Always more companions

Organization

In the meantime, he talks with a driver in Ouigour and writes down the driver’s name and phone number. After ten minutes, Liu Jia calls us to say that she found us a hotel. We find ourselves in a room on the 9th floor with a very nice view. Liu Jia comes in our room to organize the rest of the trip. In the end, we decide to take a train from Hami to Xi’an and then a plane to Hohhot. Then we’ll take a train to Xilinhöt where our friend Ayin, who is photographing nomads in Mongolia, will pick us up. Then, dad and Liu Jia go buy the authorizations for the eclipse and I finish my text. When I’m finished writing and they still haven’t returned, I watch the basketball match between Argentina and Serbia. My cousin Roshanak calls me from Paris in the meantime to tell me that they had received the packages we sent from Xi’an and asks about the rest of our trip, which I explain. When the match ends, dad arrives and tells me that the authorizations for all of us are too expensive. So instead of paying 300 Yuan per person, with the help of the driver he met in front of the station, dad rented a mini bus for 300 Yuan to go to another location to watch the eclipse. Since I’m hungry, with dad we go eat soup in front of the hotel and we go in an Internet café to send the text and do the research I want to do. Then, I go back to the room to go to bed since tomorrow we have a day filled with sensations.

Police station and friends on the road to eclipse

How a travel can be full of suprises and sensations

Today I wake up with the joy of discovering something new, since today we are going to see an eclipse. According to scientific research I did over the Internet, the best place to see it is in Yiwu, a small city North-East of Kumul (Hami) in Oriental Turkistan. The Chinese authorities took advantage of the eclipse to set up a toll and have millions of tourists going to see the eclipse pay. The cost of the authorization is too expensive for us: 320 euros or 3200 Yuan. With dad, we figure that an eclipse is visible not only in one place and that the band of vision is wide and long. Looking at the map and on Internet, we notice that the eclipse is also visible from another small village. Dad calls the minibus driver he hired the day before and tells him where we decided to go. When we are finished putting our things away, we go have breakfast. I don’t know why, but today for breakfast I take only a hard-boiled egg and some Chinese bread. Yet, dad says that while traveling it’s always better to eat well when there’s the opportunity to, because we never know what might happen. When we finish, we put our things in the mini-bus that’s being driven by a fat man that always scratches himself and who’s called Karam. Coming out of the hotel, I see a robust man of about 65 years old who limps and has a four-day old beard. I talk with him and with his accent, fast-talking but more distinct than a British, I understand that he’s American. He tells me that he lives in Beijing. He came with his wife. She’s about the same age as him with white hair. She has the real attitude of a grandmother: she’s considerate of everything and everyone. Her son, in his thirties, speaks very good Chinese. They also came to see the eclipse. He’s very nice and before leaving, he looks at our license plate. He’s going to Xincheng like us and says that if we cross paths on the road and we’re in trouble, he’ll come and help us. Then he leaves. And so do we, in our mini-bus. But after five minutes, dad remembers that we have to prepare our train departure between Hami an Xi’an that will last more than 23 hours, just after the eclipse. He asks Liu Jia if she found a solution to buy the train tickets. She says no, but guarantees that we’ll be able to buy them in the evening when we return. Dad says that Xi’an, a popular tourist destination, will most likely be the next destination for the thousands of tourists that came to watch the eclipse. That’s dad’s experience as a traveler talking! He asks Liu Jia to find a solution now for the tickets or to have someone else buy them, but she has none. At that moment, our Indian traveling companion proposes that we go to a travel agency and have them buy the tickets for us. We then go to Hami’s big hotel where there’s a travel agency. We arrive in a small crowded room where a woman is typing information into a computer and another who has to sell the last six authorization tickets for the eclipse and had promised to sell them to ten people. Languages are mixed in this crowd: we hear Australian, British, American and even Chinese being spoken. In the middle of the shouting and stress of the woman selling the authorizations, Liu Jia asks her if she can book out tickets. She writes our train on a piece of paper and accepts. Dad and his genius sees that this poor woman, once the tourists will be gone, will only want to hang her head back, sigh and sleep. Since Liu Jia told me that she doesn’t care about seeing the eclipse, and although he’s sorry about it, dad proposes that she stays to buy the tickets if she doesn’t find another solution. Then, she answers with a sentence that I’ve heard a million times during this trip with her, which is: “It doesn’t matter.” She takes her things from the minibus and leaves. I can hear myself thanking dad and see Yang Dong relieved to finally be able to speak in Liu Jia’s absence, because she doesn’t let others speak and no one dares ask a question for fear of getting an answer in her voice that could blow out an eardrum. The driver starts driving at an odd speed, and we tell ourselves that he’s weird and at this speed, we’ll arrive in the village tomorrow morning, well after the eclipse. After a few minutes, he stops in front of a gas station where cars are lined up waiting to get gas. At that moment, dad protests and asks the driver to not waste his time and to find another gas station. He also asks him to buy Kumul melons that are reputed to be the best in the world. After driving in circles for 10 minutes, we find the melons but no gas. We buy three melons at 5 Yuan. Finally, we find a gas station at the end of a small sandy road and Karam fills up. When the tank is full he begins to drive at a normal speed and then I feel relieved. Then, I sleep while listening to Jacques Brel and think about a journey between Nîmes and Monaco during which I listened to Brel with my grandfather.

Getting ready for an eclipse

Feeling lonely on a train...

We wake up at dawn this morning. I get the luggage ready with dad to be well prepared for the train departure. My things ready, I go down for breakfast and then go meet Alem. I get in the car and wait. Then everyone arrives. I notice a new piece of luggage that is like a long tube and dad tells me that Ghazi had the calligraphy delivered. At the station, I pass easily through the luggage inspection, although I notice that all the liquids are taken then mixed to see if we made explosives! After fifteen minutes we leave with our entire luggage and dad is reassured because they didn’t confiscate anything. We go into the train and towards our seats, since it’s not a night train there are no sleeper cars. But we’re not around the same table and we ask two people if they can change places with us. At first they refuse but since the controller helps us, they finally accept. I sit and listen to my iPod Touch. After an hour, a young man comes and speaks English to us and asks us what we would like to eat. Life settles itself in the train: Yang Dong sleeps in his seat, I talk to a young man about basketball, dad and Liu Jia order. Back from lunch, I begin to write while dad goes for a walk in the train. When dad returns, he tells me there’s a Chinese-speaking Indian a few rows behind us and that he’s a student at MIT. I go talk to him and I learn that he doesn’t speak Indian and that he learned Chinese when he was living in Malaysia. At around 16:00 we arrive in Hami and dad suggests to the Indian that he comes with us. He accepts. Dad asks Liu Jia and the Indian to find us a hotel around the train station. In the meantime, he talks with a man in Ouigour and writes down the his name and phone number to find a way of getting to the eclipse. After ten minutes, Liu Jia calls us to say that she found us a hotel. We find ourselves in a room on the 9th floor with a very nice view. Liu Jia comes in our room to organize the rest of the trip. In the end, we decide to take a train from Hami to Xi’an and then a plane to Hohhot. Then we’ll take a train to Xilinhöt where our friend Ayin, who is photographing nomads in Mongolia, will pick us up. Then, dad and Liu Jia go buy the authorizations for the eclipse and I finish my text. When I’m finished writing and they still haven’t returned, I watch the basketball match between Argentina and Serbia. My cousin Roshanak calls me from Paris in the meantime to tell me that they had received the packages we sent from Xi’an and asks about the rest of our trip, which I explain. When the match ends, dad arrives and tells me that the authorizations for all of us are too expensive. So instead of paying 300 Yuan per person, with the help of the driver he met in front of the station, dad rented a mini bus for 300 Yuan to go to another location to watch the eclipse. Since I’m hungry, with dad we go eat soup in front of the hotel and we go in an Internet café to send the text and do the research I want to do. Then, I go back to the room to go to bed since tomorrow we have a day filled with sensations.

On the train to Hami

The day train

We wake up at dawn this morning. I get the luggage ready with dad to be well prepared for the train departure. My things ready, I go down for breakfast and then go meet the driver. I get in the car and wait. Then everyone arrives. I notice a new piece of luggage that is like a long tube and dad tells me that Ghazi had the calligraphy delivered. At the station, I pass easily through the luggage inspection, although I notice that all the liquids are taken then mixed to see if we made explosives! After fifteen minutes we leave with our entire luggage and dad is reassured because they didn’t confiscate anything. We go into the train and towards our seats, since it’s not a night train there are no sleeper cars. But we’re not around the same table and we ask two people if they can change places with us. At first they refuse but since the controller helps us, they finally accept. I sit and listen to my iPod Touch. After an hour, a young man comes and speaks English to us and asks us what we would like to eat. Life settles itself in the train: Yang Dong sleeps in his seat, I talk to a young man about basketball, dad and Liu Jia order. Back from lunch, I begin to write while dad goes for a walk in the train. When dad returns, he tells me there’s a Chinese-speaking Indian a few rows behind us and that he’s a student at MIT. I go talk to him and I learn that he doesn’t speak Indian and that he learned Chinese when he was living in Malaysia. At around 16:00 we arrive in Hami and dad suggests to the Indian that he comes with us. He accepts. Dad asks Liu Jia and the Indian to find us a hotel around the train station.

Last hours in Urumqi

Under surveillance in the bazaar

We take the car to go to the city’s bazaar. We were expecting an old bazaar but instead we are in front of a large street with little shops that looks like any other shopping street in a French tourist town. There’s nothing left of the large Oriental bazaar dad saw here 13 years ago. Actually there is: his pictures of it! To replace the little stands, people hang the shirts they are selling on themselves, like moving coat hangers, while shouting to attract customers. There are also people who put the things they are going to sell on the ground like food, small objects or clothes. When we arrive, we begin to film. A police officer follows us, and since we’re leaving his surveillance zone, he calls a colleague who is in the surveillance zone we are heading towards. After 5 minutes, we are followed by three police officers and two of their colleagues are questioning our driver. So, we ask Liu Jia to ask the driver if he can pick us up further to avoid the police officers. After a few minutes, we get in the car and go to another place. We walk around a block where there are a few shops; we go into one but when the salesman sees that we are filming his store, he throws us out. We learn later that it’s because he sells pirated CDs. We eat ice cream and I think of my cousin Soheil who loves ice cream, it’s the only person with whom I ate three scoops of ice cream at my favorite ice cream shop in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the South of France. But the police are still there. So, we take the car again and head to the museum, but the museum is closed and dad talks to mom again about work. It’s a bit much, but I guess they have to work. Since the museum is closed, we decide do go to a hill that has a view over the entire city. On the road, statues made of grass had invaded the street. We stop. We’re in front of a mall and there’s a camera store inside where we might be able to find cassettes since we are already running out. But the salesman said he didn’t have any. We ask him if he knew of another store that might have some, he gives us the name, but says that it’s closed. So with dad and Yang Dong we go outside and photograph the statues. But in a moment of precipitation, I accidentally knock over dad’s camera and its wide-angle lens. Luckily Allah helped me and in the end nothing was broken. At that moment, dad gets a call from Liu Jia who says that she bought the train tickets to Hami for tomorrow. Dad tells her that he’ll pass the phone to Yang Dong so that he can tell her where the other camera shop is, but since Yang Dong tells her that it’s closed she doesn’t want to go. Dad explains to her that it’s common that a salesperson mentions another store but says that it’s closed so that we’ll buy at his store instead. Liu Jia goes to the store and fifteen minutes later she calls saying that it’s open, so dad takes a taxi and goes to meet her. In the meantime, he asks me to take pictures of the statues and when I’m done, I sit on the stairs and play Snake on Yang Dong’s cell phone while he films and takes pictures. While I’m playing, my cousin Soheil calls and I’m happy to have him on the phone and I hear news from him and especially of his daughter Mona who is three-years-old. He tells me that everything is fine, so I’m really happy for them. Dad and Liu Jia come back with 20 cassettes and I’m glad about that. We go back to the hotel and ask our driver to come pick us up tomorrow at 6:30 am Turkistan time to be at the train station on time to make our 7:53 am train. We go to the room, surf the net a little, then I write my texts and go to sleep.

A day in the life of The painter

Ghazi paints with his soul

Today I get up early since we mustn’t be late when Ghazi’s driver comes to pick us up. He’s a medium sized man, with a scar on his cheek and looks more like a Turk than a Chinese. We arrive in a street where buildings line a park where old men play Go, the national Chinese board game. I go into a building that has just been cleaned, judging by the large puddle of water. I go up the stairs and each door looks like looks like the one at Marina’s, my “almost” aunt, who has a two-meter steel door with a thickness of 50 cm. Dad explains to me that there’s security problem in this city. We go up a few floors and ring the doorbell in front of a door similar to the others. A young man, about 19 years old, opens the door; he’s dressed in military clothes. It’s Ghazi’s grandson. We go in and his son greets us; he’s in his fifties and a computer engineer. He accompanies us to the living room where Ghazi is waiting for us. He seems more comfortable here than at last night’s supper, since he’s home. He’s wearing a stained white shirt and comes to greet us. He shows us his paintings. He explains them one after the other. I learned that an Ouigour wrote, 100 years ago, an Ouigour language dictionary, but the Chinese government forbade its translation since it didn’t want the Ouigours to have anything to learn their language. They had to wait for the English translation of the book for the Anglophones to put pressure on the Chinese government so that it could finally be published in the Ouigour language. That was done in 2007. He tells us the story of the Ouigour Romeo and Juliet he painted. We leave the living room and go towards a table where hundreds of tubes of paint are laid. He sits and continues the painting he had started earlier. He mixes the colors and when the mix is right, he puts the paint on the canvas. He does a small canvas that will be used as a model for a much larger painting. In front of a painting of a peasant, he explains that for him peasants are the people with the most freedom. They might be poor and do the same job their entire life, but they don’t have problems with overtime, 35-hour work weeks and salary increases that Western societies know today. He works and when he’s finished, he rests, thinks and dreams, something a bureaucrat never does when he thinks only of doing his 35 weeks and then going home. After explaining this to us, he invites us to have some fruit that his grandson brought out. While we’re eating, a boy of about 10 who is already in university arrives. He’s gifted, and also Ghazi’s grandson. When we are finished, Ghazi’s son shows us the DVD he did on his father’s work. I tell dad that it looks a lot like Aydin’s work with dad, and he tells me: “but you know, I consider Aydin my son.” When we finish the DVD, Ghazi asks dad to take a picture of him and I film, then take pictures. I even nearly knock over one of Ghazi’s paintings. When we finish the portraits, Ghazi takes a sheet of paper and empties half his tube of Chinese ink in a plate to do calligraphy. He takes a brush and I notice that normally his hand shakes, but when he takes a brush everything stops, as though there are messages being transmitted between his hand and the brush. In his hand, the brush moves as though performing a dance, like a woman dancing to seduce men. Dad is moved by this movement at once delicate and majestic. He has tears in his eyes. His calligraphy finished, he needs to put his signature to affirm that he’s the artist. He looks in a closet for a little stone, then a larger one and a round box that contains red ink that allows him to sign his calligraphies. He takes a magazine and a paper towel that he puts underneath his calligraphy at a precise place. He takes the small stone, looks at it and turns it delicately to see which is the right side to sign in the right place. He dips the stone in the red ink and with his hand of nearly 75 years, presses down on the paper. He takes the other stone, dips it in the ink and after changing the magazine and paper towel’s position, he puts his second signature. For a few seconds after, he observes in silence his work to admire it and also to see if it’s complete. His work finished, he looks at us and says that it’s for me but that there’s one thing left to do to finish the calligraphy, and that is to frame it in nice paper and he will send it to me. I thank him and get ready to leave with dad when he invites us out for lunch. We say goodbye to the family and go down the stairs. Downstairs, I notice I forgot something so I go back up. And I think of what I hear a lot: “when you don’t have a head, you have legs!” I finally go meet the others to go for lunch. Everyone knows Ghazi and greet him. It’s a joyful lunch. After, when we are finished we get up and I talk with Ghazi’s grandson. We talk about the Ouigour identity and his country of which he’s proud. And when I ask him which country he’s talking about, he answers that he considers Oriental Turkistan his country, not China. I tell him that he must believe in his country and we leave.

Between melons and tension

Arrival in Urumqi

That done, dad buys water and we take the car to go see China’s largest salt mine. After an hour, we arrive on the shores of a salt lake that is the second lowest point in the world. I send an SMS to Estelle, mom’s godmother who is in Camargue, near saline, to tell us where we are. Dad finds a place where the view is better…for us, the photos and the video footage. We take the car again and find ourselves in an area closed off by large barriers and where the entrance fee is very expensive. We call the great painter, and friend of dad’s, Ghazi to let him know of our arrival in Urumchi. A few minutes later, he calls us back and tells us that he reserved a hotel for us and that he’s expecting us for dinner at 20:00. It’s 19:15 and we’re about an hour away from Urumchi. In the middle of road we stop to look at monsters that are in rows like pickets, their three arms open wide like the blades of a vegetable chopper: they are among thousands of Mr. and Mrs. Windmills. A bunch of buses stop, filled with Chinese tourists who are having their picture taken while imitating these monsters. When a small Ouigour car comes, they take me for one of them and I am very honored. Dad buys two large melons that I gladly eat; they are crispy and extraordinarily tasty. You probably know of the famous Hami melons. Actually, they are really good in all of Xinjiang and it’s because Hami is the closest city to China that the Chinese made these melons famous. We arrive at the hotel Tumaris, a three star hotel that seems to have another three reserved by Ghazi. We get the rooms quickly and at half price thanks to Ghazi. While we’re waiting for him to arrive, Yang Dong gets the camera ready to film and right there, a young arrogant Chinese man who thinks he’s better than us tries to stop us from filming saying that it’s forbidden. But dad isn’t about to be bossed around and shows the young man that he doesn’t care about what he’s saying. The Chinese man keeps protesting until Ghazi arrives and then he backs off. Yang Dong films this character who is a rather old man with his hair combed back, like a Sicilian godfather with a belly that’s well fed. He’s a man with almond-shaped eyes, who takes dad in his arms. Looks are only a small part of this person’s extraordinary being. We go towards the other end of the hotel in a room with a dance floor. We sit at a table and can watch a show that crosses the Silk Roads. There are Russian, Kazakh, Ouigour or Tadjik boys and girls that come. It’s incredible how pretty the girls are over there. The person presenting the concert has a round head, Russian and Turkish traits: in reality, he looks a lot like an Azeri. Over there in the street there are very few Chinese and mostly people we’d find in Baku, Dubai or Tehran. During dinner, Ghazi tells me that thanks to dad’s documentary on the Ouigour in 1995, these people were able to come out of the shadows. He also tells me that I should always have the goal of doing better than him and not like him. After this discussion, I go film the dances. When everyone is finished, Ghazi tells dad that he must go. Dad gets up and we do the same to accompany him to the door. Respect. We thank him again. Dad and Ghazi embrace each other. Tomorrow, we’ll go see him. We go back to our room and since there is Internet we make the most of it. I look at the news and see that Karadzic has been transferred to The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Bosnian genocide and in Serbia. I also looked at the very good question the CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour asked Mr.Sarkozy, during a press conference with Obama about his use of the term “deep clean” the rabble. In French it’s an expression that can be interpreted as racist, and will not be forgotten with someone like Obama who has succeeded well in life despite fitting into Sakozy’s definition of “rabble”. As usual, Sarkozy answers indirectly to the question, but mainly makes the phenomenal mistake of saying there hasn’t been a riot since he took office, evidently forgetting the ones at Villers le Bel in the Paris suburbs. After since I’m used to looking at the evolutions of the transfers in soccer, the news about soccer and the competitions throughout the world with the FIFA website and news about my favorite team: the OM. Finally, I have a look at a forum on Iranians living in Francophone countries or speak French, check the news about Iran and questions young people asked today. To finish off, since I’m missing more than a month and a half of my favorite daily show “La Plus Belle Vie”, I look at what’s happening but thanks to an unofficial site, I can know what will happen next. That is, of course, without forgetting to check my emails. When I’m done, I write my text. Dad is so tired that in order for him not to fall asleep, he goes for a walk. I keep on writing my text but he’s so tired that he comes back a few minutes later. When I finish writing, I send it by email to my mother who will correct it then post it in my blog. Then I get ready to go to bed and I sleep waiting for morning to come.

Getting ready for the city of Urumqi

Under Chinese rule

This morning, we wake up early to get our bags ready and drive towards Urumchi. We take our time, since we’ll be leaving by car and not by train so we’re not rushed by a departure schedule. We have to work on the photo captions, but we still hurry to have our things ready quickly. This trip isn’t only about discoveries and adventure, it’s also work. We each sit in front of a computer and begin to write. It’s 10am Xinjiang time, that is, 12pm Beijing time when Yang Dong advises us to check out of our rooms. Dad asks me what time it is since he doesn’t have a watch and when I tell him the time, he says: “we still have two hours.” So we keep on writing. I help them make a shortcut of a Zip file to compress the documents that will be sent. Our work finally finished, we pack the last few things that remain. It’s 12:25, Xinjiang time. We go downstairs and dad says that normally everywhere in the world, they charge a fee if someone checks out after 12:00 and with the little time we exceeded, the hotel should be lenient towards us. But downstairs, the lady behind the front desk tells us that we’ll have to pay an extra 100 Yuan for each room. Dad isn’t happy about that, and since he knows that in China the important aspect of each decision is its “leader”, dad asks for him. Then, when “leader” arrives, dad explains to him the problem. The young woman wants him to pay half the room’s fee when we have only exceeded the checkout time by 25 minutes. The leader looks at his watch and says: “you mean by 2 hours and 25 minutes.” That’s when we understand that he works according to Beijing time. What gets to me, it’s that the Chinese invaded the Ouigour people’s lands while trying everything to keep its culture prisoner, like change the alphabet so that no one else could understand it afterwards. They are supposed to respect minorities, but they force them to speak Chinese when they all speak Ouigour and have no need to speak Mandarin. They classify them as being what they call an “ethnic minority”, as though they were the absolute majority and the best in the world. And finally, there’s an hour in Xinjiang’s time zone that isn’t even recognized since it’s not used in the entire administration. In the end, dad leaves by paying 30 Yuan. After that annoying episode, we can take the car. The man who’ll take us to Urumchi is a friend of Harkin and his name is Alem. He’s a rather short man and wears a beret. He looks like a caricature of a French man. After driving for an hour, we arrive in the city of Dabanchi where, according to a song, there are the most beautiful women in China. I don’t think so. We stop in a small restaurant with only three tables. Mom calls us to let us know that the editor had sent the contract to do a book. I’m happy, but she also tells me that the top story in French newspapers is a rumor that Ouigour activists will do an act of terror in Beijing. I think it’s another attempt from the Chinese government to tarnish the image of the Ouigour people. But dad reminds me also that for security reasons surrounding the Olympic games, and with the cameras we have, we can expect to be arrested which I don’t find reassuring. But I don’t care: it might be a good experience. At that moment, a green khaki truck filled with soldiers stations itself in front of the restaurant. They observe us. After watching us and exchanging looks with me for a few minutes, they leave. That’s when a large chicken dish we ordered arrives and we eat. I even eat the chicken’s foot. It’s so good! A man comes to ask for money and we understand that it’s to build a mosque. Alem's phone rings for the tenth time, that’s why we call him “mister the Prime Minister.” To finish the meal, we ask to have the water they used to cook the noodles they served with the chicken because in China, instead of throwing it out, they drink it. During the meal, I peel garlic for dad and when mom hears of that she says: “Oh no!” since dad eats a large quantity of it and if I start it won’t smell very nice in the house. I reassure her by telling her that it’s for dad and if I eat some, it’s to avoid smelling dad’s breath when he calls her. After paying, dad goes to a hairdresser since I told him it would take only 5 minutes.

Dances along the Silk Roads

Escapes and questions

After an hour, half working and half relaxing, we take the car to go see a show of all kinds of dances of the Silk Road. And the dancer’s eyes puncture the spectators’ eyes. I end up next to a group of French people and a slightly round man who was a former rugby player that I saw for the first time with a cigar in his hand, before going in to watch the show. He tells me he’s the representative of a group of people who organize trips on the Silk Road. He asks me if I’m here for the eclipse, I tell him no, for the Olympics, I tell him no, then he asks me if I’m here on family business, I tell him again no. Then he asks me if I understand the Ouigour language. I tell him no but that my dad does. So then he’s persuaded that dad’s an Ouigour, but I tell him no and he asks me if he’s a Kazakh, I tell him he’s French and Iranian born. During the show, I observe keenly the dances, but also the girls. They are so beautiful! Towards the end, one of the French asks me why I came here. I explain to him the trip and give him the site and title of dad’s book on the Silk Roads. Then, in front of the hotel with Harkin we eat but I leave early. Since he said he was going to sleep in his room, Yang Dong gives me the camera. He and Liu Jia are afraid he’ll steel it. The idea makes me laugh, but I take it anyways. In the end, Harkin didn’t even sleep in the room. I write a little then go to bed while dad and Liu Jia keep on working on the captions.

Valley of the grapes

Impressions

Harkin’s house, where we are invited, forms a rectangle around a courtyard with many rooms. In one of them, a man of about 70 with a beard and blue eyes greets us with one of his grandsons in his arms. We settle down in the same way we did at the musician’s and have a bowl of laghman. In a moment of inattention, I spill the broth on my shirt. I rinse it in the river right next to the driver’s house. After having eaten and thanked our hosts, we take the road again. A new separation for a new discovery. We discover a minaret made of clay which has a large base that gets narrower towards the end. I discuss with dad the entrance fee, since I find it much too expensive, but dad negotiates by saying that a mosque, like all houses of God, must be free for believers, but it doesn’t work. So, we don’t go in the minaret. We head back with the driver towards the valley of grapes. Under the vines, a DJ plays music so that the girls and women can dance. We take the time to observe the scene. When we leave, the DJ dedicates a song to “his new friends from France”. On the way back, a man and his son are selling grapes. We take 2 kilos and I eat half during the drive back. We go see Liu Jia and I offer her some grapes, but since she already bought some, she tells me: “yours are rotten.” I admit it, I was annoyed. I had always learned from my parents that when someone offers you something, you must have the heart to thank the person and accept the gift; without criticizing or else it’s like a slap in the face.

The master of music

A few music notes or the faraway journey

Dad insists on seeing a master of Ouigour music. So the driver drives away from Turpan and brings us to little dirt alleys in a small village. He goes into a small courtyard and there, a medium size man with a moustache invites us into the house. His name is Abdul Rahman Ebrahim. He’s the greatest Ouigour musician in Turpan. We sit cross-legged on the ground, but I have trouble remaining seated like that. He serves us tea and bread hard as wood. After, he gets his instrument and then begins absolute happiness: with his eyes closed he begins to play and sing with a majestic voice. His voice is so beautiful that it brings so many sensations. While filming him, I have trouble not putting down everything to simply listen, but it’s while thinking of my cousin Aydin who plays nearly the same instrument that I keep on filming to be able to show him the footage when I get back to Paris. In the middle of the piece, Harkin plays at max volume the Italian revolutionary song A Belachao but in Russian. Even though dad loves that song, he’s not pleased with this attitude and asks him to turn it off immediately. When he’s finished playing his pieces, he takes us to the other side of his house, on a little shaded patio covered in green Turpanese grape vines that hang above our heads. In the middle of his courtyard is his workshop. On top of being a musician and singer, he makes his own instruments and cribs to make a living. He shows us how, with a machine, he makes the foot of a crib out of carved wood. I find that magnificent and extremely surprising. Dad enquires about the best Ouigour musicians and asks the musician if he has a CD, but he only has VCDs that can’t be read in France. We thank him for everything. When I say goodbye, he takes me in his arms, which I found very touching.

The Ouigur culture

Cell phone story (continued)

I am so tired when I wake up that I even ask dad if it’s ok if I don’t go with him. At first, he hesitates, but finally he asks me to get up. I do it and quickly get ready to leave with dad, Yang Dong and Harkin, whose name means “free” in Ouigour like the “Azad” of my Persian name. I learn that Liu Jia has to do captions for dad and she won’t be coming with us. There’s another problem with dad’s phone. Direction: the bazaar. We enter a small, crowded alleyway where people are laughing and doing business while buying everyday things. Heading towards the second, we enter a small street where thousands of Oriental flavors blend. We buy two kinds of beef raviolis and eat them. It’s our breakfast; it’s so good. Then, dad finds the hats he was looking for. After the Mao hat and the Hui hat, here’s the Ouigour hat. It’s a hat that’s smaller than one’s head and always has embroidery. Each drawing has significance. Mine is green with a square base and white and red drawings that resemble flowers. Dad’s is very similar, it’s just bigger in size. We put our hats on our heads and head to… the telephone repair shop. This telephone story is becoming somewhat of a gag. On a street-corner, behind a glass and in a booth, a young woman in front of a computer and a boy covered in bandages are waiting for us. We go in and dad explains our problem: he can’t read his emails on his Blackberry anymore. The boy takes the phone, has a look at it and gives it back saying that his boss isn’t there and he can’t do anything. We take the phone and go back in the street we were on and I still notice how pretty the girls from Turpan are. In front of the car there’s a store that sells books in Chinese and Ouigour. I bend over them and find a book that could interest dad: it’s a book of love songs with music partitions on the Silk Road. I hand it to him, he looks at it and congratulates me: “you have a good eye” he says to me. I like it when he compliments me. I tell him that it would please Djanan who is a piano master for a 10 year-old. We leave the store and we go from air conditioning to the heat in Turpan, which still remains pleasant. We head towards a kind of Laundromat to drop off our dirty laundry. I wait while they take our things and lean on a wall that turns out not to be a wall at all: it’s a kind of ventilation system with water and I end up with a wet shirt, I wasn’t very happy about that. At least it dries quickly in the heat.

Under control

Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang) under control

We go to meet Liu Jia and Yang Dong and go to a beach well known for its sand that has virtues against rheumatisms and articulations. Many people bury themselves in the sand to get better. Then, we discover people buried in the sand that dad photographs. Back at the hotel, dad stays in the room to work while I go eat and to an Internet café to send my texts. I write every day and it becomes a pleasure to do so. I bring back the skewers and bread I bought for dad before eating. Three Ouigour sit in front of me and I begin to talk with them. I learn that to say a person comes from a county, one adds “De” at the end of the country’s name. Liu Jia is pressing me to leave while I’m learning something about one of my family’s language. She tells me: “it’s midnight”, I look at my watch and say: “We have time since in Xinjiang, it’s barely 10pm” (we changed time zone). Finally, we leave to go to the cyber café and there, the people refuse until I tell them whi I am, and they let me go in. But the place’s manager throws me out before I am finished. So, we go to another cyber café that refuses to let me in but accepts Liu Jia; that’s when I understand that foreigner’s aren’t allowed in. She only had to load her photos and I have to send my texts for the blog. I ask her if she can do it for me, but she doesn’t understand. So I get up, leave and go see the third cyber café. When Yang Dong sees me leave, he follows me and tries to help me get into the cyber café but it doesn’t work. So we go back to see Liu Jia. Thanks to the kindness of the people at the cyber café, I can do what I need to do in five minutes: I send mom my texts to have them proofread and translated into English. We then go back to the hotel and tell dad about this adventure.

A valuable stop

Grapes, tea and smiles

We leave the mosque, and since I’m hungry, they show us the house of an Ouigour family that serve us grapes, a Turpan specialty and prepare in front of us the national Ouigour dish, the Laghman. It’s a noodle soup wit lamb and vegetables. We see the mosque’s Imam and learn that the mistress of the house is his daughter. We talk with him. He’s a rather old man that holds himself with a cane. He tells us that he comes to greet his daughter and that he’s 85 years-old. During lunch, I ask dad about the Ouigour language. He tells me that it’s a language with Turkish roots. So, I ask him if in Azerbaijan the language is very different from the one here and if Mama Bozorg (dad’s mom) would have been understood here. He tells me that there are a few differences but that she would be able to have a basic conversation. This language can be understood by the Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Azeri, nomadic people in northern Japan or Siberia, and that we find the same roots with the Inuit’s Inuktitut. I find it brilliant that so many people can understand each other in so many different countries. We end our discussion and leave thanking our hosts. We go for a walk in the village. Three women are making tea, we talk with them and explain our journey. We learn that they’re all teachers, on vacation like their students. We then decide to let Yang Dong and Liu Jia have some rest and go the two of us to the hills, near the place of pilgrimage. We climb and these moments I share with dad, it’s good to have this intimacy. We take the time to talk, not only do. Going back down, I trip and dad teaches me how to descend a mountain. I’m glad to be spending some learning moments with dad.

A history of Turkophone languages

Grapes, tea and smiles

Since I’m talking about the next step of our journey after Turpan, dad tells me that we must think and live the present moment and not always project ourselves into the next day, or if so very little. And since I don’t like to be contradicted, I’m upset. Finally, dad explains to me that this trip allows us to discover new things, but if we always think about tomorrow or the next destination, we’ll never be able to enjoy the present moment. All right, I understand his philosophy and do my best to think about it. We leave Turpan to head towards the desert. There’s a small village called Toyogh, however when Harkan said that entrance fees were included in his fee, he didn’t take into account this “new tourist stop”. Basically, it’s up to us to pay. Dad asks us to get out and stays in the car. He speaks to him in Ouigour since Ouigour is close to Azeri and dad speaks Azeri since they are Turcophone languages. Other negotiation: dad has him understand that if there’s an accounting problem, it’s up to the driver to take on. Question of commitment. The issue is resolved. Harkan pays the tickets. At the entrance, two police officers ask us for our passports, but for the first time since the beginning of the trip, dad didn’t bring them. So, he begins to speak in Ouigour and since the police officers are Ouigour, they show us another route to avoid police checkpoints. We find ourselves in the small streets of a mud village and we begin to observe the people who live there. I, of course, observe the girls and in Xinjiang, they’re drop-dead gorgeous. We talk with people from the village and learn that there’s a place of Muslim pilgrimage on its heights. We go up and there we end up in front of two old men praying. Dad makes a donation for the upkeep of the mosque. At the end of this place of pilgrimage, we enter something that looks like a cave. It’s dark and cold, but it’s a good place to gather ourselves. A group of people from the same family is crying. We stay discreet, silent and we move away towards the mosque. There is an empty yard where no one seems to be waiting for us. We are about to be thrown out when the Imam arrives for the prayer. We go to a basement where the air is cooler than upstairs and more pleasant to pray. Dad takes pictures.