Queralt✨'s Reviews > Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide

This is Tahir Hamut Izgil’s memoir of this time in China as a poet and intellectual in Urumchi. Joshua Freeman, who used to translate Izgil’s poetry prior to him becoming a refugee, adds a foreword explaining how he got into Uyghur translation and became acquainted with the poet and how he ended up translating this memoir. I tend to skip translator notes and I’m glad I didn’t in this case.

The book has a poignant title, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night, and it’s also a powerful and hard-to-read story about discrimination, repression, and surveillance over the Uyghur. Besides the actual genocide, I thought the cultural genocide this memoir highlights (removing words in Arab from Uyghur movies, banning classical Uyghur literature, etc.) was very interesting. The Uyghur genocide isn’t getting as much attention as other current issues, but the cultural genocide is something I had not heard of (at all, I dare say?).

Izgil explains how intellectuals and Uyghur are treated by the authorities and his story about how he found his way to the US. It’s a hard read.

“I wish the Chinese would just conquer the world,” one of my friends said suddenly.
“Why do you say that?” asked one of our companions.
“The world doesn’t care what happens to us,” my first friend replied. “The world doesn’t understand China. Since we can’t have freedom anyway, let the whole world taste subjugation. Then we would all be the same. We wouldn’t be alone in our suffering.”