Entrepreneurial Poet's Solo Journey Begins

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

— James Madison

Sasha scratched his left leg in the back, just above the ankle. He was waiting for the Putney Station bus off of South Fulham Road in London. He could take the train, but as an American tourist, he preferred to watch the brightly clad schoolchildren crossing the road together, or observe the Chinese and African maids coming home from work. Sometimes — well, one time — he'd had a fairly nice conversation with one of the Chinese maids. She was a younger woman around 30 and wearing a red plaid skirt. She was still six years or so older than he was but, he had hoped, young enough to banter with him in Mandarin. He was right, and they'd chatted and laughed lightly all the way to Brixton, where she got off to cook and clean for her own family.

* * *

A year and a half ago, a holiday in London at 23 had sounded just right to him as he accepted the Longhorn Poetry Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin along with his BS diploma in business. "The Entrepreneurial Poet" was a name he sometimes called himself. He enjoyed thinking of himself in the third person. His mother had had a habit of doing this during his childhood. She would say as if reading from a book, "Her son had bright brown eyes but this did not prevent him from falling down a lot." As he went out the door to the graduation ceremony, she had said, "He stands ready to be created."

"Ana was the Uyghur word for mother," he thought to himself. He called her name in his heart. "Ana ... where are you? Have you left me alone?" Sasha was 25 now, and the events of the intervening 18 months had made the postponed London trip more desirable than ever ... even necessary.

* * *

The double-decker bus pulled up and Sasha pulled down tightly on his gray wool toboggan hat. No need to attract attention. He was average height and could pass for a college student from the States. He was from the States. He was an American. It had been 13 years since he stood with his parents in the crowded Austin courtroom and solemnly pledged his allegiance to the United States of America. His mother, Nur Ye, had held his left hand. His father, Yusup Sabir, had kept him near. He was like most Uyghur sons, a protected child. Before ethnic cleansing by the Han Chinese, the Uyghur people had lived in the rocky regions of China bordering Kyrgyzstan. Once he started school in Austin, Sasha had quickly learned to simply refer to himself as "Chinese." Loved, pampered, pushed to academic excellence at all times, he had never questioned his parents' love. Not really. His mother had sometimes whispered in his ear as she looked at his father, "You are his castle he is building to live in."

When you face certain and horrible death and you miraculously escape to a wide, green field full of flowers, you do not question anything. Your family is still alive, and a future lies ahead of you. That is enough. Later, he realized, he was their future. That is what his mother meant when she whispered in his ear.

The bus meandered along Fulham Road up toward the Kensington District. He watched the line of jewelry stores, chemists, and, every five blocks, a KFC or Starbucks: ah, home.

His father had been glad to see him leave for London, glad to release him to the world. This man, who had pulled him, a little boy, with him out of the Xinjiang region where his part-Chinese, part-Turkish, part-Arabic tribe was being massacred by the Han Chinese, this man he called "Chichi," meaning "Daddy," he realized now, had been anxiously awaiting the day when they could say goodbye.

The events that led to his father pushing him out of the nest were so upsetting to Sasha that he never talked about them. No one else knew except for the three of them — his mother, his father, and him — the reasons why they were no longer a family.

The day after graduation, he had gone skiing — water skiing — a new sport he'd discovered when a girl asked him out. He didn't tell them that a girl, Julia, had asked him out. He just said, "... some friends from my accounting class." That day, he met Julia on campus, and she drove them to Lake Travis, about a half-hour away, where they joined six others. Julia spotted her friend's boat, and they jumped aboard. When Sasha's turn came, he slipped on the skis in the tepid green water, adjusted his vest, grabbed the rope handles, and waved his hand for them to take off, and they went flying. Flying was a joy, like poetry.

When he woke in the hospital, he had a crease in his skull from where the boat and it had collided. Not his friend's boat, another boat nearby that caught him in a wide arc.

"Your hair will cover the scar," his mother said as her fingers caressed his face. Her fingers were so small, yet he'd seen them throw a knife 20 feet and kill a duck in midair. Her fingers traveled over his head as if she could magically bring back the thick black hair that had once covered it.

* * *

The bus suddenly jolted to a stop and snapped Sasha out of his painful memories.

He scanned the busy streets for his maid "friend." The domestic workers did not usually board until 3:30, and it was just now 3:00, the hour of sunset in wintry England. In one hour, the streetlamps would be on. The question that was never far from his mind, reasserting itself over and over, was, "Where is my mother now?"

Sasha leaned back against the bus seat and let his mind wander back again to the days after his accident.

* * *

Nur Ye and Yusup had taken him home. Soup — they gave him soup and dumplings. His father rubbed his toes. They stroked his bald, bandaged head and told him stories from the mountains about caves and kings. A week passed. His mother put the gray cap on his head "to keep the bandages safe," she said. She alone changed them. He wore the hat. He slept in the hat. After eight weeks, he took the hat off to dress his own wounds. He was a grown man, after all. He could do it himself.

Then something fantastical happened. On his once off-white skull grew a forest of tiny reddish orange swirls. Was it a disease? He gasped at his reflection. A parasite? A reaction to the medicine? He reached up and touched it, just as he did now unconsciously in his bus seat. One ruddy ringlet bounced happily out from under his cap before he pushed it back.

It wasn't long before Yusup spied the red curls. "Red-haired Uyghur boy! Chinese redhead!" His father, who saw that he was just another boy and not a son from his loins after all, raged through their apartment shouting in the...