2022.07.16 来自中国监狱的维吾尔族诗篇

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来自中国监狱的维吾尔族诗篇
广受赞誉的诗人古尔尼萨-伊敏正在服17年的刑期，因为她的作品被认为宣扬 "分裂主义"。她仍在写作。

亚斯明-塞罕报道
夜空下的树木图片
Katie Martin / The Atlantic; Getty
2022年7月16日



对于许多维吾尔人来说，诗歌与其说是一种小众的文学创作，不如说是日常生活的重要组成部分。维吾尔族文化已成为中国政府在西北部新疆省镇压的目标，这种对维吾尔族和其他少数民族的迫害，美国称其相当于种族灭绝。当局摧毁了维吾尔族的圣地，审查维吾尔族书籍，并在学校里压制维吾尔语。根据设在华盛顿特区的非营利组织维吾尔人权项目2021年的报告，至少有312名维吾尔和其他突厥穆斯林知识分子被拘留，其中包括作家、艺术家和诗人，但实际数字被认为要高得多。


被监禁的人之一是古尔尼萨-伊敏，她是一名维吾尔族文学教师和著名诗人，是2018年被送往中国庞大的所谓再教育营网络的大约100万维吾尔人之一。一年后，她被判处超过17年的监禁，据说理由是她的诗歌提倡 "分裂主义"。事实上，伊敏的作品并没有明显的政治色彩，但她的诗歌以自己的方式见证了自中国大规模收容计划开始以来的维吾尔族经历。

在禁止说话的地方
花朵不允许绽放
鸟儿不能自由歌唱

居住在挪威的维吾尔族语言学家阿不都维利-阿尤普是伊敏的朋友，他告诉我，在她被拘留之前，她曾在网上自行发表了一系列受《一千零一夜》启发的诗歌作品。阿尤普说，就像谢赫拉扎德这个人物一样，她每天晚上讲一个故事来阻止自己被处决，伊敏相信，"她的诗歌会在某种程度上拯救她"，使她不被抹杀。在她被捕之前，她已经发表了近350首诗。

阅读：从种族灭绝中拯救维吾尔文化


但似乎，即使被剥夺了自由，伊敏也没有停止创作诗歌。2020年4月18日，阿尤普在中国社交网络应用微信上收到了与伊敏关系密切的人（为了保护他们，阿尤普拒绝透露其姓名）发来的一系列信息。这些信息包含了几首诗的照片，这些诗写在一个笔记本上，可以追溯到上个月，阿尤普从笔迹和风格上认出是伊敏的作品。

当我问他，她的诗怎么会传到给他的发件人那里时，他告诉我，他不确定是否知道。用来传播这些诗的微信账户很快就被停用了--他认为这是发件人需要减少暴露的风险。"阿尤普说，"人们在向中国以外的地方发送东西时使用这种技术。"而且你不能再联系[他们]。" 许多生活在国外的维吾尔人告诉我，他们不再与新疆的亲人保持联系，因为担心会危及他们。

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在试图鉴定这些诗歌的过程中，我与台湾中央研究院的现代中国历史学家、维吾尔族诗歌的主要英文译者Joshua L. Freeman交谈。他向《大西洋月刊》提供了其中两首诗的译文，并同意阿尤普对其出处的评估。虽然他允许他们不能证明这些诗是伊敏的，但他对这种情况很熟悉。弗里曼曾在维吾尔族首府乌鲁木齐生活过几年，2020年，他收到了他的一位前教授阿布都卡迪尔-贾拉里丁的诗。贾拉里丁和伊明一样，被拘留；在他的情况下，这首诗是由囚犯偷运出来的，他们在被释放出营地之前，已经把贾拉里丁的诗句记在心里。

阅读。我的朋友一个接一个地被送进集中营

弗里曼对伊敏和贾利丁选择诗歌作为他们与外界交流的方式并不感到惊讶，他告诉我，维吾尔人长期以来一直依靠诗歌作为在困难时期的团结和力量来源。诗歌--即使没有笔或纸也可以创作、朗诵和背诵--在维吾尔人的这一历史性磨难中成为一种受宠的文学形式。

"他说："对许多维吾尔人来说，诗歌不仅仅是一种抵抗形式；它是在一个在许多情况下几乎不可能自我表达的环境中的一种自我表达形式。"维吾尔社会中的诗人在很大程度上是他们人民的代言人。"

"Aybéke"

如果你没有听到我熟悉的声音
在你天空中没有月亮的夜晚
你在哪里寻找我的星星
在你悲伤的日子里

为了你，我愿意付出一切
把我的身体留在遥远的荒野中
希望已经破灭，但你依然存在
枯萎的花朵上的一滴露水

我走后，谁抚摸你的头？
我现在的同伴是担心和遗憾
没有你的每一天都是我喉咙里的火焰
没有选择的余地，我只剩下伤痕。

  - 2020年3月27日

"无题"

当你想到我时，不要流下悲伤的眼泪
你不能为那些已经离去的人而消逝。
如果现在你在梦中找到我
你不要对路途充满憧憬

生命中有些东西是我们无法企及的
不要因为我的缘故而在你的心中怀有怒气
不要向你遇到的人打听我的消息
你对我的思念不能压迫你的灵魂

只要把我当成一个正在旅行的人
如果我还活着，有一天我会回来。
我不会轻易放弃幸福的。
我对生活的要求还有很多

我的两颗星现在已经留在你的身边了
在我离开的时候，请为我珍惜它们。
以从小养育我的仁慈之心
让他们生活在你的庇护怀抱中

  - 2020年3月29日

本诗由乔舒亚-L-弗里曼从维吾尔语翻译。

亚斯明-塞罕曾是《大西洋月刊》的一名职员作家。
推特




Uyghur Poems From a Chinese Prison
The acclaimed poet Gulnisa Imin is serving a 17-year sentence because her work supposedly promotes “separatism.” She’s still writing.

By Yasmeen Serhan
An image of trees against a night sky
Katie Martin / The Atlantic; Getty
JULY 16, 2022
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For many Uyghurs, poetry is less a niche literary exercise than a vital part of everyday life. Uyghur culture has become a target of the Chinese government’s crackdown in the northwestern province of Xinjiang, a persecution of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities that the United States has said amounts to genocide. The authorities have destroyed Uyghur holy sites, censored Uyghur books, and suppressed the Uyghur language in schools. At least 312 Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim intellectuals, including writers, artists, and poets, have been detained, according to a 2021 report by the Uyghur Human Rights Project, a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit, though the actual number is thought to be far higher.


One of those imprisoned is Gulnisa Imin, a Uyghur-literature teacher and an acclaimed poet who was among the roughly 1 million Uyghurs sent to China’s sprawling network of so-called reeducation camps in 2018. A year later, she was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison, reportedly on the grounds that her poetry promoted “separatism.” Imin’s work is not overtly political, in fact, but her poems bear their own kind of witness to the Uyghur experience since China’s mass-internment program began:

Where the words are banned to be said
The flowers are not allowed to blossom
And the birds cannot sing freely

Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur linguist based in Norway and a friend of Imin’s, told me that prior to her detention, she had self-published a series of poems inspired by One Thousand and One Nights online. Like the character Scheherazade, who tells a story each night to forestall her execution, Ayup said, Imin believed that “her poetry would save her” somehow from erasure. Before her arrest, she had published nearly 350 poems.

Read: Saving Uighur culture from genocide


But it appears that, even deprived of her liberty, Imin did not stop composing poems. On April 18, 2020, Ayup received a series of messages over the Chinese social-networking app WeChat from someone close to Imin (whom, for their protection, Ayup declined to name). The messages contained photos of several poems scrawled in a notebook dating to the previous month, which Ayup recognized by the handwriting and style as the work of Imin.

When I asked him how her poems could have reached the sender who’d passed them to him, he told me that he had no sure way of knowing. The WeChat account used to transmit the poems was deactivated soon after—a measure he attributed to the sender’s need to reduce their risk of exposure. “People use that technique when they send something outside” China, Ayup said. “And you cannot contact [them] again.” Many Uyghurs living abroad have told me that they no longer keep in touch with loved ones in Xinjiang for fear of endangering them.

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In the course of trying to authenticate the poems, I spoke with Joshua L. Freeman, a historian of modern China at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica research institute and a leading translator of Uyghur poetry into English. He provided The Atlantic with translations of two of the poems and agreed with Ayup’s assessment of their provenance. Although he allowed that they could not prove the poems were Imin’s, he was familiar with the scenario. Freeman had spent several years living in the Uyghur capital of Ürümqi, and in 2020 he received a poem from a former professor of his, Abduqadir Jalalidin. Jalalidin was, like Imin, in detention; in his case, the poem had been smuggled out by inmates who, before being released from the camp, had committed Jalalidin’s verses to memory.

Read: One by one, my friends were sent to the camps

For Imin and Jalalidin to choose poetry as their way of communicating with the outside world came as no surprise to Freeman, who told me that Uyghurs have long relied on poetry as a source of solidarity and strength in hard times. Poems—which can be composed, recited, and memorized even without pen or paper—have become a favored literary form during this historic ordeal for the Uyghur people.

“Poetry for many Uyghurs is not just a form of resistance; it’s a form of self-expression in an environment where self-expression is nearly impossible in many contexts,” he said. “Poets in Uyghur society are, to a very significant extent, the voices of their people.”

“Aybéke”

If you don’t hear my familiar voice
In the moonless nights of your sky
Where were you searching for my star
Amidst days that looked sadly to you

For you I would give everything
Leave my body in the distant wilderness
Hope has frosted over, yet you remain
A drop of dew on wilted flowers

Who strokes your head while I am gone
My companions now are worry and regret
Each day without you is fire in my throat
No choices left, I’m nothing but wounds

  — March 27, 2020

“Untitled”

When you think of me, shed no tears of grief
You must not fade away for those who’ve gone
If now and then you find me in your dreams
You must not look with longing down the road

Some things in life remain beyond our reach
Hold no anger in your heart on my account
Ask no news of me from people that you meet
Your thoughts of me must not weigh on your soul

Just think of me as someone on a journey
If I’m alive, one day I shall return
I won’t give up on happiness so easily
There is much more that I still ask of life

Both of my stars have now been left among you
Please cherish them for me while I am gone
With the kindness that raised me up from childhood
Let them live within your sheltering embrace

  — March 29, 2020

The poems have been translated from the Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman.

Yasmeen Serhan is a former staff writer at The Atlantic.
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