The New Dominion

The following is a serial translation of Abdurehim Ötkür’s 1985 historical novel Oyghanghan Zemin, Chapter Two, pp. 25-29. New readers are encouraged to start from the beginning, Chapter One, Part One. This translation is presented for information and entertainment purposes only. It is also a work in progress — comments are welcome, especially on the (questionable) quality of the translation.

In Chapter One, Part Four, the plan of the progressive official Fan Yaonan to take control of the Xinjiang government failed in bloodshed. Fan Yaonan’s carriage driver has been detained for questioning…

Chapter Two: The Stranger

“What is the use of vows? They are not what binds people. If you feel in a certain way about a thing, that binds you to it; if you don’t feel that way, nothing else can bind you.”

- E. L. Voynich, The Gadfly

1

The soldiers tied the half-stripped carriage driver to a pillar and began to whip him. In a moment, they made his hairy chest and broad shoulders as mottled as a tiger’s skin. Drops of blood were leaking out from the tracks of the whip. As for the carriage driver, his bald head falling back against the pillar and his eyes closed tightly, he was shaken by every blow from the whip, but he said not a word. His soiled badam doppa lay crushed under the soldiers’ boots.

Around this time, that fat officer stumbled in and, grabbing his beard, said, “Yes, very singku. Now maybe you have come to your memory. So, tell me, recently, whose homes did he visit?” He began the interrogation again. The mouse-moustached interpreter translated for him in his thin voice just like that of a woman. However, as the carriage driver, having driven Fan Yaonan’s carriage a long time, knew Chinese quite well, before the interpreter was finished speaking, he opened his eyes wide, riveting them upon the interrogator, and said, “I told you I don’t remember! I don’t remember!” At that instant, indescribable sparks of rage were jolting from his eyes and tongue. The interrogator unconsciously let go of his beard and retreated a step. But, catching himself, he began angrily to slap the carriage driver. A moment later – perhaps his hand may have hurt – he ceased his hitting and yelled, “You will not say, no?!”

As this light haired man with deep-set eyes was originally from Mäkit, people called him Häsän Dolan. Once upon a time, he had left his hard life, going to “the other side of the mountain” across an icy mountain pass, then spent his youth wandering among the coal mines of Ghulja and later serving in the ranks of the horse grooms of the wealthy Uyghur of Ürümchi, Rozi Haji, having a home and hearth. After Fan Yaonan was appointed to the mayorship of Ürümchi, he had begun, through Rozi Haji’s introduction, to drive Fan’s carriage. Because, as he himself had said, “Mr. Fan was a dishonest, but also a compassionate and gentle man,” Fan would often ask after him, took care of him, and would pour his heart out to him as to a friend. Those words that Fan Yaonan had explained to him with simple expressions and “occasional hand signals” especially seemed somewhat strange to him, but felt as a lamp lit to a dark room:

“It’s not right to call you chantou. Your original name is Uyghur. It is even written as such in our ancient books.” “Uyghur, Han, Kazakh, Uzbek, and other nationalities are blood relatives to each other. They must be equal, and none of them looked down upon. Among the government’s yamuls, there is not one official from a local nationality. This is not good.” “The current yamuls are like a bunch of hordes of bedbugs that drink the blood of the common people. The officials are tyrannical, black-hearted, corrupt opium addicts, and, until they are gone, the common people’s days will not be good.”

One day, when Fan Yaonan saw a Soviet-made notebook and two pencils held in Häsän Dolan’s hand, he said, “How are your son’s studies?” Häsän Dolan told him how his son was just about to finish his fifth year, but that, from now on, there was no higher school in which he could study in his mother tongue.

Of course, in those days, there was only one elementary school in Ürümchi that taught in an ethnic language, and this was the “Noghay” mosque school built with money from wealthy Tatars and Uzbeks in the Nanliang District. Mäxsut Muhiti had invited the teachers from Tatarstan, and one of them was the man known as Mr. Häydär.

After Fan Yaonan heard Häsän Dolan’s words, he said, in a pained voice:

“This is what you’re seeing: up until now, Xinjiang hasn’t had a single school started by a government of the local nationalities, and now the government absolutely does not want there to be education among the local nationalities. However ignorant the people are, that’s how happy the government will be. This is because, they think, leading an ignorant people is easy.”

As Häsän Dolan was listening to such words as these, he was coming to understand that Fan Yaonan was indeed different from other officials, and his rather hairless, emaciated face, too, seemed luminous to the eye, and his voice was become more pleasing to the ear. He was, then, not just Fan Yaonan’s carriage-driving servant, but was known perhaps as Fan Yaonan’s sincere friend, and he believed that, if Fan Yaonan were Xinjiang’s General, it would certainly be a benefit to the land.

“Hey, blood-suckers, I understand very well why you’re troubling me,” thought Häsän Dolan while under interrogation. “You’ve not had your fill of Mr. Fan’s blood, and now you want to eat the heads of those close to him. Would I tell you that Mr. Fan had gone to see Tahirbäg, that he met with Mäxsut bay, that he went last week to Mr. Häydär’s house, as well? Curse this tongue of mine. If I die under blows, may I die that I do not speak their names. If my life is ruined for goodness, and my death for evil, may all the good people disappear in your hands? No, no! Look, this round-as-a-skin-bag rat, he means to slap me as though slapping a small child, does he still want to open my mouth! Stop, vermin, you’ll really see…”

“Will you talk, or not?!” yelled the interrogator once again.

“Free my hands, then I’ll talk,” said Häsän Dolan. The interrogator thought for a moment, then gave a signal to the soldiers.

When Häsän Dolan had for a moment massaged his hands’ wrists and joints, freed from the rope, he said, “Here’s what I say,” and, with one blow from his fist, felled the interrogator. Stumbling away with the shackles on his feet, he, too, fell to the ground. The soldiers panicked and, in the upset, surrounded him on all sides like hungry wolves.

>> Read Chapter 2, Part 2…