This excerpt comes from the first part of a trilogy titled Motherland by Zordun Sabir (1937–1998), published posthumously in 2000. One of the best-known and most widely read Uyghur novels, Motherland is Sabir’s magnum opus and a pivotal work of Uyghur literature written during the “golden age” of Uyghur literary production in the 1980s and early ’90s. It is a work of historical fiction that offers a vivid portrayal of life for Uyghurs and other Turkic groups as they navigate a period of political turmoil between the Chinese Republic and the establishment of the East Turkistan Republic in 1944. To date, it remains one of the bestselling works of Uyghur-language fiction, reprinted four times within its first two years after publication. It has undergone some revision by the Chinese government and has been banned and then republished on numerous occasions. Although currently banned, unofficial reprints and audio recordings of the book are widely circulated in the diaspora. Cyrillic Uyghur versions of the book were also published in Central Asia, and a Turkish translation was published in 2022.
Zordun Sabir was a leading writer during his lifetime too. Born in Ghulja to a poor family, he was able to complete secondary education after being taken in by a teacher. Sabir’s literary career began under difficult circumstances in 1961, when his poem “White Apricot” was published in the journal Tarim. Shortly after its publication, he was arrested and accused of being an ethno-nationalist and counterrevolutionary. As a result, he was sent to the Tibetan region of Garmu near the border of Gansu and Qinghai for re-education.
It wasn’t until 1972 that Sabir was able to start writing again. One short story in particular, titled “Dolan Youths,” proved to be his breakthrough in 1979; it provided a social commentary on the forms of cultural erasure that occurred during the Cultural Revolution and the effects of political trauma. He went on to publish four novels, thirteen novellas, eighty-six short stories, two dramas, one screenplay, and five essays of literary criticism, and is most known for his works Motherland (in Uyghur, Ana Yurt) and The Quest (Izdinish). The latter, which is widely considered to be a semi-autobiographical work, is a two-part novel portraying the lives of youth studying to become teachers as they face the Cultural Revolution and the socio-political movements that paralyzed the economy, destroyed a significant amount of Uyghur literature, and caused tremendous chaos in the region.
Sabir’s characters hold a distinct place in Uyghur popular culture. His work encompasses the ethno-national ethos of Uyghurs and their Turkic traditions through historical fiction and is a conduit for Uyghurs to understand their collective history. He has influenced Uyghur literary forms in a culture that is not known for its novels (poetry, on the other hand, is far more widespread), inspired debates on Uyghur values and history, and brought Uyghur realities into broader conversations about the nature of the human experience.
Zordun Sabir was also one of the first Uyghur writers to receive international literary awards. A number of his works, including Dolan Youths (1979) and The Quest (1983), have received awards from the Chinese Writers Association. In 1987, Zordun visited Germany, where he met the famous Turkologist Annemarie von Gabain, and wrote stories such as “For the Straight People” and “The Unemployed Are More Diligent,” which expressed the German desire for the unification of East and West Germany. These stories were both published in German-language journals. In response to his visit to Saudi Arabia, Sabir also wrote the novella The Headless Letters (1989). The novella, which described the life of Uyghurs living in Saudi Arabia, won the King Faisal International Prize given to artists by the Saudi state.
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Motherland is a work of historical fiction set in twentieth-century Ili, a region in what has been called Xinjiang by Chinese leaders, in the northwest part of the Republic of China, soon to become the East Turkistan Republic. The trilogy’s first book begins in 1938 and continues into the early 1940s. It follows an ensemble cast of Uyghur characters navigating their lives in their hometowns while having to endure the power play between the Soviet Union, Chinese warlords, the Kuomintang (i.e., the Chinese Nationalist Party), the Chinese Communist Party, and different factions of Uyghur society living under colonial rule.
A principal character is the fifteen-year-old Uyghur boy Nuri, the first in his village to attend school. We follow Nuri as he navigates between the simple life of the village and the more cosmopolitan life of the city, where he learns about society and the current goings-on of the world. Set on becoming one of the “greats, like Lenin,” he is tortured with questions of identity, nationality, and power. In addition to the tumultuous moment in history Nuri is living through, his life is turned upside down as tragedy strikes him twice: first, his father, Ziyawudun, an honest and cheerful man, is wrongfully imprisoned after being accused of failing to pay taxes. Seeking help from anyone he can, Nuri encounters Gheni the Thief—a real historical figure—who vows to break Nuri’s father out of prison. Meanwhile, Nuri is in love with a classmate of his, Sabiha, the half-Tatar stepdaughter of a corrupt Uyghur official, Abdumar. Bent on currying favor with the Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai, another historical figure, who was military governor of Xinjiang, Abdumar sends Sabiha away to Urumchi, the capital, to be married to one of Sheng Shicai’s relatives. These events kick off a series of life-changing developments that foreshadow the fate of not just Nuri, but of Ili and the country as a whole.
Eventually, Nuri is forced to leave school and go undercover as his father becomes a fugitive after escaping prison. He rubs shoulders with revolutionary teachers from the Soviet Union, rich Uyghur merchants and Beys, and communist leaders like Mao Zemin, before eventually joining Gheni and his bandits in the mountains. He vows to save his father, his siblings, and Sabiha, who has been severely abused. He also vows to save the rest of the Uyghur people of his village, who have been downtrodden by Sheng Shicai and Commander Qiu, Shicai’s father-in-law. But Sabiha has her own revenge planned, and so do other local leaders, merchants, religious figures, and farmers in Ili, as the pressures from above and below grow greater. Furthermore, Sheng Shicai himself is facing pressure from the Soviet Union and the Kuomintang, as both encroach on this region. We end the first book with Soong Meiling, the First Lady of the Republic of China, visiting Sheng Shicai, and with Ziyawudun, Nuri, and other factions of Ili society independently coming to a decision to fight against their oppressors and overthrow the powers that be.
The book not only follows the character arcs and perspectives of Nuri and a few people close to him, but also those of historical figures such as local Ili leaders, famous Uyghurs, and even Sheng Shicai himself. Through these characters, we learn about Uyghur customs and detailed local histories from the times of the Qing Empire until the present in Ili, as well as in places like Qumul, Kashgar, and elsewhere, in addition to the relations between Hui, Han, Uyghur, Tatar, Russian, Kazakh, Mongol, Kyrgyz, and other peoples, and the thoughts, fears, and hopes of different actors and groups for the future of East Turkistan.
Through the novel’s characters, we see complex notions of identity play out during a global era of nation building, redrawing of state borders, and changes in power. Time and again, the question arises: what does it mean to be Uyghur, Muslim, Turkic, working class, bourgeois, educated, native, or foreign? The story touches upon themes of love, powerlessness, interrogations of cultural practice and politics, and revolution. The author provides contextualizing accounts of what else is happening in the world at the time, from the United States to Europe to Japan, in a style influenced by Russian classics like War and Peace and by works of Turkic and Persian prose. He weaves an intricate map of mixed languages, cultures, and religions that exemplifies the diverse nature of this part of the world, in a style rich with pastoral descriptions, dialogue, and historical narrative that serves as a buttress against the brutal forms of cultural erasure that the Uyghur and other Turkic peoples have faced over the past century.
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Historical novels hold a special place in Uyghur society. Part of this genre’s popularity may stem from the fact that history is a heavily censored topic in Chinese-occupied East Turkistan. In the absence of historical textbooks, writers have found a loophole in outright censorship by “fictionalizing” historical events, places, and people, though it is important to note that authors still give them a pro-Chinese bent to allow for publication. In an interview with the Tarim Talks podcast, historian Dr. Rian Thum postulates that as the long-held tradition of learning about local histories from manuscripts and lithographs of Uyghur tazkira died down with a changing technological and political world, the manuscript tradition continued, in a way, in historical fiction. In fact, many of the old Chaghatay, or pre-modern Uyghur manuscripts, were translated into modern Uyghur, and certain biographical accounts were turned into wildly popular novels. Another idea is that history as a subject in Uyghur culture was not seen as a separate field of study confined to classrooms. Rather, history was a topic that was learned through going to shrines and listening to the shrine keepers, or storytellers at markets and in traditional gatherings like meshrep, or it was passed down through craftsmen teaching traditions and crafts, and so on. History is felt viscerally in the everyday and naturally becomes our fascination and discourse. And so to many in the Uyghur community, novels like Motherland are seen as a source to learn the Uyghur history unavailable to them at school, which can only teach the state’s narrative. Like textbooks, historical fiction discusses historical events, describes historical figures, and sparks questions about the identity of the community and who controls knowledge of our past. As mentioned above, Motherland spread like wildfire after it was published. A radio station published a ninety-four-part radio drama replete with background music and voice actors for every character. There are also multiple other unofficial “audiobook” readings available on apps in the diaspora. When the books were banned, many people read them in secret on floppy disks and USBs.
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Zordun Sabir lived part of his childhood in the East Turkistan Republic (ETR). ETR is sometimes known as the Second East Turkistan Republic to differentiate it from the first one established in the south in 1933. To set the scene, the modern-day borders of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region can be divided into three broad areas. The north is considered to be above the Tengri mountain ranges (Tengritagh in Uyghur, Tienshan in Chinese) and around the Junggar Basin, bordering Russia and Kazakhstan. The south contains the Tarim Basin and the Taklamakan Desert, and borders Tibet and India. The east is closest to Gansu and Qinghai and contains the Turpan and Qumul regions. The size of this entire region is more than four times the size of Germany. These three geographical regions align well with their political histories, too.
The south is often cited as where most of the modern-day Uyghurs live and contains the cultural capital Kashgar. This region was previously part of the Qarakhanid khanate, one of the first Turkic regions to convert to Islam (in the tenth century), and maintained a legacy of Turkic, Muslim, or Uyghur culture interacting with societies around the world via the Silk Road trade networks. Previous inhabitants include Tocharians, and possibly Saka and Sogdian-speaking peoples. Currently there are also Kyrgyz, Sarikoli, Wakhi, Pamiri, and other populations native to the area. After many rises and falls of different ruling parties, the Qing Empire would eventually clash with the Dzungars, a Mongol Oirat people who had conquered the region from the north, and take the south in the eighteenth century.
The north is home to Mongol, Xibe, and Turkic people like Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, and Uyghurs. Historians note that while there were some “Uyghur” people in the region before, a majority of modern-day Uyghurs migrated there from the east and south, including during Dzungar and Qing rule, where farmers from the south were moved to the north to work. These Uyghurs were called Taranchi—a term that is often used in Motherland to describe the Uyghurs native to Ili, different from the southern Uyghurs who are called Kashgaris, even if they are from other southern cities like Hotan. During the Qing period, the borders in the Ili area fluctuated between local, Qing, and Russian rule, which also plays a significant role in the culture and technology described in Motherland.
The east mainly refers to Turpan and Qumul. When the Uyghur Khaganate of the eighth and ninth centuries fell (not to be confused with current Uyghurs, although they are considered to be one of their ancestral groups), Uyghur aristocracy migrated south from its modern-day Mongolia and Junggar borders to join other Uyghurs near Turpan, and merged with the locals to establish the Qocho Kingdom. Other groups from the Uyghur Khaganate moved to Ganzhou and established the Ganzhou Uyghur Kingdom (modern day Yughurs). Some also moved to the areas that would soon become the Qarakhanid Khanate. The Qocho Kingdom practiced Buddhism and would only convert to Islam centuries later. As the story goes, when Genghis Khan’s empire came to this territory in the thirteenth century, the Uyghur scribe Tata-tonga developed the Mongol writing system for him, derived from the Old Uyghur alphabet. Qocho would become a vassal state of the Mongol Empire and the Uyghur king Barchuq Art Tegin would be declared as the fifth son of Genghis Khan.
These three regions continued to be somewhat united after the fall of Genghis Khan, first as the Chaghatay Empire, then Moghulistan, with smaller kingdoms occasionally breaking away. Eventually the Turpan and Qumul Khanates would come to be, and Qumul in particular would maintain its status as a semi-autonomous khanate up until 1930, when it was abolished by the Republic of China. This would play a significant role in the rise of rebellion across the entirety of the region.
The term Xinjiang (New Frontier) came into use through the Qing Empire. Although established in 1759, there were many periods of revolts, not just by Turkic groups, but also by other Muslim groups like Dungans, and locals would establish short-lived but significant periods of self-rule. However, in 1884 the Qing would convert the region into a province, then the Republic of China would take control of it in 1912.
In the decades leading up to the action in Motherland, the world is defining itself in nation states. Discourses on nation, race, and ideologies such as democracy, capitalism, communism, and so on are taking more center stage. Europe is entering World War I; the Soviets will soon come into power; the British Empire is firmly established in India, playing the “Great Game”; and the ethnonym Uyghur is being revived as a rallying point to unify the culturally and linguistically similar grandparents of modern-day Uyghurs. The historical narrative of Xinjiang is being neatly written as a province being run smoothly by Beijing, occasionally shifting borders through treaties or negotiations with the Soviet Union.
But the locals, often seen as irrelevant in the shadow of global powers, have a different story. “Xinjiang” was being ruled by Chinese warlords who put their personal ambitions above Beijing, thousands of miles away. By the 1930s, Uyghurs—the majority population—and fellow locals (Turkic and non-Turkic alike) were starting rebellions in all major cities due to high taxation rates, leadership brutality, cultural and linguistic disconnect between foreign rulers and natives, and other forms of discrimination and oppression infringing on their daily lives. Eventually, the first East Turkistan Republic was established in Kashgar in 1933, with leadership from Hotan and Qumul. They were overthrown by a Hui army loyal to the Kuomintang. In 1937, Sheng Shicai enacted a great purge, killing and incarcerating over a hundred thousand Uyghurs. This is the point at which Motherland starts.
The trilogy is set in the north, where we see the lead-up to the second East Turkistan Republic. Chinese historians sometimes refer to it as “The Three Districts Revolution” and reference it as one of the many proletariat uprisings that overthrew the Republic of China and brought in the Chinese Communist Party. Other historians call this a vassal state of the Soviet Union. It’s not until recently that foreign academics have paid proper attention to local primary sources. Sabir’s trilogy, along with more current scholarship, tells a story where ETR was not merely about liberating three districts from the Kuomintang. The entire northern, southern, and eastern regions of “Xinjiang” were imagined to be part of this newly established nation, and locals from those areas wrote to leadership in ETR in support of them. Of course, there were divisions, with some Uyghurs preferring “Uyghurstan” while others used “Turkistan” to be more inclusive of the significant Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tatar populations, and others rejecting “Uyghur” altogether and referring to themselves as “Turki.” Some Uyghurs believed it was safer to side with larger powers like Kuomintang, CCP, or the Soviet Union, and this is shown in Motherland, too. Nonetheless, the two East Turkistan Republics and their leaders carved out a powerful and lasting impression of an independent future, one that would attempt to revive during the following decades, one that continued to be advocated for by those who fled the CCP, one that sparked a tizzy of interest from readers in the twenty-first century, and that continues to be part of a significant portion of the diaspora’s dreams. The final book in the trilogy ends with the mysterious death of the last president of the East Turkistan Republic.
READ AN EXCERPT FROM MOTHERLAND