Forgotten women
some of us are ghost, most us are still in camps
It’s been eleven years that I’ve watched this man wake up, eleven years watching him stretch his legs, drink his coffee, and put on his uniform before leaving for work. For eleven years I’ve stood beside him as he greets his colleagues, sits at his desk, and studies the tasks laid out for the day with a small smile on his face. You would think that in eleven years I would have come to understand him better, that I would have learned something about him, maybe even found some trace of humanity in him. But after eleven years of looking into his eyes, I still cannot find a soul.
I remember that eight years ago people started looking for me. They wondered where their dear friend had gone, why I had stopped knitting scarves for the old women in my town, why I no longer brought my famous chicken congee to those who were sick, why I had stopped visiting the friends who once filled my days. Eight years ago my face appeared everywhere. Across phones, across screens: Have you seen her? Millions of people saw it.
At first they were certain something had happened to me. I would never leave without saying goodbye I would never disappear without a word. But after a year of searching, people slowly gave up. The story that I had left willingly began to make sense to them. Perhaps I had wanted freedom, perhaps I had grown tired of my town, my friends, my family. My name was mentioned less and less. After all, it seemed impossible that millions of strangers could stand against this man and win.
They were so close to the truth though. Some of them had even caught my scent on the man I had been following for eleven years, yet they let him go without a single question. Maybe it was his confidence that protected him.
I must admit, for a moment I had hope. Seeing humans search for one of their own almost made me believe my life had meant something. But that hope faded eight years ago, when the story of me disappeared just as quickly as I had.
The truth had been right in front of them, laid out meticulously, yet no one followed it far enough. After eleven years beside him I know something the world never saw: he was never as powerful as he pretended to be. He was not invincible.
I met him at the market. I was buying tomatoes and he was buying carrots. I barely noticed him at all. My attention was on the shop owner, arguing about how the prices kept rising even though he knew I would pay the same amount like I always did. The next day I saw him again at the butcher’s shop. That was strange, I remember thinking, How could I see the same man two days in a row in a town where I had never seen him before?
The third time I saw him I finally understood the danger I was in. I was walking home when a voice called from behind me. Before I could react, he grabbed my bag. I was too stunned to fight him. He took a picture of me and demanded that I identify myself. In that moment I knew something terrible had begun.
One windy night I heard my door open. I had been expecting no one, yet I had not slept. I was already dressed, my prayer mat folded neatly in the corner of the room. It was as if some part of me had known this moment was coming. Two men entered or perhaps four, I could not tell. They were aggressive even though they knew I could not fight them. I prayed quietly under my breath that my Lord would protect me. They dragged me outside and forced me into a truck. Beside me were other women, some barely more than girls, their cheeks red and swollen from slaps. We drove for hours in silence. None of us spoke, but each of us understood the same thing: our lives would never be the same again.
For two years men came and went from my cell. He was always one of them. For reasons I never understood, he had taken a liking to me. The memories blur together now. I remember thirst, sickness, the constant scratching of rats along the walls and sometimes even against my skin. Everything happened in darkness. Two years passed like that, and I still do not know how my mind survived it. Sometimes he came when he was bored, sometimes after what must have been a bad day at work. And each time he did things to me that I refuse to describe.
Occasionally he talked, probably because I refused to. From those moments I learned small things about him: his name, that he once had a wife who died in a car accident, that according to him my life would end sooner or later.
One day it did. By his hands. They needed the cell for another girl, and I had refused to learn their way of living. So he killed me.
Since that day I have followed him. Eleven years now. Watching him taught me something important: he was a coward. A man ashamed of his own reflection, good only at obeying orders but incapable of making decisions himself. In the end I understood the truth. There had never been a reason for what he did to me, no ideology strong enough to justify it. Only cruelty, and the enjoyment he found in it.
Three years after my death I saw him afraid for the first time. People had begun talking about the women who were disappearing, women like the ones who had shared the same corridor and screams as me. The public was angry. They demanded to know where we were. For a brief moment, a spark of fear appeared in his eyes. Some women had escaped and spoken about what had been done to them. Pictures began circulating. The truth was finally emerging. I wondered what more the world needed before someone would knock on the doors of that place.
Months passed. People were outraged. And then, one day, it all stopped. The conversations faded. People moved on with their lives as if ours had never mattered. His ugly smirk slowly returned. Once again, we had been forgotten.
So for the rest of these years I follow him, wishing I could sink my dirty nails into his neck, wishing someone would remember me enough to dig my bones from the mud where they left me. I still pray that one day he will burn in the same darkness he forced me to live in.
And I still pray that people remember that Uyghur women exist. Some of us are ghosts, most of us are still in camps.
Thank you for reading. For March, I thought about women who we had forgotten, women who still need our attention, women still suffering and I instantly thought about Uyghur women.
It really seems as if we only talked about them for a short period of time and then left them on their own, we need to start talking about them again. They still need us.
We needed this reminder fr❤️