At home with WA's comedy
Is there anything Sami Shah misses about Karachi? "I miss the energy," says the Pakistani- born stand-up comedian and former journalist from his Northam home. "There is a mad, frantic energy. There's always this electric buzz.
"What I don't miss is the sense of panic we had to live with on a daily basis."
As Shah writes in his new memoir, I, Migrant: "I remember looking across at the grisly vista, my clothes soaked in blood, and thinking, 'I need to do comedy. The world can't be like this. I need to do comedy'."
That same motivation not only to deal with the horror of daily life but escape it would result in Shah's decision to apply for a work visa to Australia. In 2012 he moved to Northam with his wife Ishma, a qualified psychologist, and three- year-old daughter Anya.
Now nearing the two-year period living in regional WA, as dictated by the conditions of their visas, Shah and his family are contemplating whether to move to Perth or Melbourne. It's a tough one - as Shah admits, he has a lot to be thankful for.
"We've settled in," he says. "My daughter Anya goes to school here and has ballet lessons in Toodyay. She's five now and this is her home; she loves it here. My wife works in town. I do my gigs in Perth and everywhere but I'm in Northam all the time. It's very peaceful, it's very quiet. It's very much home."
Listening to Shah sing the praises of the Perth comedy scene, you might be forgiven for thinking he's already made his mind up.
"I've been a part of the WA comedy scene for two years now and don't feel like an outsider anymore. Perth is fantastic, probably the envy of the other cities for comedy. It has the best rooms, it pays the best money, the Fringe is just amazing.
"There's a real sense of community. I get on really well with all the other comedians I know in Perth, which is a weird thing, because I come from a completely different background.
"And they all come from different backgrounds from each other: one is a dock worker, one's a transvestite . . . but I am really lucky and privileged to be a part of the Perth comedy scene during one of its best periods."
In Karachi, Shah had his own TV show and his own newspaper column; his stand-up comedy was (eventually) equally successful and that success has been emulated in his adopted country, where he performs to full houses and rave reviews on a regular basis.
Following various newspaper articles and being the subject of ABC TV's Australian Story, Shah was asked if he'd write a memoir. He was surprisingly reticent.
"Allen & Unwin contacted me and said 'Hey, I want you to write this book'. I did not want to. They actually spent two weeks convincing me. I actually wanted to be a fiction writer.
"That's the way I saw myself, right from a child. And I thought 'I'm 35 - what could I possibly write in a memoir?' But they convinced me to at least give it a shot. A scant nine months later the book is on the shelves."
And now he's plain terrified.
"I'm used to stand-up comedy, where the feedback is immediate and right there. In publishing it's slower. I feel really stressed. I thought I would be enjoying it more. But that is my own deep-seated insecurities coming to the surface."
Shah says the experience of writing a book was closer to writing a newspaper column.
"It didn't matter whether you were in the mood or not, you just had to deliver it. And so there is a certain training that comes with that. You pick something from reality, you think about the agenda behind it and you think about the kinds of things that influenced it. Then you try to sum it up into something more coherent and philosophical.
"This is my life story: I know how it starts and I know how it got to this point so far - I just don't know how it ends."
