Russian airplanes drop bombs on Syria, 2020. Credits.

The war years were hell for Syrians but sometimes paradise for the Uyghurs, who were better off there that under Chinese persecution. Some even found love.

Kok Bayraq

Bitter Winter, 01/21/2025

My musician friend Qasımjan came to me one day in Istanbul with a friend, who was also one of the Uyghur “insiders” who had been to Syria. His name was Yarmemet. He was speaking fluent Arabic to someone on the phone. I was curious and asked: “In which school did you learn Arabic?” “Not in school, in bed,” said my musician friend. He quickly added, ”Sorry, it was a bit of a rude joke, our friend’s wife is Arab.”

“There is a bit of truth to this joke,” said Yarmemet. ”When I was newly married, I only knew the names of the seven days of the week from Monday to Sunday and how to count from 1 to 100 in Arabic. I learned the rest from my wife and my children. Also, since I was on duty at the border from morning to night in the first years of our marriage, I only came home at night, I didn’t have much opportunity to walk around the market with my wife or visit the neighbors.”

“How many children do you have?” “I have eight children,” Yarmemet answered immediately. During the conversation, it turned out that three of these were Arab children from his wife’s previous husband. The father of these three children had died when a building exploded during the war.

“Thank God, no harm was done to the children,” I said. “One of our daughter is gone, dead.” Tears welled up in Yarmemet’s eyes, and he looked away from us.

When I learned that this girl was not Yarmemet’s biological daughter, but the daughter of his wife’s ex-husband and that he had never seen her, I was surprised by this affection, and even thought that perhaps he was just showing off. But there was no camera filming us, and when we spoke, neither I nor my interlocutors knew or planned that these words would be written one day.

“I’m sorry, ”he said, ashamed that tears came to his eyes. “Our daughter’s death was very sad, and every time my wife describes the scene, I cover my ears not to hear it.”

Sensing my slight surprise, Qasımjan added: “This brother of ours gets along very well with his wife… even in the early days when they did not understand each other’s languages ​​and communicated by signs.”

Obviously, the man deeply loved his wife and cried for a stepdaughter he had never seen. I put forward the knot in my mind: “I used to think that tears would not easily come from the eyes of people who fought on the battlefield.” Yarmemet answered: “We may seem mysterious or strange to some, but as humans made of flesh and blood, sometimes, there are pains that we cannot bear, and we cry too! Next time, I will tell you the story of a comrade who has fought harder than me, but is kinder than me.”

“Okay, so be it” I said, and added “So when warriors fire their weapons, behind the anger that drives them, there is also an equal or greater love.” “My father-in-law once said something similar,” Yarmemet answered. He told me that one day when he came home, his wife had left a small note. It said that she took the children and went to her parents’ house and would return the next day. While Yarmemet was making his bed, he noticed that his wife had left her low-heeled soft shoes and had left home with her high-heeled leather shoes. Since his wife was pregnant, he thought that she would have difficulty standing in high heels. He took her soft shoes and walked for two hours to his father-in-law’s house to bring the more comfortable shoes to his wife. When the father-in-law saw this, he kissed Yarmemet’s forehead with tears in his eyes and said: “I never thought warriors could have so much tenderness!”

The following question immediately came to my mind: “Did you have children in your homeland?” “I had a wife but no children.” As he spoke, it became clear that when he left his homeland at age 43, there was a good reason why he did not have children.

Yarmemet was born in 1979 and was sentenced to ten years in prison when he was 18 years old for his involvement in the Yining Incident that occurred on February 5, 1997. After completing his sentence, he married a local girl in January 2008. Three months later, he was detained as a former prisoner when the Olympic security measures were implemented, and released a year later. After the Olympics, whenever a state leader or foreign diplomat visited the region, he was detained for 15-45 days for “legal education.”. Thus, during the two-year marriage, he spent no more than four months with his wife. 

To escape the troubles in Ghulja and be with his wife for a longer time, and to set up a stable family, he moved to Urumqi in early 2009. However, the Urumqi riots broke out two months after he moved. Fortunately, he was not at the scene during the incident, but was captured during the subsequent cleanup operation. He waited for a trial for one year. After the trial, he was released from prison; but at this time his father-in-law had already taken his daughter to Ghulja to save her from this “problematic husband.” 

Actually, this is not an isolated incident. According to Radio Free Asia, Ilham Iminjan was charged for 15 years when he was 21, and was not released when his sentence ended. “The family had planned to let him marry as soon as he was released, since the entire golden period of his life was spent in prison.”

Uyghur carpenter Arkin Iminjan was slightly luckier. He was sentenced to two separate prison terms on different charges, and before he was arrested for the third time, he got married and had a child. However, he is now in prison again, his wife is a de facto widow, and his child is an orphan. The famous political refugee, Ershidin Israil was also imprisoned three times. His wife was able to live with him for only four years during their 25-year marriage.

After remembering these stories, I am convinced that Yarmemet is one of the real winners of the war in Syria. I fully understood the weight of his words: “Of course, we have not yet done anything for our homeland and our people, our hearts are sore; but our personal life, at least mine, is not as pathetic as some people say. Thank God, I feel as I am in heaven, I have a faithful wife and eight beautiful children.” 

I was thinking of the suffering of Syria under the Assad regime and Russian bombs from which millions of Syrians have fled, and of the stories told by Uyghurs who went there. Therefore, I propose a subtitle for this article, “The Hell for Syrians – The Paradise for Uyghurs.”