by Tariq Ali
SIX
DEAR D:
You asked far too many questions before you left Lahore. One that irritated me the most was whether I saw myself as a Punjabi or as a Chinese girl. Instead of replying that I was a Chinese Punjabi, which I think is what you wanted to hear, I remained silent because it is more complicated. Did you ever notice how often I remained silent when you questioned me? Did you? It would have been impolite to tell you that they were usually stupid questions that irritated me greatly. You always asked about my family history. In this case the reason I did not reply was not because your query was foolish, but somehow I felt the timing was wrong, and, to be truthful, I didn’t want the information passed on to your mother, which you would have done and with a look of triumph.
The enclosed manuscript is really for you. Perhaps it’s too lengthy and dull. If you feel that, don’t even try and be diplomatic. That was never your style. It was such a sad and difficult subject that I was often inclined to stop. But it became a habit and was my way of conducting a one-sided conversation with you, in which you just had to listen and not question me every few sentences. The early section is typewritten! I had a great deal of spare time at Georgetown before the children arrived, while Zahid was saving lives. He’s good at his job but sometimes goes too far. A few years back he saved a life that the entire family, except for him, felt did not deserve to be saved.
I did not much care for the company of other medical wives and was never into shopping as a habit, let alone acquiring jewellery; these objects slip by me unperceived. So I spent many hours in the university library reading Chinese history, something that was impossible to do at dear old Nairn College, where the history we were taught was too, too farcical. So what you have is in three parts. Tales that my paternal great-grandmother told us when we were very small and that were regularly repeated by her grandson and his mother. It is oral history of the kind familiar to most families, though if I remember well your family stories always had alternative versions that were probably closer to what must have happened. The bulk of what I have sent you is oral history, but where I can I have confirmed it during my labours at the library. I have added a map to help you situate Yunnan. Punjabis are genetically provincial and need all the help they can get.
There are my incomplete diaries about what happened to me after your attempted rape failed (I’m teasing; I never thought that for a moment) and you left Lahore never to return. I think I know why. Zahid did return for a while and we began to see each other, first to talk about you and then ourselves, and when he suggested marriage, neither of us pretended it was love or passion. It was friendship and convenience. And, just so that you know, he is a very sweet and kind man and my life has not been unhappy at all. Of course he has become very wealthy now, but this has not made him miserly or disagreeable. In many ways, though not politically, he remains the same. I can’t pretend that all is well. My life has lacked something, but then whose life is perfect? Yours?
One question I will answer now. I always thought of myself as a Lahori Punjabi. If pushed further, I would have said I was a Yunnanese Punjabi. Never a Chinese Fatherlandi. Those two identities were not mine. At the time you would not have understood this, because, like my brother, you were infected with the revolution, and talk of Han domination would have been brushed aside by all of you with contempt as it still is by Zahid. Perhaps the reason for this is that the Punjabis have become the Han equivalents of Fatherland, crushing other nationalities at will, but that’s your story. Better write it before the Baluch and the Pashtuns and the Sindhis produce their own.
Sometimes I wondered whether you ever took me seriously. I suppose I should have written ages ago and told you that Zahid had had nothing to do with Tipu’s arrest, but knowing you I also knew what would happen. You would have established contact with Zahid, apologised, made friends and, being Punjabis, wallowed in a lot of emotion, male camaraderie and self-pity. Had that happened, with you coming in and out of our house on whatever continent, it would have been unbearable for me, since in the shadow of that brotherhood I would have become a cipher. So it was pure selfishness that stopped me from telling you. I prevented him from doing so as well, by employing underhanded arguments. When the children arrived and became the centre of my life, then I could have told you, but we inhabited such different worlds that I thought you’d probably forgotten our very existence. Nothing in your novels that I have read indicated otherwise. Enough. I hope the manuscript answers all the questions you asked when you still loved me, and if there are others I’ll answer them as well, since we’re in the same city again after forty-five years.
—Jindié.
PS: You asked me about the Chinese equivalents for Arab names; here are some of them:
* Ma for Muhammad
* Ha for Hassan
* Hu for Hussain
* Sai for Said
* Sha for Shah
* Zheng for Shams
* Koay for Kamaruddin
* Chuah for Osman
SEVEN
MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER QIN-SHI, whom we knew as Elder Granny, was a niece of Dù Wénxiù. The name will not mean anything to you or to most people, but it’s inscribed in the annals of the Han as a byword for rebellion, Islam and ‘petty-bourgeois nationalist deviations’. Elder Granny would talk about the rebellions in Yunnan as if they had happened in the previous week. Hui, or sometimes Hui Hui, was the Chinese name for Muslims or people of Muslim origin, but I suppose you know that by now. Or was China only Mao and Lin Biao for you as well? Nothing else mattered. I can’t help these asides because I can still get very angry with you sometimes.
Every evening just before we went to bed, Father would send us to Elder Granny’s tiny little room near the kitchen. She must have been in her nineties at the time, and we all knew she would die soon. My father worshipped her. She was his last link with Yunnan except for Old Liu, a cobbler from Dali who really was an antique—one hundred years old in 1954. He had taught Grandfather and Father the art of measuring feet and cutting leather to make shoes. Father would tell us that Old Liu always made a shoe from just one piece of leather. That was the test. If you used more than a single piece you would never be a master shoemaker. Sandals were different, of course, but Liu never took them seriously.
Elder Granny had no teeth at all and could eat only soup and barley rice. Her toothlessness made us laugh, because we were children and even though veneration of our elders had been instilled into us at every opportunity, a Punjabi cynicism had crept into our lives as well, infecting us with the Lahori sense of humour. Often stupid, sometimes surprisingly subtle, but usually very funny.
At story-time we would sit at her feet, not looking at her when she talked, so as not to giggle when she became really excited and a shower of spit descended on us and it became really hard to keep a straight face. Despite all this we understood every word. She spoke Mandarin with a strong Yunnanese accent. When she used strange words, Hanif would shout, ‘We don’t know what that means, Elder Granny,’ even though it was considered rude to interrupt elders and he always pretended that he didn’t really care about our past. She didn’t mind at all. She would stop in mid-sentence and patiently explain what each word meant. Hanif wasn’t really interested in the stories, but he loved her presence, so mostly he sat quietly, thinking about cricket and his school friends. Elder Granny would begin each story the same way, so that her introduction became embedded in our heads. I used to tell the same stories to my children, but in Punjabi because they never learnt Mandarin, to their great regret. ‘Please start now, Elder Granny,’ I would say, and she would begin:
‘And there was once a city, a beautiful city, much more beautiful than Beijing, and it was called Dali. It was built on the edge of a lake, surrounded by mountains, and in the spring when the blossoms were out we could be forgiven for thinking that this was a replica of heaven. Kunming may have been the capital, but Dali was the heart of Yunnan, which, as you know, is itself the most beautiful country
in China. In this beautiful city, there lived a family. Our family. We had been here for such a long time that nobody remembered how long, and in China that can only mean a very, very, long time ago. Some of us lived on the land, but most of us were traders, including Dù Wénxiù’s father. He was a salt merchant, but that did not satisfy him because it was not aesthetically pleasing, and so he set up a shop with the finest textiles and pottery.
‘The textiles were beautiful, but designed only for the nobility. They were made of pure silk. The pottery was simple. He had discovered that our potters were making thousands of plates with the blue that had become so popular in all of the Muslim world. From Yunnan these plates with Arabic calligraphy would be transported to Baghdad and Palermo and, later, to the Ottoman lands of the great Sultan, and from there to Cordoba in al-Andalus and to Africa and even the barbarian world. When trade with the Arabs ceased, your great forebears made sure that the potteries never closed down. Skills handed down from father to son are too precious to lose. Once lost, they never return.
‘Those plates became the pride of every family in Dali, even those who were not Hui. At the Third Month Fair, which was the largest in the world, I think, because traders came from every province in China, but there were also Lamas from Tibet and tribal peoples and others from Siam and Bengal-India and Burma and Cochin China. They used to say that in the very early years of the fair there were traders from as far away as Mesopotamia in the world of the Arab peoples, and that it took them six months to make the journey, so they were all a year older when they returned to Basra.
‘My grandfather, Wénxiù’s father, always used to throw a big banquet for the most important visitors, whose families had been trading with ours for many generations. Dù Wénxiù had always thought that he would continue in the trade of his father and forebears. My grandfather said that our ancestors had first come here with the armies of Qubilai Khan. It was said in our family that our great forebear, who finally settled in Dali and built the house where we all lived afterwards, had been responsible for supplying the Great Khan’s armies with food and women. I have no idea whether that is a fact or not. I hope it was just food he supplied. So we had been in the city for many centuries.
‘Some Hui, especially those who live in Khanfu [Canton] and Beijing, would never be happy tracing their lineage to the time of the Great Khan. They insist they are the direct descendants of the Arab traders and ambassadors who came to these shores while the Prophet, honour his name, was still alive. The Prophet had once said, “Seek knowledge where you find it, even as far as China,” and the Hui in Khanfu claim that is why their ancestors arrived in the first place: to seek knowledge, not profit. People are so ridiculous sometimes. Sultan Suleiman used to smile and say that every Believer wants to believe that he has a tiny drop of Arab blood in him, because he wants to be blessed with the same blood as the Prophet.
‘However we came, we intermarried so much that were it not for the taboo on pork and circumcision we would be no different from the Han. But we would never be the same as the Manchu. [At this point, D, she would pause, not to regain her breath, but to offer a short prayer to Allah asking him to punish the Manchu for their crimes. Hanif would always interrupt, ‘Mao Zedong is not a Manchu, Elder Granny,’ but she would brush him aside with a gesture. Then she would continue.]
‘Dù Wénxiù was happy helping my father organize our trading activities. He would have done that for the rest of his life and remained happy, but Fate had other plans for him.
‘I think it was springtime in 1856, when the worst killings of our people took place in Kunming. The Manchu governor hated the Hui people in any case, but prices fell and the newly settled Han became resentful of those who could still work. The Manchu governor, Shuxing’a, hated us Hui because when he had been in the northwest he had been defeated by some Muslim rebels. They were not Hui. They spoke their own language and had their own customs, but of course they shared our faith and prayed as we do, facing west, and, naturally, they never ate pork. Shuxing’a’s soldiers had been defeated by them and he was running away disguised as a woman. The rebels captured him. Let’s see if you are a woman, they said, and then they stripped him and threw pebbles at his testicles. He hated them forever after that and suffered from pebble-sickness for the rest of his life. He did not think how lucky he was to be alive. Then he was sent by the Manchu to Yunnan, and once in Kunming he began to plot his revenge, but against us Hui. He thought we were all the same as the people in the northwest. It was he who organized the massacre in Kunming. And once these things start there’s no knowing how they will end. Even before he came, the Han were killing us in the villages, burning our homes and mosques. By the time this monster started in Kunming, we had lost nearly forty thousand men, women and children. So our young men took up arms to defend themselves. What else could they do?
‘Wénxiù suddenly adopted an Arab name, Suleiman, to stress his faith, to unite our people and defy the Manchu. They killed so many of us that year. Thousands and thousands perished. It made our young men very angry. We are not goats to be led to slaughter so easily, Wénxiù told his father, and he and other young men went into the mountains to teach themselves how to fight.
‘My father was a Han, but he fought on our side because he wanted Yunnan to be free of the Manchu. All we Yunnanese are very proud people. The Manchu called us bandits, but they were the real bandits. Do you know what bandits are, Hanif Ma?’
‘I like bandits, Elder Granny. I want to be a bandit.’
Her cackle was infectious and made everyone laugh, including Father.
‘There are good bandits and evil bandits, little Hanif Ma. Good bandits help the poor. Evil bandits work for the Han rulers, never the poor. Wénxiù was only nineteen years old, but my mother told me that he never lost his temper, not even when he was a little boy. So after they went to the mountains and changed their names, all his friends would call him Suleiman Dù Wénxiù, till he became the Sultan. Did you know that, little Jindié and Hanif? Your ancestor was the Sultan of Yunnan. I may have been only eight years old, but I can still remember when all the people came out on the streets of Dali to greet him: “Sultan Suleiman wan sui, Sultan Suleiman wan sui.” It was the first slogan I ever learned. When we went with my mother to see him in his small palace, she made us repeat the slogan. He lifted me up and kissed my cheeks. His beard was very soft, very different from the beards in Xinjiang.
‘There were many different people of every sort who lived in Yunnan during his time. Han, Hui and non-Han, many of whom were tribal people and others who were Buddhist. Suleiman Dù Wénxiù fought the Manchu armies and defeated them, but he never permitted any discrimination against the Han people in Yunnan. There was so much intermarriage. My mother, Wénxiù’s favourite younger sister, was married to a Han Yunnanese, who was my father. It was like that all over our country. We were all interrelated, and if the Manchu had not interfered with us and sent in more and more of their people to steal our work, our mines, our trade and our property, and this at a time when things were bad for everyone, there would have been no rebellion.
‘And it was all the people, not just the Hui, who fought against the Manchu. Had it only been us, we would have been defeated much, much sooner. Always remember this, children. Your great ancestor was a Muslim, a Hui, but he ruled for all the people. Not just the Hui. That made my father so happy, because after the killings in Kunming and the villages everybody expected the Hui to go in for revenge killings. Sultan Suleiman knew that well and it made him angry. “We are not such poor-spirited people that we seek revenge on innocents. The best revenge is to make the whole of Yunnan strong and free from the rule of the Manchu, who steal, oppress and kill all Yunnanese who refuse to wear the queue.” The day after he said that, many of the Han who had lived in Yunnan for many generations came out and publicly had their queues removed. That was the way they showed their support for your great ancestor. You must always be proud of him and respect his memory. Are you listening, Hanif
Ma and little Jindié?’
She rarely said more than that, but soon after she died my father began spending a few hours each Sunday telling us more stories and sometimes reading from manuscripts he had in his possession and showing us where these places were on the map. Your friend Hanif/Confucius became really alienated from these stories and would plead with my father to be allowed to go and play with his friends on the neighbouring streets.
‘You can play with whomever and whenever you like, Hanif,’ my father would say. ‘But I sometimes worry that they will warp your mind and drag you down to the gutter. You must never lose your self-esteem.’
Hanif would surrender abjectly. He hated seeing our father upset and he would sit through our family history lessons, but his mind was usually elsewhere. Once when he was fifteen or sixteen and my father was not in the house, he told me angrily, ‘China is being transformed by Mao Zedong and the Communists. Everything will be different. What’s the use of blind ancestor-worship, which was the curse of the old society and kept the peasants enslaved? If I had been alive at that time in Yunnan, I would have fought with our forebear. What’s the point of all this now?’
I never could see it that way myself. For me it was an accretion of knowledge. Even if our forebears had not been involved in the rebellion I would have wanted to know who we were and why we had been forced to flee Yunnan. We did not leave voluntarily to seek work elsewhere. We were frightened. We thought they would kill us all. Young girls were being kidnapped every day and sold as slaves. We had kind neighbours in the other regions and they helped us because over centuries we had traded and intermarried with them as well. Many of our people were given refuge in Guangzhou and Tibet and also in Burma. What made Hanif really angry was a tendency, I don’t think it was stronger than that, on the part of my parents and Younger Granny to portray life in Yunnan before the Manchu went on their killing spree as a golden age. I know these rarely exist in history, but we always preserve memories of some good things and call them a ‘golden age’ to keep our hopes alive. For if it was possible once, it could be again. [Utopian thoughts are not necessarily bad, or are they, D? I once read something by you many years ago either in praise of or predicting a world revolution in your lifetime. Perhaps I misunderstood what you wrote, but even though the thinking behind it struck me as crude and schematic, I liked the Utopian strain. Have I got it completely wrong? If so, apologies.]