The Vine Basket Read online

  It was midafternoon before the last row was turned, seeded, and firmly covered with soil. In a rare moment of usefulness, Ana had noticed Mehrigul’s red, swollen fingers and offered to switch tasks, relieving her own tired back, too.

  As they returned to the house, neither ana nor daughter spoke of the corn pile that still loomed at the side of the yard. When Mehrigul hung the hoe and seed bag in the shed, it was no surprise to her that the donkey and cart were not there. Ata used to go to the steam baths in the nearby township once or twice a week—Memet, too, when they were both working hard on the farm. Surely that was where he had gone, in tribute to the hard work his wife and daughter were doing. And then out drinking, to be certain he didn’t return home before their job was done.

  Ana wouldn’t question him. She’d fold her hands meekly in front of her and do his bidding. Try not to draw back if he stank of wine.

  Maybe Ata was out gambling away the hundred yuan—and Mehrigul wouldn’t say anything, either. It was his money now. Somehow, though, she’d make baskets, get them to market, and keep the money next time. She’d use it to help her family.

  Another thought came to Mehrigul as she swooped up an armful of dry twigs and headed for the house. The men Ata drank and gambled with—had they sent their daughters to work so they’d have more money? Was that what Ata was doing? Finding out how to lie about her age, how to get false identification papers that claimed she was sixteen rather than fourteen? It could be done. She’d had a friend at school whose family sent her to work in the local cotton factory before she was of age.

  One hundred yuan? Nothing, he’d said. Mehrigul would be a real help if she went to work—and brought money home to Ata.

  She snapped the twigs she’d brought inside into small pieces and stuffed them into the round metal cookstove that sat atop a small tripod stand. She grabbed the kettle and headed for the spigot in the yard. Brought it back. Set it to boil.

  Ana was resting.

  What would the family do without Mehrigul right now? Was Ata thinking about that? All her jobs would fall to Ana. Even if she earned money, someone would have to do the work. Couldn’t Ata tell she was doing all she could to take Memet’s place?

  Mehrigul was on her way to bring Chong Ata in for tea when the neighbor’s donkey cart stopped out on the road, delivering Lali from her day at school. How lucky that the neighbors were glad to have Lali’s company for their daughter, now that Mehrigul no longer went to school.

  What if she couldn’t be here to welcome Lali home?

  For a moment she stood paralyzed. Finally she forced a smile as her sister skipped across the yard toward her.

  She engulfed Lali with hungry, outstretched arms. Held her as her mind tried to dismiss any thoughts of Ata’s treachery. He wouldn’t make her go away! Would he?

  Lali wiggled free from Mehrigul’s hold. “Xiang bu xiang qu tiao wu?” she asked in Mandarin as she spun in circles, grabbing at Mehrigul’s hands, trying to turn her around in circles, too.

  Mehrigul hated the pinched, nasal sounds of Mandarin. “Would I like to go dancing?” she repeated in Uyghur, drawing out the soft, lyrical sounds of the words. Hearing her little sister speak the language of their oppressors unsettled her. She didn’t want to hear it. Not now. Not ever.

  But it was the language spoken in school, and in all important places. Lali had to know it. Mehrigul had to know it.

  Lali stood in front of Mehrigul now, tapping her foot, her head tilted, waiting for her sister’s answer.

  “Xie xie, thank you, Lali. It’s a good thing for us to do,” Mehrigul said. She grabbed Lali’s hands and twirled her round and round. Soon they were laughing and skipping and dancing, stirring up the packed earth of their grassless yard.

  “Ke yi. Gou la. Okay. Enough,” Mehrigul said as she pinned her sister’s hands together and pulled her to a halt.

  “No,” Lali moaned. “Dancing is fun.”

  “And we have things to do. Time to take Chong Ata in for tea and to help Ana with supper,” Mehrigul said, turning Lali around in the direction of their house.

  Lali broke away, running into her grandfather’s room. “Wo men he cha ba, Yeye. Let’s have some tea, Grandfather,” she’d called in Mandarin before Mehrigul could stop her.

  Chong Ata had heard. His hand went up, cupping his mouth as he turned his head away.

  Mehrigul drew Lali back into the yard. Waited until her sister’s eyes met hers. “Mandarin is our secret language here at home, Lali. Remember? Chong Ata and Ata and Ana don’t understand the words, and they don’t want to learn. It upsets them if we speak anything but Uyghur.” Mehrigul tightened her grip as she saw her sister’s lips begin to quiver. “No, Lali, you must understand. Hearing Mandarin reminds them of how different their lives were before the Han Chinese overran our land. We must not be the ones who remind them.”

  She put her arm around Lali’s shoulder, gently pushing her down until they were squatting side by side in the yard.

  “When Chong Ata was a young boy, his country was called East Turkestan. Mostly Uyghurs lived here. But you won’t learn that in school, Lali,” Mehrigul said, her voice losing its gentleness. “The Chinese act as if they’ve always been here, that it’s always been their land. Chong Ata won’t even talk about the past anymore. It’s too sad for him.” Mehrigul struggled to hold back her anger; she didn’t want to frighten Lali.

  “When I was very little, Ata’s brother, Uncle Kasim, and his family lived with us on the farm. I remember dancing and singing right here in our yard with aunts and uncles and cousins.” Mehrigul swirled her hand around in the layer of dust and sand that covered their hard-baked yard. There had been many celebrations here at festival and holiday times, Chong Ata used to tell her, as Chong Ata’s father and grandfather had told him.

  “I’d like to have cousins and friends living with me,” Lali said, nestling against Mehrigul. “We could dance and sing together all the time. Maybe they wouldn’t always be as busy as you are.”

  “Maybe not, Lali,” Mehrigul said, hugging her sister closer. “But our farm couldn’t feed so many people anymore. The Chinese began taking over the land and misusing our precious water supply. Uncle Kasim became a cook and moved his family to a city far away.” Now Memet was gone too.

  “Why are the Chinese so mean?” Lali asked.

  For a moment, Mehrigul was silent. She wanted to tell Lali, wanted her to understand, but the truth could be dangerous for her sister to know. “You must never repeat what I’m going to tell you—not to your teachers or to your friends. This is secret between us,” she said, keeping her voice as steady and calm as she could. “It’s because they don’t want us here. We’re in their way, and we don’t talk and think and do things the way they do.

  “Like right now.” Mehrigul rose, pulling Lali with her. “You’re going into Chong Ata’s room, and in your most beautiful Uyghur you will invite him to tea, which he will drink while sitting on a Uyghur rug on our dirt floor.”

  There was little naan left to go with their tea. Ana would have to bake again, and it had become Mehrigul’s chore to prepare their outdoor earth oven. She gathered wood that would burn down to the hot coals needed to bake the bread. As she tended the fire, she dug a few carrots, radishes, and turnips from the garden for soup.

  Tasks done, Mehrigul walked across their fields into the peach orchard. A large patch of grapevines lay beyond. Overgrown, neglected, but useful for the meager crop of grapes they harvested and dried for raisins. And suitable for basket making. Autumn was a good season for gathering branches, Chong Ata always said.

  Mehrigul ran her hands through the tangled thicket of bushes until she found a vine the size she wanted. She pulled it free, stretching it out well over an arm’s length. She tested it, wrapping it around her fist. It did not splinter or break, so it was supple enough to be woven. There would be no time for seasoning the stems as Chong Ata did with the willow he used, drying them and then resoaking them. The vines she picked must be
used right away. In less than three weeks Mrs. Chazen would return.

  Mehrigul twisted and bent and ripped at the branch, but she could not break it loose. She should have known there was no way to harvest vine shoots without a knife. She wanted only the small, perfect part of each branch.

  There were three knives in the family: Ana’s cooking knife; Ata’s, which he always carried; and Chong Ata’s, which he used to cut and shape willow branches. There had been a fourth—Memet’s, the one that cut the grapevines for Mrs. Chazen’s basket.

  Mehrigul sank to the ground. Where was Memet now when she needed him so badly?

  Mehrigul remembered the night her brother left. It was late August, just before school was to begin. She had heard the roar and sputter of a motorcycle coming down the roadway, bringing Memet home. He’d been spending more and more time with friends, hanging out in cafés, sometimes as far away as Hotan. Ata didn’t like the boys who picked him up on their motorcycles. He was afraid Memet would get into trouble in their company.

  Ata had yelled at Memet when he came through the door. Memet didn’t say anything. He got the rawap from its peg on the wall, sat cross-legged on the floor, and began to play and sing.

  I invited a guest into my home

  Asked him to sit in the place of honor

  But my guest never left

  Now he’s made my home his own

  Mehrigul hoped Memet hadn’t sung this song in front of a Chinese person who understood Uyghur; the guest who would never leave was the Han Chinese.

  Memet stopped singing but his fingers still plucked at the strings, the notes sliding in and out of shifting scales. “We Uyghurs are slaves to the Han,” he declared. “There’s no place for us here anymore.”

  The notes had slowed to a fragile, mournful sound that seemed to come from Memet’s heart. “There is no place for me here,” he said. “I must know what else is out there, where my hope lies.

  “I’ll be back,” he’d said. “Someday.”

  Sleep had not come to Mehrigul that night. Maybe she’d known there would be no other goodbye from Memet—that he would not be there in the morning. She hadn’t been surprised to hear a scuffling of feet on their earthen floor, the creak of door hinges. She’d bolted from her platform and followed him, not caring that she was in her sleep clothes.

  “Memet. Wait,” she’d whispered loudly, running to catch up with him.

  He stopped but did not turn to look at her.

  Mehrigul grabbed his arm. Felt him shaking. He put his hand over hers and led her to the road where his friend was waiting, standing beside his silent motorcycle.

  “Yusup, this is my sister,” Memet said.

  “Salam,” his friend replied, making no effort to hide his impatience. “Memet, we must leave. Let’s go.”

  “No.” The firmness in her own voice startled her. Something bad had happened. She had to know.

  Memet held his palm out to Yusup. “She’ll keep our secret,” he said as he bent toward her. “But no one, not Ata, no one must know what I’m telling you. They must only know I’ve left. If Ata tries to find out whether they’ve captured me, he’ll get in trouble. End up in prison himself.”

  Then Memet told her about the demonstration. Memet, Yusup, more than a hundred other boys, men—even women and children, he’d said—had gathered at the Hotan market for a peaceful protest. They hated that they’d lost their farms just because the Han wanted them. His friend Jawab and his ata had refused to give up their land and had been taken away to some unknown prison. It was an innocent protest. They weren’t armed. Memet said the police had attacked them before they got started. Shot at them. Killed at least twenty. Injured more.

  “We’ve got to go, little sister,” Yusup said to Mehrigul, grabbing the handlebars of his motorcycle. Beginning to push it down the road. “By now they’ll have the roads blocked and be looking for us. Our pictures could be on their cameras.”

  Memet’s arms engulfed her, lifted her from the ground in an almost strangling embrace. Then Memet and Yusup were shoving the motorcycle down a narrow trail, away from the main road. A path that would, before dawn, lead them to the desert’s edge.

  Five

  THE GRAPEVINE WAS STILL entwined around Mehrigul’s hand as she stirred from her memories. Someone was calling. Not Ana, but a voice she knew. Her friend Pati. She rose and slowly untangled herself from the vine as she tried to clear her thoughts.

  Her friend’s red jacket was the first thing she saw as she threaded her way back through the peach orchard. Pati always wore red—a beacon of happiness. Always smiling, safe in a family of grandparents, parents who adored her, a brother, a sister, aunts, uncles, little ones.

  Mehrigul thought Pati’s happiness also came from the rushing stream that flowed through the mill beside her home, powering the turbine that moved the huge stone circles to grind wheat or corn. Mehrigul had been known to sit for hours watching the gushing water. She’d gladly be transported there now, but she saw Ata shoveling corncobs onto the wagon Pati and her brother had brought over from the mill. Ana was helping. Even Lali.

  Pati walked across the field toward Mehrigul, who slowed her steps. She wanted as much time as possible with her friend before going back to work.

  They greeted with a hug, Pati not seeming to mind that Mehrigul was grubby and smelly from her day’s labor.

  “I brought a book, Mehrigul,” Pati said. “Lessons are difficult this year.” She shrugged. “You wouldn’t think so, but I do. I need your help . . . I miss you.”

  Mehrigul reached for Pati’s hands and pressed them. She averted her eyes to shield her friend from the bitterness that swelled within her—anger that she couldn’t pursue studies that would give her some chance for her future.

  They began to walk toward the house. “I’ll have very little time for us to be together.” Mehrigul’s words were muted. “There’s much to do here.”

  “I’ll ride my bicycle over after school. That will give us some time,” Pati said.

  “I can’t explain, but I won’t be able to see you for a few weeks.”

  “Does your ata make you do everything Memet used to do? You already had a lot of chores of your own.”

  “There’s another thing I must do now, too. It’s important. And . . .” Mehrigul halted. “Are you still studying English?”

  “You’re acting crazy, Mehrigul. There’s something so important you can’t see me. Then, suddenly, you’re interested in English.”

  Mehrigul hung her head. “I can’t talk about it.”

  “Well,” Pati said, “since you asked, there is someone who comes to our class to teach us English once a week. Our teacher wants to learn, and she makes us do it too.”

  Mehrigul nodded, then quickened her step. “I must help with the corn,” she said. “Ata keeps glaring at me.”

  “Let the others work. You’re treated like a drudge around here when you should take care of yourself and think about finding a good husband.” Pati’s face turned as red as her jacket.

  “So, all goes well with you and Azat?” Mehrigul asked.

  Pati sighed as her face turned a deeper shade of crimson.

  “I’m happy for you, Pati,” Mehrigul said. “But that’s not for me.” She would not spoil her friend’s contentment by saying that the last thing in the world she, Mehrigul, dreamed of was moving into another household to work for someone else, even if it were her husband. She turned away. There was more. “Things are not good for my family right now,” she added in a hushed voice, overcome for the moment by the divide that was growing between her life and Pati’s. Wondering what it meant.

  Pati’s arm locked around Mehrigul’s waist as they moved toward the corn pile, and Mehrigul let herself enjoy the comfort of knowing she had no reason to question her friend’s loyalty. Yet she also knew that she would no longer share her deepest fears—like being sent away by Ata—with her friend. Was she too ashamed to tell her? Or afraid Pati would desert her? Was she shutting herself
off from the world as Ana had done?

  “I bet I can load more corncobs onto that wagon than you can, and do it faster,” Pati said.

  For now, anyway, Mehrigul and Pati were in step, and it felt good.

  Pati and Azat, the felt maker’s son, would marry, Mehrigul thought as they hurried along; they had already been promised. A match between these two Uyghur families—the miller’s daughter and the felt maker’s son—would be a good one. Azat would take his father’s place as master felt maker one day. It was a fine business. Their rugs were sold for high prices to the Chinese and to the tourists who shopped at the covered mall in Hotan.

  Pati wouldn’t be allowed to make rugs. She wouldn’t choose the colors or patterns. She’d heat the water that must be sprinkled over the wool at just the right moment. Mehrigul had watched Azat and his family make rugs, and that was the role of his mother. And would someday be the role of his wife. She’d bear his children, cook, sew.

  She’d always wear red and would never be hungry.

  Mehrigul’s arm encircled Pati. She was happy for her friend.

  For herself? She saw no contentment in such a future. Going to school had been her hope and joy. If she studied hard, spoke perfect Mandarin, maybe she could get a job at the museum in Hotan. That was her dream. Mehrigul wanted to be the person telling visitors that her Uyghur ancestors had been here greeting people during the golden age of the old Silk Road.

  That dream was beyond her reach now. But a new dream stirred in her, one that brought fear as well as pleasure. There was something she wanted more desperately as each day passed—to make another basket worthy of Mrs. Chazen’s attention.

  For the next three weeks Mehrigul would allow herself only that one thought. No matter what happened after, she’d have this special moment in time.