“I don’t know how to make this shit funny,” comedian Mohanad Elshieky says about his initial attempts to include an anecdote about being wrongfully stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol into his stand-up routine. 

He says when he started integrating difficult material into his set, “The first few times, you’re not really getting anything.” For the audience, “This is still weird. It’s still a serious thing, and people are not sure if they can laugh or not. But they eventually figure something out.”

Elshieky is a Libyan-born activist turned comedian who has appeared on late-night shows such as Conan and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and whose topics cover everything from awkward Uber rides to comparing ISIS and Al-Qaeda’s respective YouTube success. 

In 2019, he successfully sued the Border Patrol after they wrongfully stopped him on a Greyhound bus. Once a Portland local, he’ll be performing at Eugene’s Wildish Theater on June 6.

Elshieky was born and raised in Libya, where he eventually went to medical school. “Not to be such a cliché, but like, I did it only because my parents wanted me to be a doctor,” he says. “I hated it. Never liked it. So I wanted any excuse to not do it ever again.” In 2011, when he was 19, the Libyan Revolution began and he left college, taking a very active role in the community. 

He began working as an English interpreter for journalists and hosted a heavily political English-language radio show. “It felt good,” he says. “I got to meet a lot of journalists from outside, and that was my first taste of being on the front lines. You learn so much from them.” 

He and his friends joined a citizen journalist group called “Alive in Libya,” where, with their own handheld cameras, they filmed the events of violence, war and everyday life. Elshieky says that citizen journalism during war is essential because “You want to hear from the people involved.”

As a result of his activism, he received a scholarship to attend Portland State University on a six-week exchange program. Well, it was supposed to be six weeks, but according to Elshieky, it’s difficult to travel back to a country that is an active war zone. So, he stayed and finished business school, pursuing standup because his public speaking professor told him to. “I’ve always loved stand-up comedy, and I feel like everything I wrote for that public speaking class was put together that way,” he says, but he had never previously considered a career.

Long story short, “I have a business degree in supply chain management that I’ve never used.” 

After making a name for himself, he had to use his newfound notoriety in a way that he never expected. 

One day in 2019, Elshieky was headed back from a comedy set at Washington State University when he switched Greyhound buses in Spokane to head home to Portland. Border Patrol approached, and accused him of having falsified documents. They let him go after holding him for 20 minutes, without ever implying that they believed that his documents were genuine. 

At first, he wasn’t going to do anything about it. “I didn’t want to be involved in something like this. It just felt too overwhelming,” he says. The overall process of a lawsuit where he would be constantly approaching Border Patrol, perpetually recounting his story, and going through years of legal work for only a chance at success just felt daunting. 

But then “I looked it up,” he says. He realized, “this has been happening for at least a decade or so, but it never hit my newsfeed, because it happens to people who have no access to help. It just happens to them, and they just get taken home.”

Elshieky realized that if he didn’t speak up, “it was going to take so long before it happened to someone with any influence who would do something about it.” The process was indeed difficult, but he came out of it with a $35,000 settlement. Soon after, the state of Washington sued the Border Patrol as well, and a policy change was enacted that prevents its agents from hanging out on the Greyhound buses. 

Now he has integrated his experience, both with the Border Patrol and as an immigrant, into his comedy routine. He does this because he doesn’t want the only exposure people have to these issues to arise when upsetting incidents occasionally hit newsfeeds. “When stuff like that happens, at least people are paying attention. But at what cost? What some [border patrol agents] are doing is outside the law.” 

That’s why, after about a year of trial and error, he found a way to deliver his experiences with some laughs. “I have a responsibility to talk about it on stage, to actually bring attention to it,” he says. “I wish my jokes would stop being relevant at some point, and I’m not worried about it. If it does, I’ll write different ones,” he continues. 

That being said, most of his jokes are not “oh this is so important,” he says. His comedy is neither rampant political humor, nor simple observations with a self-deprecating edge. Instead, Elshieky sums up the heart of his comedy best when he says, “When crazy stuff would happen to us, we would make jokes about it. It would connect us.” Whether embarrassing, life-altering or just plain stupid, “I feel like, if you have an experience, and it’s very crazy, as long as you can make fun of it, then it’s fine.”

Mohanad Elshieky will perform 7:30 pm Friday, June 6, at Wildish Theater, 630 Main Street, Springfield. Tickets are $25 at WildishTheater.com.