It’s raining hard when we go outside. No thunder, no lightning, just rain pelting our faces and forming puddles for us to wade through. We dodge across the busy highway into a warren of streets and alleys, wishing we had umbrellas, taking shelter under an overhang to catch our breath. There are many overhangs on this busy, narrow street and lots of people like us, without umbrellas, skittering from place to place trying to keep dry. But they’re not really like us. The men are shirtless—bare-chested—and they wear short pants. Even the women wear shorts and scanty tops; old women have bare legs.
Litter and piles of garbage and construction debris line this half-paved street of two-story gray buildings. Children run around, enjoying the rain, which has to feel better to them than the scorching sun of a hot summer day. A car slowly honks its way through the narrow passage, zigzagging around people sitting under umbrellas in front of their shops, their tables full of wares. This is a street with no sidewalks, a street for people and bicycles and motorcycles, not cars.
We’re about to make a dash to another dry spot when a hunched-over woman passes by, dragging a cart full of garbage by the shafts as if she were a donkey. No one seems to notice; some step out of their way to let her pass.
“We have to help her,” I say.
“No.” Mikray holds out her arm, stopping me. “It’s not that we shouldn’t,” she says. “It’s just that . . . we don’t have time.” She starts to move away.
I stop her. “Why, Mikray? Is it dangerous? Is that what Ushi meant when she said she’d let the neighborhood take care of us?”
“Oh no. These people are as poor and downtrodden by big bosses as we are. Maybe more. They won’t hurt us. They think we’re strange, wearing all these clothes when it’s so hot,” Mikray says. “Ushi probably meant she hopes I’ll try to escape. Then she can have me tracked down and arrested and sent for reeducation. Please, for now we have to hurry.”
Mikray’s voice is sharp, urgent, as she bolts away, leading us on through more streets and alleys. She stops in front of a doorway covered with a green curtain that hangs from a rod on brass rings. A kid’s lime-green cart is parked under an open window; an assortment of soggy kids’ clothes droop from a line strung along the wall. No sign is visible. It’s obviously someone’s home, but Mikray parts the curtains and we walk into a tiny computer repair shop. A few old computers line rickety shelves. Others lie on tables, gutted with wires and parts hanging from them. Mikray greets a young man who is working on one of the machines—or, rather, gives him a nod. He stops what he’s doing, opens a door at the back of his shop, and they disappear.
When they come back, Mikray collects money from us and tells us we each have a half hour. We don’t have to sign papers or show registration cards. Nothing. We follow her through the door, then through another door, and enter a windowless room with about ten computers. Two people are already here and don’t even look up to see who came in. With no discussion, we part and take seats that separate us. None of us has shared her secrets, and for now that is how it will be.
I touch the jade piece that hangs around my neck and pray that my connection to Ahmat works. Water trickles down my cheeks as I key in my password.
If it’s rain, the raindrops turn to tears of joy. It works!
There are pages of messages. I start at the top and read as quickly as I can about the flow of water from the melting snows of the Kunlun Mountains. Our code words are simple so that we won’t get caught in the great firewall the Chinese government has set up to censor communication in our Uyghur homeland of East Turkestan—a name we definitely will never use. Water is safe. If the streams bring an abundant supply, it means that all is well with Ahmat and with my family. If there has been a fierce windstorm from the desert, then there is trouble. I read on and on about streams that are full to overflowing, and about how Ahmat’s job of conserving this precious resource has become harder and harder. He knows that this water must sustain him and the crops and the land for a long time to get past the period of drought that he knows will come. He, too, is counting the days, weeks, and months that we are separated.
I read on, and know he’s getting desperate for news. A thousand years are not worth one day, he writes. Just that sentence from the famous sung poetry of our people, and I know I am to fill in the words:
Without love my soul
A thousand years are not worth one day.
Before the fires of love
The fires of hell are nothing.
You bring me terrible pain.
I rest my hands on the keyboard and close my eyes as I think these lines, struggling to find the right words for my reply.
It’s when I open my eyes that I sense a change. Movement. A shadow crosses my screen. A man has passed by. Was he standing behind me, reading my screen, while my eyes were closed? I steal a glance at Mikray and see that she’s cleared her screen and sits hunched over the keyboard as if in deep concentration. The man passes her by too and goes over to a man who was already in the café when we entered, obviously taking him by surprise. The video on the man’s screen keeps rolling until the intruder reaches over, ejects the disk, and puts it in his satchel. It’s easy to tell that the jerk of his head means Come with me. They leave very quickly.
Were they friends? Was the video watcher being arrested?
There’s no way of knowing. We seem to be safe. It wasn’t underage people he was looking for—or Uyghurs. No informer alerted him to strangely dressed girls running in the rain.
My hands are shaking. I’m not certain I can type, but I must send a message to Ahmat before time is up.
I key, The sky is gray. The moon is good, the sun is good . . . Ahmat will know the rest of the words, or he’ll find them. I can think of no other safe words to send that will let him know how I am and why I haven’t answered sooner.
I turn to his emails again, wanting to read every one. Each is shorter than the one before. Sometimes he sends only the word “water.” Twice he’s written “wind” with a string of question marks following it. I keep searching for words to let him know I might not have another chance to send a message for weeks or months, without alarming him so much that he will get in trouble trying to find me.
A tap on my shoulder startles me. It’s Mikray. I can’t go yet! I can’t break the connection. I’ve written so little.
Mikray tugs at me. “Roshen,” she says, “we must leave.”
I sign off and follow Mikray and Gulnar through the doors and into the street, thinking of what I should have said. Why did I send so few words? I could have said, Work, work, work, so little time. Those are safe words and would have given him some understanding of my life. His words comforted me. The words I’ve sent to him—when he finds the poem—speak only of my despair:
I am far from my homeland and the sky is gray.
The moon is good, the sun is good, to be a wanderer is bad.
I am a wanderer, the prince of wanderers.
I cannot bear this wandering, my face is sallow.
Eighteen
MIKRAY LEADS US to a small teahouse. Gulnar and I don’t ask how she knows about it, we simply follow. We decided before we came that we’d have tea. No food—we couldn’t afford that—but we would have tea. We sit at a table near the front window. Mikray makes sure that Gulnar sits with her back to the street. She herself sits so that she can look out. I have a partial view of life as it is lived on this gray street in the drizzle of rain falling from the gray sky.
As if by agreement, each of us takes a headscarf from her bag. Gulnar and I tie ours loosely at the back. Mikray pulls hers tightly across her brow.
The tea is so good. Steamy hot in a bowl. It isn’t the steamy hot I need in this sweltering weather, it’s the comfort of my hands cupping the bowl, taking small sips to make it last.
We don’t say much. My mind is on the messages I should have sent to Ahmat. I didn’t tell him how much his weather reports mean to me, or that he should keep sending
as many as he can, even though I have no way of knowing when I’ll be able to reply.
“I’m going for a walk. Alone,” Mikray says, bringing me back from the anguish of my thoughts. “I’ll be a while. If you want, there’s a space nearby where you can sit outdoors under a scraggly tree and electric wires. Ask the owner. He’ll tell you how to get there.” She gets up slowly, as if she’s not in a rush, and I know why. She doesn’t want Gulnar to know she’s meeting the young man who’s sitting on his motorcycle at the corner of the street—the young man from the factory. His name is Chen. Is he a friend or a traitor?
“We’ll be fine, Mikray.” I put my hand over hers as she pushes away from the table. “Thank you for helping us.” I’m fighting to hold back tears of gratitude and of concern for her.
Her eyes meet mine. “Wait for me at the park,” she says, and somewhere buried in the permanent scowl that covers her face is that flicker of defiance that unnerves me and at the same time makes me care for her.
“Off you go,” I say, and I don’t let my eyes follow her.
I turn to Gulnar. “I’m quite content to sit here for a while. How about you?” I say this so that she’ll look at me, not Mikray. Then I find myself talking about Ahmat, at first to distract her and then because I need to tell someone. I tell her how he seems so far away, so unreal to me.
“No,” Gulnar says. “You’re the lucky one. You mustn’t lose faith. He cares for you. How many messages did he send?” Her face, always so tranquil, so at peace, comes alive. “You’re so lucky,” she says again, and then her face crumples.
“Was there bad news, Gulnar?” I ask.
Her hands cover her face. She shakes her head.
Whatever is wrong, I know she has not been comforted by our visit behind the green curtain.
“Can you tell me what’s happened? Can I help?” I say. I pour what is left in our teapot into her bowl and put it into her hands, which have fallen onto the table. Something familiar, something comforting may help.
“Thank you,” she whispers as she wraps her fingers around the bowl.
“I was about to be married,” she finally says, her voice quiet, almost under control. “But they took my fiancé away. It was a peaceful protest—it started out peacefully.” I’m afraid she’ll break the tea bowl as her hands tighten in an iron grip. After a pause, she leans nearer to me. “They fired guns at him. At the Uyghurs. He fought back. . . . He was captured and sent off . . . somewhere . . . to prison. I signed up to work in the factory because I need money. I need it to help find him, maybe bribe someone to tell me where he is.” Her face tightens in anger. “Even if I have money, I’m not sure I’ll ever find out if he’s dead or alive. There are no traces, no news or rumors from anyone at home.” She pushes her chair away from the table. Stands up. “Let’s go outside,” she says. “It’s stopped raining.” I stay motionless. Ahmat is always careful, isn’t he? He hates what is happening, but . . . ? Is he still cautious and wise? I must be like Gulnar, who hides her feelings in her embroidery, carefully, methodically adding stitches to her ever-larger tapestry of colorful desert tamarisk. Work that belies her despair.
It’s Ahmat from whom I must conceal the truth, so he knows nothing of what’s happening here. He must not try to help me. He must think only of his studies and my return. Harbor no more anger than he already has for the tyrants who rule over us. Saying nothing is how I can help to keep Ahmat and my family safe. I pray that he will not read too much truth in my words, that he’ll think I said I cannot bear this wandering because I’m so far away from him and all I hold dear.
I get directions from the teashop owner. Gulnar and I walk slowly and silently through streets that have become more crowded with half-dressed people and pushcarts and wares, children splashing and climbing over piles of debris—everyone dodging bicycles and motorbikes as they speed by.
When we get to the park, we find overturned wooden crates to sit on. Mikray was right—there is a sad-looking, almost leafless tree, and there are electrical wires dangling above the small grassless space.
“I wish it were still raining,” I say to Gulnar. “I prefer hot rain to the steam bath we’re sitting in now.”
She nods, and for a while we speak about the weather. Then about Hawa and her entourage. They left the factory with umbrellas, which was curious. No one in Hotan owns, or needs, an umbrella.
“The girl with the pink hair must have provided them,” I say.
“No. Ushi gave them the umbrellas. I saw her do it.” Gulnar shrugs.
I hope Hawa will be all right in the hands of the pink-haired one. It’s certain she’s being taken to a place much different from where we are.
“I guess it’s Zuwida and Jemile I really worry about,” I say, “but the Chinese girl they’re with seems kind. I hope she’ll at least buy them tea.”
“I hope so,” Gulnar says. She sighs and turns her head away. Not rudely, but I think she is lost in her own thoughts, while I’m doing all I can to avoid mine.
I let the sounds of the neighborhood take over. Familiar noises—children laughing and crying, neighbors calling to one another, motorcycles honking their way through crowded streets. But they aren’t the sounds of my people. I shut my eyes as if doing so will make it all go away, and in a way it does. My eyelids are heavy. I can’t keep them open. My head rests against the pitiful tree.
I don’t know how much time passes before I wake up. Gulnar paces back and forth across the small square of parched earth, kicking at the trash that’s been dumped there. It’s comforting to know she has watched over me. When she sees I’m awake, she sits beside me.
Our stomachs growl.
“At home,” I say, “my family is known to have the sweetest, juiciest watermelons at market. You must visit one day—when we return. We’ll feast on watermelon.” I lick my dry, cracked lips, hoping the thought might help quench my thirst. “I have dreams about our melon patch.”
“That’s a good dream,” Gulnar says, but she is not thinking of eating or of home. She keeps looking up at the sky, and now I look up too. That’s the way we tell time, and time is passing too quickly.
“Mikray will be here.” Now I get up and start walking back and forth. I know what I say is the truth—unless something bad happens. “She won’t abandon us.”
It’s not long, though, before smells of cooking oil and spices mix with the hot, humid air and mothers call children in for supper. It becomes harder to know the time because the sky is threatening again. A black cloud heads our way.
I listen for sounds of motorcycles coming from the alleys that feed into the park or from the narrow street. Many pass. None of the passengers is Mikray.
“Do you know the way back to the factory?” Gulnar asks. “I wasn’t paying much attention.”
I think of the alleys and the turns we made to get to the black café, and the answer is no. I shake my head. “You wait here,” I say. “I’m going to the teahouse to get directions.”
I’m gone before she can stop me, before I can respond to the panic on her face.
The directions are vague, and I’m told two different routes. We probably should leave now, before the rain starts again, but we can’t. At least I can’t. Maybe that is what Ushi meant when she said she’d let the neighborhood take care of us. She thought—hoped—Mikray would get in trouble and never return.
There are men sitting on our overturned boxes when I get back, playing a game on a wooden board they’ve put between them. Other men hang around, smoking, talking. Home from work. Relaxing before supper.
Gulnar crouches in the shadow of a building next to the park. I join her.
“It’s getting late,” Gulnar says, her voice strained, unnatural. “We don’t know our way, and the men . . . I don’t like it.”
“Gulnar, please. The men don’t seem to be taking any notice of us. Pull off your scarf,” I tell her as I quickly remove mine. “Keep hunched over. With our rained-on, bedraggled clothes,
we don’t look much different from the woman we saw earlier pulling the cart. Mikray will be here,” I say. “She gave her word. She’ll come. We still have time.”
Gulnar shakes her head. Keeps shaking it.
“If we’re late, I’ll tell Ushi it’s my fault and she can give me your points.”
Gulnar drops her head when she hears my words and the unkindness in my voice, but I can’t help it. She chose to come with us, to go to a black café. Surely she had some idea of the risks.
I turn away. My eyes search for Mikray; my mind tries to will her back. I’d never admit to Gulnar that I, too, am losing hope for her return. I have faith in Mikray, but I don’t trust the young man from the factory. Is he Ushi’s secret agent, getting Mikray into trouble so she can be sent away?
Mikray doesn’t come, only debris stirred up by gusts of wind, and then the rain—heavy, almost horizontal rain—begins to soak us. The men leave the park. Gulnar and I flatten ourselves against the side of the building, getting as much protection as possible from the narrow overhang.
The rain brings something else—an umbrella sweeping down the alley. Then I see leggings, a long skirt.
“Mikray, here!” I shout, waving my arms.
She greets us. Presses herself against the wall next to us. She doesn’t tell us where she’s been. I look for some sign that her venture has met with success, but her face holds its hard, angry expression.
“I brought you something,” Mikray says. She turns to me, thrusts the umbrella into my hands. “Hold this.” She runs into the park and drags the crates over to the wall. We sit, crowding together under the umbrella. She pulls plastic bags from her pocket, opens one, and takes out a handful of dates for each of us, dropping them into our palms. They’re beautiful, large red dates—the kind grown in Hotan.
Only when I find myself stuffing my mouth with the smooth, juicy flesh of the dates do I realize how hungry I was. I savor the sweetness, the familiar taste. Suck on the small pits to get every last bit of flesh from them before spitting them out and putting more dates into my mouth.
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