I am heartbroken and sick with worry waiting to hear from my friends in Urumqi. I have sent five emails and three texts, and the reports of a communications blackout are correct – I am hearing nothing back from any of them. And since their voices are silent and too many of you only know the Uighurs who were recently released from Guantanamo, I want you to know my friends. I have omitted names and am debating the addition of photos. I want you to see their faces, but I fear for their safety.
I am an evolutionary biologist and do field work in Xinjiang. I just returned last month from my second season in the area. I spent two months there last spring and almost three months this spring. My closest friends in the province are all Uighurs, and they are beautiful people. "Y" and I can sit for hours discussing the philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity. And it frustrates me to hear him say that he is forbidden by the government to enter the mosque. Young men under the age of 18 and all students are banned. Students that get caught can be expelled from university. But that doesn’t stop him.
"M" has a quiet spirit and a heart of gold. She puts others so far ahead of herself that she slept curled up on a cold bare bed in a hospital room with me as I spent the night hooked up to an IV battling food poisoning. All while she was suffering her own viral infection and was sleep deprived from spending night after night working on a scholarship application. She wants to study abroad and is one of the hardest working and sharpest students I’ve met there, but she says she is competing with an enormous pool of applicants from all over China, and many of them hire services to write their essays and take the entrance exams for them.
"A" is an artist, but he is eagerly learning as much English as he can by spending day after day in the Big Bazaar stalking foreigners who he can practice with. I met him when I was wandering the street alone one day trying to build up the nerve to go into a restaurant and point at what someone else was eating since I can’t read Uighur, Chinese, or Russian – the only useful languages in that part of the world. "A" says he saw me from a block away and ran to catch up with me, slowing down right before he reached me so that I wouldn’t be startled and take off. He had kind eyes and an honest smile, so I invited him to join me (in a very crowded restaurant) for lunch. We then had two more meals together and spend an afternoon sightseeing, and have remained in touch. I have three volumes of The Hardy Boys in my car waiting to be sent to him to help him improve his English even more. Hopefully I'll be able to send them soon.
"N" is a law student who is planning to start in the fall and study international law. She loves languages and people and wants to travel and learn more about the world. She has a boyfriend, but neither of their families know or they would be urged to marry. They want to marry but are waiting until they both finish school and get jobs. There is a bit of a cultural clash between the older generation and the younger Uighurs who want careers and families. Their parents all worry that if they don’t marry by the magical age of 25, it will be too late.
"N" is also an assistant tutor at an all Uighur English language school, and she took me to meet her students. Before I knew it, I was in front of a class of about 80 Ughyurs who had never met an American. Many of them had never seen a foreigner, even though they live in the largest city in Xinjiang. And they all had questions. Some of the funniest were "Is Michael Jackson a Muslim?" and "Do Americans get their nutrition from vitamin pills instead of food?" The most difficult was "Why do Americans hate Afghanistan?" I didn’t really catch the full question, and my friend and one of the teachers tried to change the subject and keep the student from asking again. Everyone was very uncomfortable. I said "no, this is the only way we’re going to get to understand each other, and I would like a chance to explain." So they let him ask his question again. I tried to delicately explain that people are not the same as their government, and most Americans don’t even know where Afghanistan is. I explained our rights to vote and what happened November 4th of last year and what that may mean for the future of our relationship with the Muslim world. And I told them that I am an American, and I am fascinated by the Afghanis, the Uighurs, and all other people and that we have so much to learn from each other. I couldn’t talk about war or 9/11 or any of those things because the language skills of these students ranges from very very beginner to somewhat more advanced. If I lost any of them in the discussion, they could misunderstand the context of "war" and "attacked", and it could have all gone wrong. And being the focus of 80 pairs of curious eyes was awkward enough. The student who asked the question didn’t understand my full answer, but the next day he asked "N" to explain. She told me that he was very satisfied with my answer, so hopefully that’s one step toward changing a heart and mind. I must have done something good because three days later many of the students gathered to celebrate my birthday. They’d gotten a cake and practiced songs and dances, even though we’d only just met.
But the situation there now is astonishingly terrible. I fear for my friends, because the neighborhood where they live, the neighborhood where I lived, is now destroyed. Shops that opened out onto sidewalks selling clothes and shoes. Street carts with fresh watermelon, and locally grown raisins and nuts. Food vendors with all sorts of innards including boiled sheeps’ lungs and whole heads. Traditional Uighur medicine shops where a man can check your pulse, look at the color of the whites of your eyes, and check the health of your nails and tell you which parts of your internal environment are "hot" or "cold" and how to change your diet to improve your health. Much of that is now gone or will be soon. Street hawkers shouting "besh kwai, besh kwai!!" in Uighur (about 80 cents) as the price of their items. This last neighborhood in Urumqi that had maintained the Uighur culture will soon be replaced by the government with big concrete block architecture. It’s already started to happen in Kashgar before any protests began. They are outlawing traditional Uighur architecture in many cities and villages on the grounds that "it’s not safe in an earthquake" when the Uighurs say that the real reason is that it has elements of Islam.
And I fear for my friends because I have no idea where they are and if they had the sensibility to stay out of this. Over 150 dead and 1,000 injured. Over 1,000 have been "detained". "Y" has already had his dormitory searched over the winter holiday and was questioned after the officer found an Islamic symbol, so perhaps he was on a list. "A" regularly walks the streets all day in that neighborhood looking for people to talk to. Even on an ordinary day as I’d walk through the bustling crowds with my friends, they would nervously scan faces and avoid my questions wondering who might be listening. And their whole bodies would go stiff as we passed a group of police in riot gear watching the crowds shopping. I can’t even imagine how tense they are now. And what’s worse is that I don’t know if I will ever know what happened if I don’t eventually hear from all of them.
Update: In addition to changing the spelling to Uighur after screwing that up the first time and to make it more consistent with the spelling in the Western news...
I did get an email this morning from a shipping agent in Beijing who was able to place a call to the office line of our colleague who is a professor at Xinjiang University. She gave me no details other than "he's okay", and I still haven't heard from any of the friends listed above.
In response to a comment about proxy servers as in the Iranian situation, to the best of my understanding this is different. It seems as though the government has cut the ISP access to the city - they aren't just censoring particular websites in this instance. Likewise, they have cut mobile access. I tried calling "Y" on his cell phone last night and only got a busy signal.
Elise, thanks for the rescue. And thanks to all of you for your compassion.