Dear Grandma

This was a letter I wrote last week after learning of my grandmother's death on May 7th, and was read out-loud by my aunt at her funeral yesterday.

Dear Grandma,

We’re not so different, you and I. Some people say that characteristics skip a generation. Is that what happened with us? Because we’re both super sassy, you and I. Did you know that when I was a little girl and being a smart mouth, my parents would tell me, “you’re being like your grandma”? Maybe it was their way of telling me that I was being too honest; I was saying out loud what I thought. Whether or not it was true was beside the point. I was saying it without thinking first about the way that it might hurt someone else. I’m still like that, sassy and straightforward with my emotions and my thoughts. It gets me into trouble sometimes. Okay, much of the time. But sometimes it’s a good thing. It helps people to know what I’m thinking and what I need. It helps me to be honest.

It’s only now that I know such talk was your way of showing that you cared. It was your way of showing love. It was also your way of showing your insecurity, your vulnerability, and your anxiety. I know that you always only wanted the best for Ruth and me. You wanted us to be in a safe environment growing up. You wanted us to be healthy. You were also insecure about yourself, your own body, and your own life, and perhaps you projected this shame onto my family and me. Is this why you would leave without saying good-bye? I know that you loved me, and you wanted to be close with me, and you wanted to protect me. It is only now that I realize you were feeling intense pain yourself, and you wanted to show your love for me, perhaps protect me somehow from feeling the same shame you felt.

There is something else that we share in common. Perhaps a propensity to isolate ourselves, move to far-away lands that are not easily accessible to family and friends. Me? China. You? Rural Michigan. Perhaps we did this because we have a vision for ourselves and our health and happiness. For you, it was easy access to hiking, biking, and swimming that you chose to make a priority. For me, it’s easy access to learning foreign languages and working with different cultures. But perhaps in doing so we ended up isolating ourselves and our relationships. Perhaps we built walls without even realizing it. Perhaps when we built those walls, others don’t have the energy to knock on them, and they just give up. And so, we too give up, and then 20 years pass and you’re gone and the opportunities I had to visit you are gone. I’ll never have another opportunity to go swimming with you, or eat ice cream on the beach, or watch fireworks on the harbor, or ride my decorated bike in the parade with Sam, or read on your living room couch, or go swimming at the club house, or take walks in the woods with you. Those things will never be able to happen again. I didn’t take the opportunity to do those things with you when the chance presented itself, and I can never get that lost time back.

But maybe there is still some hope here, maybe I can go back to Presque Isle and visit your grave and go biking in the streets and swimming in the lake. Maybe I can bring my kids here on summer vacation and we’ll watch the fireworks and the parade on Fourth of July and we’ll think of you and I’ll tell them stories of your tenaciousness and your spunk and your sass and your honesty. And I’ll tell them that you left me with perhaps the most important lesson of all: don’t give up on your relationships because they don’t reach out, or they’re far away, or they’ve put up walls that you don’t understand. Talk to them, tell them what you want the relationship to be like, ask them, “why are you putting up walls?” I know it’s not your fault that we didn’t spend a lot of time together when I was younger, just as it’s not my fault either. Maybe you were too scared, maybe you were not able to be vulnerable with us the way we needed you to be. But that was the only way you knew how to show us that you cared. Perhaps in this way you have given me a gift, shown me how much we need each other, and how our relationships are worth saving and worth talking about no matter how much hostility there was in the beginning. Because at the end of the day all we have are our relationships.

You and I didn’t always understand each other. But maybe that’s because we are so similar that we couldn’t see that we were staring at each other in the mirror, our defense mechanisms and our anxieties clouding our relationships and making it hard for people to feel close to us. Regardless, I know you love me and I hope you know that I love you too, always and forever. I will come back here with my own children to show them the place that you loved so much. I’ll think of you, and I’ll remember why you loved it here so much and I’ll remember that life is short, something to be treasured.

Over Thanksgiving last year, you said to me between laborious breaths over the phone, “I doubt I will ever see you again.” I knew then that I had to come back to Michigan to see you, and I did. Me with my concussion, you with your weak heart. A weak heart that was actually not weak at all but stronger than any of us could have ever imagined, pounding through your chest and keeping you breathing throughout the winter, the blood pulsing through your veins as you gasped for oxygen. We laid next to each other in bed, sleeping and holding hands, you scowling at me when I accidentally touched your back with cold hands. We slept and listened to the radio and laughed and cried together.

Again, we are not so different, you and I. You had panic attacks in the same way I did, hyperventilating and confused, scared but not sure about what. “I am NOT scared to die,” you insisted over and over again. We talked about it, and you begged and pleaded with me: “I want to die, I want to die,” you told me over and over again. “I know, I know,” was all I could say while holding your hand. “It’s going to be okay,” was all I could say between my tears. I knew how you felt. I had felt it only a few weeks before, after sick with a concussion I had fearful images of me dying and what my funeral would look like, images that would leave me in the throes of panic attacks.

My concussion was painful, but I don’t regret a single minute, a single move that I made. That concussion brought me back to you, brought me back to Michigan so we could celebrate Christmas and New Year’s together. That concussion brought us closer than we ever had been, allowed us to spend more time together in one stretch than I can ever remember. And what a gift that was. What an honor that was to spend that time with you. Thank you for letting me take care of you. You were vulnerable with me, letting me do and see things that were embarrassing, letting me into that part of your life, into that private space that I had never before seen before. Letting me see that vulnerable side of you, for before you had always put up a shield for me. It was a shield made of love, a shield made out of protection for me and my safety and health, but it was a shield nonetheless. This winter, both of us sick and lying in bed, we were finally able to be vulnerable together. And perhaps for the first time in our lives we were able to sit in peace together.

I had a dream about you recently. I was taking care of you in your hospital bed and you kept thrashing around uncontrollably. I was trying to hold you down, but I couldn’t and you almost knocked over the computer that was next to your bed. There was a bottle of cat shampoo that I just had to pour into a plastic bag, but it kept spilling all over the floor and all over me. While I was distracted, you escaped. You rode off in your nightgown on a boat, sailing off into the lake’s horizon. Later, the lake froze over and you came walking back to me on the ice and we embraced.

Grandma, I know you’ll always be there for me, even if it is only through memories and stories. I’m glad you were finally able to escape the misery you were in and I hope you’re out there, riding on boats and skiing and swimming and hiking with Sam and Hope like you love to do.

Uyghur Clubbing

On Friday afternoon I get a WeChat from K, a male classmate of mine: “Hi Sarah. Today 7:30 pm local time. 360 music club.”

Huh? I thought to myself. What’s going on?

The message wasn’t clear as to what we would be doing. I knew 360 was a Uyghur club and it was close to my house. But there was no “hope to see you there,” or “my friends are going, would you like to join us?” I sent a message back inquiring about the nature of this gathering, but there was no response.

At 7:15 pm (it is common for everything to happen at the last minute here), I get a call from K. “I know I said 7:30, but actually it starts at 8. So I’ll see you then, yeah?”

“K, sure, but what’s going on? Who is going and what’s this all about?”

“It’s my birthday, so we’re going to party tonight. A bunch of my friends are getting together.”

“Oh! Ok, then. I’ll see you there.”

I arrive fashionably late at 8:15 pm local time (10:15 pm Beijing time), going through the metal detector, opening my purse for inspection, and undergoing the body frisk by the female security guard who pats me down from under my armpits to my thighs. Ahead of me in the lobby is a wall of wooden shelves separated into square cubbies, each holding a different bottle of yangjiu (foreign liquor): Skyy, Ballentine’s, Bacardi, etc. Inside the music is pulsing to an electronic beat.    

I go inside to look, but K isn’t here yet. The security guards are really friendly and helpful, noticing that I was wandering around by myself, they suggest I go to the second floor to check for my friend and asking, “Would you like to sit down?” as they offer me their stools. “Who reserved the table?” I give them K’s name, and the security guard translates K’s name into Chinese—the awkward monosyllabic sounds of a Uyghur name translated into Chinese are clunky in his mouth—for the Han boss who is holding a clipboard. “How the hell should I know?” snaps the boss, “There are two Ks who have a reservation tonight and they both don’t match the phone number she has” (K has a really common Uyghur name).

I hang around in the lobby for the next 45 minutes. I look in the mirrors over the sinks outside the bathroom, and notice my hair is flat and greasy. I fix my hair into a ponytail. The Han bathroom attendant with a pixie cut and gold earrings sitting in the corner stares at me as she lights incense sticks and cracks sunflower seeds, periodically yawning and rubbing her face with her hands.

K calls me twice to apologize for being late, saying that the traffic is really bad. He arrives at 9 pm with two Uyghur girls, one is a Chinese teacher (she spent eight years in Shanghai in Chinese school, so her Chinese is almost better than her Uyghur) with a round face I recognize from a previous event, and one is a girl with a short, pixie cut and red lipstick who greets me with, “Hi” and a small wave. K is wearing a shirt that says, “Istanbul: The City that Never Sleeps.”

I follow them into the dance club. The room is pitch black except for the colorful neon lights and disco balls flashing and rotating around the room at a dizzyingly fast pace. Uyghur music—Turkic style dutar (two-stringed guitar-like instrument) strumming with high-pitched trumpets blasting a cheerful tune—is booming from the surround sound speakers at an ear-splitting volume and the bass beat is thumping so loud the entire room seems to be vibrating. In front of us at the far end of the two-story high ceilinged room, is a stage with its curtains pulled open. A man is standing in the center of the stage holding a microphone and screaming/singing into it about missing his mother and his homeland (a very common theme in Uyghur songs). In the stage background are several Greek-style columned pillars and a soft red light illuminating them. On the two sides of the stage are placed some kind of Roman style statue of a person holding a tray of flowers. On the far right and left inside the walls in the foreground of the stage have a huge built in display case with 4 feet tall matryoshka Russian dolls (the traditional kind you can stack inside one another).    

The remaining three sides of the room are lined with two levels (a first floor and a second floor, the second floor like a loft) of tables surrounded by plush booths, where Uyghurs sit smoking cigarettes or hookah, drinking Red Label Jack mixed with iced tea, and eating dapanji (Big Plate Chicken). I can smell the taste of the spicy peppers and cumin exuding out of the dishes as we walk by. I notice that most of the women are not wearing headscarves, except for a few women wearing stylish Arabic style headscarves, or headscarves that are loosely tied around the forehead to show the front two inches of their hair. The tables encircle the dance floor, which is a raised platform lined with metal banisters, located in front of the stage. On the ceiling hang 4 huge chandeliers, the ceiling decorated with ornate gold trim in a delicate flower pattern.

Here is a picture from inside the club with the two levels of tables and the plushy booths. You can see a woman dancing Uyghur dance on the dance floor on the right. It was so dark it was hard to get good pictures. 

We arrive at our table—K greeting the guy already sitting with two touches on each cheek, a greeting reserved for male relatives or the closest of male friends—with a huge curved couch-like booth that could seat ~15 people, and the women sit on one side of the couch-booth, and the men sit on the other. As we wait for the food to arrive, the tasty smell of fruity and spicy hookah scents surround us. I notice the group at the table behind us has two women in skin-tight sequined black dresses celebrating their birthdays, each wearing a silver princess crown and blowing out the candles on a cake. A huge bouquet of roses sits in the middle of the table, and a 5-year old girl sits next to them wearing a paper crown. Each time a new person arrives at our table, everyone stands to greet them, us ladies touching our hearts and bowing slightly if it’s a guy, or shaking hands and touching each cheek to the other if it’s a lady. One of the guys suggests getting some yangjiu, but K says, “let’s not drink alcohol.”

Otherwise, everyone is distracting themselves by playing on their phones in an effort to seem cool and aloof. One of the guys makes a comment about it, joking that maybe we should open a WeChat group and talk to each other on there. The girls (except for me in a passive effort to avoid perpetuating the patriarchy) periodically stand to pour tea and honey into everyone’s glasses. One of the boys teases the Chinese teacher about being more Chinese than Uyghur (she just came back from Shanghai one year ago), and asks her jokingly in Chinese, “So what do you think of Xinjiang (xinjiang zenmeyang)? You see this food here, it’s all the Xinjiang specialty food (xinjiang techan), you should have a try!” I laugh out loud at his incredibly good impression of a Chinese person.

Performers emerge periodically to dance on the platform. First, a pair of ladies dressed in traditional Uyghur dancing costume dancing traditional Uyghur dance. A little while later, two Uyghur women emerge dressed in Indian costume, dancing to Indian music in traditional form. Lastly there is a Uyghur in short white shorts and a long flowing gown that drags behind her like a wedding veil, which she whips seductively around as the audience catches glimpses of her bare legs.

An American EDM song comes on, and the club patrons flood the dance floor, dancing what in Uyghur is called “disco,” which for them means American wedding free-style dancing to Western pop music. Everyone bobs around like a white guy that can’t dance and I’m thankful for all my years of training at grade school and high school dances. I notice that some of the women on the dance floor are wearing skirts with slits that go above their knee and some are showing the top of their cleavage, and I’m surprised and slightly scandalized as this is a rare sight indeed.

When a Latin pop music song with Spanish lyrics plays in the background, I sit back in the booth and sigh a breath of relaxation. This place, this night feels like a truly global experience, an example of the internationalism that is so alive in this city that sits at the intersection of so many cultures: Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Indian, Uyghur, Chinese, American… Even Latino culture if you count the music, and Greek and Roman if you count the decorations.

The song changes to a slower pace, and pairs of women go up onto the dance platform to “tansa,” the Uyghur version of waltzing. Next, the song changes to Uyghur music and the floor floods again with people dancing “ussul,” Uyghur style dancing that involves twirling your hands and wrists, waving your arms and walking around in a circular pattern without touching your partner. Generally, it’s danced between a man and a woman, but women-women and men-men paired dancing ussul is not uncommon either.

People dancing ussul on the dance floor/platform

I still remember my first foray into Uyghur dance back in 2014, the first time I went to a Uyghur club. E advised me that day, “Just wave your hands in front of your face as if to say, ‘look at my pretty face,’ and wave your hands in front of your chest, torso and hips as if to say, ‘look at my pretty body.’” I felt so awkward and ugly and stupid and clumsy and uncoordinated that day, but I tried my best. I still feel awkward doing it, but I just keep eye contact with my partner and smiling as wide as I can the whole time.

Over the next four songs, a couple of the guys ask me to dance (it’s rude to refuse a dance), and then two of the girls ask me to dance. Ussul is incredibly flirtatious and sexy, and I love that it’s the one time Uyghurs will publically engage in an open display of sexuality and human attraction in an otherwise incredibly repressed society. They are super kind to me, telling me how well I dance and asking me who taught me.

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Before too long, I get up to leave, saying good-bye to everyone and tughulghan kuningizge mubarek (Happy Birthday) to K. I walk home in the mild spring evening, my ears ringing and my clothes and hair smelling of smoke.

Uyghur names are so much better than English names

I did a post on this in 2011 about Chinese names (Chinese names are so awesome), so I thought I'd do one on Uyghur names too, since Uyghur names have really cool meanings.

Just as a preface, a lot of Uyghur people, especially men, have Arabic, Persian, or Turkish names that they may not know the meanings of, or they may just have made-up names that sound nice, like we have for Amy or Taylor. Some also have names of famous people from Islam or the Arab world, just we have for people from the bible. The following list does not include popular Uyghur names from Arabic or the Quran, but only includes the most popular names in Uyghur with meanings in Uyghur.

Female names:

Dilnur- Light of the Soul

Guljennet- Paradise Flower

Aygul- Moon Flower

Aynur- Moonlight

Muqeddes- Sacred

Merhaba- Welcome

Muhebbet- Love and Affection

Mihriban- Kind and Good

Gulbanum- Flower Queen 

Zilala- Pure

Melike- Princess

Male names:

Erkin- Freedom

Adil- Fair/Just

Tursun- Stay (often given to children born after their mother has suffered several miscarriages, it's a wish for this one to stay here on earth). 

Muxterjan- Chosen Life

Kamil- Expert

Hemrahjan- Life companion

I love Uyghur names! They have such deep and beautiful meanings. It's always fun when I learn a new word in Uyghur and realize it is actually a popular name.