Zohab Zee Khan: "The security guard knew that it was ridiculous." Photo / Facebook
Zohab Zee Khan: "The security guard knew that it was ridiculous." Photo / Facebook
Spoken word poet Zohab Zee Khan is sadly no stranger to racism and xenophobia.
The fourth-generation Pakistani-Australian was shocked to be made to feel like "a security threat" at a suburban shopping centre in Canberra. A perceived threat, he believed, because of his appearance and little else.
Khan, whose talent for words is well known, became a victim of racism and "paranoid ignorant xenophobes" at Westfield Woden on the weekend. With a "bunch of work to do", he set up his laptop at the local food court and began writing.
A "sheepish" security guard approached. Khan thought it might be a poetry fan who recognised him - "poetry isn't the most popular thing in Australia but occasionally someone will recognise me and say, 'I like your stuff,' and that's what I assumed," he told news.com.au.
Instead, the woman said something he described as a "kick in the guts". On Facebook, Khan described the comments.
"This might sound funny, but quite a few people have been complaining about you typing and looking around," she told him. "They think you might be up to something."
"When she told me that 'quite a few people' had raised a security concern about me 'typing frantically and looking around', the nicest response I managed was, 'Well that's kinda f****d up, don't you think?'"
"She said, 'Yes,' and responded with, 'I just had to come over here to make it look like I am talking to you.'"
Khan called the entire conversation "ridiculous" but admitted he was deeply offended.
"For me, the issue in all of this lies in the fact that the baseless complaint was acted upon. The security guard knew that it was ridiculous.
"We need to stop placating paranoid xenophobes. I was just a dude writing on his laptop, eating a beef kebab in a food court. This is not a security threat."
Khan told news.com.au while it's "not the first time I've faced something as blatant as that", it was still "an absolute shock that this even happened".
"It made absolutely no sense to me that I was minding my own business, just like anybody else.
"I was literally doing my job, That's my work.
"To go from the high of 'somebody likes me' to the low of 'someone thinks that I want to cause harm to the wider population' is not really good for one's psyche.
"I can only assume it's based on the way I look."
Khan said he sat there confused and fuming inside before looking around to see if anyone else had witnessed it.
"I ... got a few sympathetic smiles. They knew something was up and that it was not the right thing that had happened."
He didn't leave. He stayed and finished his writing. Later, he took to social media to express his frustrations.
"Today was a kick in the guts," Zohab said of the incident. Photo / Facebook
"I genuinely cannot remember the last time I have been more upset at the utter rubbish that is paranoid ignorant xenophobes," he posted on Facebook.
"Racism is an everyday battle for people that look like me, today it just happened to be a little bit more obvious.
"I've convinced myself that I'm different, that I'm strong and that I can handle day to day racism, and mostly I can. But today was a kick in the guts.
"Today my state of being has been thrown from the high 'I love life' extreme of writing poetry, to the terrible lows of being thought of as a scary bearded man that is out to hurt everyone.
"This unfortunately is the world that we live in and this unfortunately is the baggage that we carry."
Khan said he has "absolutely no issue with Westfield or the security guard as a person".
"The security guard was just doing her job as she thought she was supposed to, she was wrong, but she did not have any ill intentions," he said.
"She shouldn't be fired, or even disciplined, this is a reflection of a systemic issue in our society as a whole."
He said "in the scheme of things, I'm fine" - and told news.com.au he had deliberately gone back to Westfield a few days later, because nobody will make him feel he can't be somewhere.
"I wasn't physically hurt and my safety was never really in question. I've heard of half a dozen or so racist incidences from this week alone that are worse than what has happened to me. But this does not change the fact that it should not have happened in the first place."
Khan has made a professional career out of performance poetry since he won the national title in 2014. He travels the world performing, and is based in Wagga Wagga when he comes home.
