How it feels

As I enter the Grand Bazaar, I walk down a street of over-priced restaurants for tourists. Young, skinny men—pants hugging their legs and still sagging below their hips, a concave dent at their back pockets—stand outside the front doors, stoking the smoldering coals of the kabob grills and hawking for clients, yelling out, Jiger kawap! Leghmen! Polu! (Liver kabob! Spaghetti! Rice Pilaf!) in an unending call to no one in particular. As I approach the center of the bazaar, the crowds thicken and the beggars increase. Advertisements on a recording loop amplified through megaphones announcing cheap cell phone cards combine with the crowds in a cacophony din. Enveloped in privilege of carrying cash, a cellphone and a passport, I hold my purse closer to my ribs. I double check to make sure my cell phone and passport are still in the inner zipped pocket of my purse, sending relief over my body when I feel their outline safely in the pocket and I walk forward.

I want to take a picture of the landscape—the police station against the exotic-looking sign announcing the Grand Bazaar to tourists situated against the backdrop of Hotan jade shops. In the foreground people are shopping, street vendors are hawking, and clothing shops are selling soccer cleats and knockoff Manchester United soccer jerseys. But I hesitate, remembering the times police officers have seen me taking pictures and told me to stop and to bring them my phone, but ignoring them and pretending I don’t understand them, I’ve run away. Not wanting to repeat that, and seeing the cameras surrounding me, eyeing me like one-eye robotic alien creatures, I decide not to pull out my phone to take a picture.

A policeman’s eyes follow me as I walk by the police station, and I hold my breath as a line of military police in camouflage fatigues pass me. They are carrying riot shields following a man in a black police uniform with a blue armband reading “commander” speaking into a walkie-talkie. When they pass and take no notice of me, I breathe a sigh of relief and walk on. As I pass through an alley that has been bottle necked due to limited space from the encroaching subway construction, the crowds thicken and I am being squeezed and pushed around in the crowd. I hold my purse even tighter and feel claustrophobic. There are street hawkers waving towels and aprons in my face, yelling out prices in an unending loop ("besh koy besh koy besh koy!") seemingly without even stopping to take a breath. Beggars are crying out in tears and wails of pain and loss and struggle, their stumps for legs and their rashes and boils on display. When I reach the row of tents selling food, shoes, and jeans, I am tempted to look at the jeans someone is selling for 20 yuan and then I remember that I can’t fit into jeans for women here. My mouth waters at the sight of steaming sheep lungs and intestines (opke-hesip, one of my very favorite foods) or hard-boiled eggs with carrots and chickpeas, and someone calls out to me, “It’s Nazaket!” (a different white girl who used to live here). I tell them I’m not her, and the whole crowd bursts into laughter, and I move on, watching as police officers chase away a banana vendor on the street.

When I pass by the same area later that night around 8:30 pm on the bus, I see a black police van with bars over its windows—the kind that looks like a prisoner transportation van—that is parked outside the entrance of the Grand Bazaar with its blue and red lights flashing. My heart seizes then, and I pray a prayer to a god I don’t believe in that none of the 6 year-old boys I saw earlier selling Q-tips and aprons were picked up, hoping that the police did nothing more than chase them away. Could they get arrested? Would they do that to a young boy? Images of the stories E told me about her friends’ brothers disappearing for no reason wrenches my stomach.