STRUGGLE & SACRIFICE
New medical drama shines light on forced immigrant experience
Transplant Wednesdays, CTV
Sometimes art imitates life in the most poignant way. Case in point: Hamza Haq, who stars in the new CTV series Transplant. Haq is of Pakistani descent, but 20 years ago his family emigrated from Saudi Arabia to Canada, settling in Ottawa. Haq was nine, the youngest of four children. His father was an engineer, his mother an organic chemist.
On Transplant, he plays Dr. Bashir (Bash) Hamed, a Syrian doctor and refugee who is forced to flee his country with his sister to build a new life in Canada. Filmed in Montreal and set in Toronto, the medical drama builds on themes of struggle, compassion and sacrifice. Below, Haq tells his own story, in his own words. (This interview has been edited for length and content.)
My dad had a great job in Saudi Arabia. The country is exceptionally problematic in terms of human rights and women’s rights, but the one thing they do well is they give people who come from abroad a lot of money to be able to eke out a lifestyle, although they don’t really guarantee any sort of future.
To trade financial stability when you have four kids for the possibility of growth in the future, it’s got to be a scary thing for any parent to do and so many immigrants do it. My parents made that decision to come to Canada. Twenty years later, they have four university graduates. Three of them have their master’s degrees — I’m the one who doesn’t — and we’re all happy and healthy.
I’m doing things that I could only dream of growing up in Saudi Arabia. Now when I think of the discomfort and fear that my parents went through in making that decision, I can only imagine what it’s like when that scenario is forced — when it’s not a decision you make over three years while getting to pick and choose.
It’s the difference between choosing to go skydiving and getting a coach and doing it in tandem for the first three times until you have the courage to jump out of a plane yourself, as opposed to being thrown out of a plane, and the parachute is thrown separately and you have to try to float to the parachute.
Transplant is the story of someone who found his parachute on the way down. It’s the story of the anxiety and fear that millions of people are going through in the world.
I think the goal of the show was to go for the feeling of what it’s really like to be a refugee, not a sensationalization. Some of these stories are taken directly from our consultants, many of who are Syrian refugees. But it’s safe to say that Transplant tells the story of one specific refugee. This is Bash’s story.
It’s very specific, but his struggle is universal — the bigger picture is something that everyone can relate to, and everyone should try to see from a position of empathy and open-mindedness. If anybody in North America complains about immigrants, they can go back a couple generations and realize we’re all in the same boat, pun intended.
I think it’s ignorant to say that there’s more racism in the United States than there is here. It’s a different language they speak over there, and their language is just a little bit louder, but the circumstances are the same. We’re fortunate that our larger cities are diverse, but the vast majority of the Canadian population is still red, if we’re going to use American terms. A lot of my friends and family tried to branch out to other cities and found there isn’t that level of acceptance.
I think this show is coming to television late. These stories should’ve been seen already. I’m very grateful that they’re being shown now, but if it was a year or two or three earlier, say, when a certain administration change happened to a country that’s very close to us, there might’ve been more containment as opposed to the spread of certain ideologies.
My parents are pretty happy about me being on this show now. Before, they were struggling financially, so any time us kids did well, we would try to spoil them a bit and it always made them a little uncomfortable. Now for the first time in my life, my parents have been kind of comfortable accepting things from me, so that makes me think that they think I’ve kind of made it. Having said that, they’re also huge critics — but that’s every parent, everywhere, about everything.
I think it’s the goal of everybody who comes here in search of a better life, that their children really live to their full potential and go for it. My work has been received with positivity, I’m getting opportunities, I’m working hard and it’s making me happy. To them, I think that’s the achievement of the goal that they set out to accomplish 20 years ago.