Posts in "STORIES"

A Poem For My Father Who Stayed In His Grave Only 623 Days

Aziz Isa Elkun
Research affiliate, SOAS, University of London

The Chinese government said this was done in order to modernize us, but their true aim was to destroy Uyghur ethnic, cultural and religious identities. I felt as if my father’s body had been brutally torn out of its resting place in our ancestors’ land.

Over the past century, countries have used the tool of nationalism to pursue their own interests. Nationalism is about people, land and the relationship between them. Nationalist propaganda creates a special relationship between a unique people and a particular territory.

The Uyghurs are one of the many peoples who have been left out of this tidy calculation. We are labelled as an “ethnic minority” that suits Chinese version of statehood. China’s policies aim to cut our ties to our land. Uyghur pilgrims are cut off from their places of worship; villages are uprooted from their fields, and families are torn apart. Islam and Uyghur culture are none separated identities of the Uyghurs, therefor they regard the burial place – gravy yard as a holy place that connects the sprits of the generation past and today. Plus, Uyghur graveyard is a symbol of belonging to each other in the Uyghur community that keep connects Uyghurs spiritually, culturally and politically.

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Aziz’s name

Yangisar Yadykar

Aziz is now thirty years old, my old friend, I keep thinking about the story he once told me, the story of how he got his name.  “My grandmother was not yet thirty when she and my grandfather firmly decided that to continue to stay in Urumchi for them was a tantamount to death and the only solution for them was to move to the Soviet Union. At that time they already had three children, two five-year-old daughters, twins -my aunts- and a thirteen-year-old son, my uncle, Aziz.


Grandfather was part of the national army. In the Union he had some connections, in Kazan and Alma-Ata. In Kazan he had friends from the Polytechnic Institute, and some of his relatives were in Alma-Ata. As a child I remember always inquiring my grandma of how she got here, she would always look somewhere to the distance and say that she sailed to Almaty on a steamboat, that would always surprised me and I did not believe. How do you come to a landlocked Alma-Ata on a steamboat? But then it turned out that there was a real shipping link across the Ili River.


The East Turkestan Republic was nearly abolished, but the bursts of fighting were still ongoing. Waiting for the necessary documents, grandmother with her children was in one of the villages near Ghulja. The river port was nearby. One of the summer days, the package arrived with documents and a letter from grandfather, where he said that they should immediately be floated on the first ferry without waiting for him. So they did. Only women and children were on the ferry, even the captain was a young girl in her early twenties. Of the male, the oldest were Aziz and a few other twelve and thirteen year olds.

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An Unanswered Telephone Call

Aziz Isa Elkun

On a bright midsummer morning when you take your little girl’s hand and walk to school listening the birds singing on the way along the narrow footpath, you feel thankful to life that today will be one of your best days full of enjoyment just like any other day that you have hastily left behind you.

At that moment I was feeling this happiness, walking with my daughter, holding her hand and telling her funny stories about nature. In our magical imagination, my little girl and I turned into sparrows and flew singing among the birds on top of the big oak tree. From our home to school, we walk along three different tree covered narrow pavements, we need to cross several small roads and it takes us fifteen minutes walking.

Sometimes it’s quite difficult for us to pass people on the narrow pavement. Sometimes our way is blocked by young mothers with double buggies and tearful toddlers. We are lucky today; we meet a lady and her little girl whom I’ve known for several years. Her daughter is in my daughter’s class, and we often meet in the playground or at our children’s activities outside school. Her name is Lucie. She is French, from Nice, and she moved to London a few years ago.

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