bounce sideways conveniently when struck by the front end of a vehicle barrelling along at 110 kilometres an hour? If I was a kangaroo, Id lie down dead exactly where I was hit and become a large fleshy speed bump over which other cars would hurtle. Fuck the humans.

All the victims of intrastate traffic Id seen up to then had been quite small, probably no more than four feet tall, but the first live kangaroo I saw was easily over five foot, a massive grey-brown beast that looked like a velociraptor covered in suede. At that size they can be quite a marvellous sight gargantuan thighs, shoulders and arms as disproportionately muscled as a Russian Olympic weightlifter, and a thick serpentine tail.

Unfortunately, I saw the kangaroo just as I came around a bend, doing 100 kilometres an hour. My headlights stamped it out in the middle of the road; it didnt so much bound into my path as appear suddenly from nowhere, a demon ghost kangaroo burped out by the spirit of Australia to kill me.

I was returning from a gig in Perth and this was the second strange thing to happen to me on the drive home that night. The first had taken place at a petrol station in Sawyers Valley, a dust-mote-sized town laid out like a suburban parenthesis at the start of the Great Eastern Highway. The drive from Perth to Northam takes an hour and a half and, since I leave for most gigs too early to eat dinner and return too late even for drive-thru, my car is usually filled with chocolate wrappers and empty water bottles by the time I reach home. This particular night, wanting to fuel up on snacks, I stopped at the neon-lit pump and walked into the shop attached, hungry for my Snickers.

Youre Sami Shah, said the man behind the counter, his accent instantly recognisable as Pakistani.

Yes, yes I am, I replied. Then, switching to our native Urdu, I asked, How did you know?

Guess, he said.

Being recognised is fun. Being made to guess how is not.

Are you from Karachi as well? I hazarded. If so he might recognise me from the meagre amount of notoriety I had gained there as an opinion columnist writing for an English daily. Whenever anyone recognised me in Karachi, it was from the terribly smug photograph printed next to my weekly columns, in which I looked straight over my spectacles at the reader with a finger curled over my chin thoughtfully. It was pretentious and rendered me eminently punchable. When I submitted it, I thought it would be funny. By the second week, even I was sick of the joke.

No, Im from Quetta, he said.

Then Ive got no idea.

He grinned and reached under the counter for a copy of the freshly delivered Sunday paper. Inside, glaring out above a half-page article, was my photograph.

A PAKISTANI MIGRANT WALKS INTO TOWN, the headline blared.

This is great! I thought.

I took a copy, along with a promotional-deal Snickers long enough for Archimedes to shift the world with, and set off, racing towards the kangaroo waiting in my immediate future.

Afterwards, standing in front of my smashed car, the attending policeman told me, You shoulda hit the fakking thing. You shoulda just hit the fakking thing. But all I could think was, No I couldnt. Im an immigrant and I dont think itd look very good if Id killed your national emblem. It seemed like the sort of thing that might come up in my citizenship exam later.

I had swerved, reflexes jerking the steering wheel as soon as I saw the kangaroo, then Id swerved again to avoid smashing into a tree. My small red Daihatsu Sirion skidded in a gravel patch, spun twice, then flipped. It glided through the air upside down, despite having all the aerodynamism of a 1970s electric razor. The seatbelt defiantly held me in place, even when the roof of the car slapped down onto the asphalt and careened forward in a shower of sparks. The only thing louder than the Japanese hatchback scraping across an Australian highway on its roof was the Pakistani comedian screaming inside.

After several seconds, we came to a stop. I was still strapped to my seat, upside down. I remember saying Oh fuck a lot. Repeating it over and over as I fumbled for the clasp that would release me.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

Then, when I pressed it and fell on my head, Ow fuck.

The door on the drivers side was punched in and lying on the ceiling of the car. I kicked at it, but it didnt give. Feeling around, I found my spectacles, which were miraculously unbroken. Able to see properly now, I realised the window on the passenger side had completely blown out. I belly-crawled through the gap and onto the cold black road, glass crunching beneath my hands.

Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

Once I had extricated myself fully, I stood up and conducted an inspection, rubbing my hands through my hair, across my face and then down over my body. No blood, no cuts and gashes, nothing but a scratch on my right hand where a sliver of gravel had pierced the skin.