by SHAZIA MIRZA
In all the countries that I have travelled to to perform standup comedy – the United States being a regular destination – I have never been held up or interrogated at customs. Or I hadn’t, until I arrived in Pakistan last week. I spent six hours at Lahore customs, as I did not have a visa in my British passport to enter the country. The people who organised my gig had mistakenly assumed that because my parents were born in Pakistan and I too am brown, they would automatically let me in.
The customs officer asked: “Are you Pakistani?” Yes. “Where were you born?” England. “That makes you a foreigner.” I get called a foreigner in my parents’ country of birth, and I get called a foreigner in my own country of birth.
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(Submitted by reader)