The Steep Ascent

“I shall never die”

THURSDAY is market-day in Kashgar and the square is thronged. Temporary booths are set up with mounds of raisins, dried apricots or vegetables brought in by villagers from the surrounding oases, who want to take back pots and pans, stirrup leathers and pails. Sturdy Turkis in dark crimson or bright-striped padded coats, soft leather knee-boots over white trousers, and with velvet fur-edged caps on their shaven heads form the great majority in the crowd. Here and there, however, is a slim Chinese from the east, in blue cotton or silk; a Russian from the west, in blouse and peaked cap; a bearded Indian; or a slant-eyed, smoothly leather-faced Kirghiz of the Pamir, looking down from a double-humped camel. Donkeys are everywhere, laden with logs for fuel, or with panniers of carrots and melons, or peering out through huge bundles of lucerne (fodder) like small walking haystacks. On one side of the square is the great “Festival” mosque, the ‘Id Gah, which gives its name to the square. Bazaars lined with open shops lead off from every corner, and the Street of the Carpenters is the shortest way out of the city by the Gate of the Hanging Gardens. Kashgar is surrounded by a wall, pierced by four gates which are shut from sunset to sunrise except to those who carry a pass from the City Governor. Beyond the gates cluster the great caravanserais-for the caravan masters so often depart before dawn or arrive after dusk that they must be lodged outside the city; and there, too, are the workshops of the craftsmen and the small pedlars and bakers who serve the travellers needs. Beyond the suburbs is the oasis-five miles each way-ringed by the desert; and sixty miles off to west and south, glittering in the clear sky at dawn, are the ice peaks of the Karakoram and the Pamir, “the Roof of the World,” and to northwards the Tian Shan, the “Mountains of Heaven,” which wall Eastern Turkestan off from every other country. Such is Kashgar in Central Asia, built furthest from the sea of every city in the world.

One Thursday a young dervish, Ali Akhond, rode into Kashgar to do his weekly shopping. All the sights of the market-place he took for granted, but he halted abruptly in the crowd at something he overheard. A man in a dusty grey cloak was speaking to a group of young students, and saying,” “Yes, I shall never die.”

“That old man must be mad,” thought Ali. “So old and frail! If he thinks he is not going to die, he will soon learn his mistake!”

“Who is that chatting over there?” he asked an onlooker.

“The European? Oh, he is the Padre.”

“One of the hospital people?”

“No, his language is different.”

“Is he mad?”

“Oh, no, he is just a Christian.”

“But what does he mean by saying he is going to live for ever?”

“I don’t know: I expect he would like to. So would we all, God bless us! Are you wanting some brick tea?” and they moved away.

With evening, the country roads were full of home-going villagers: some riding, some driving carts, some singing love-songs in the hot summer night to keep away jinn (evil sprites), or shouting guidance to their horses as the carts lurched in and out of irrigation channels dug unexpectedly across the side-roads. Until the dog began to bark and the farmer called on his wife to open the door, it was difficult to see a house even by moonlight, for all the windows were in the roof. But the room inside was attractive, the walls whitewashed, the alcoves, with shelves for bedding, picked out with gay painted flower-patterns; and bright rugs were spread on the platform which served as a bed by night or a sofa by day. Outside was a vine-shaded verandah where it was pleasant to sit drinking tea or smoking after work. Ali Akhond and his neighbours had each his own tiny farm. The loess soil of Turkestan is so rich that in many parts it will bear two crops a year without needing manure. Water came in the elaborate network of canals and channels from the neighbouring Red River. Food was plentiful and cheap. They grew wheat, maize, oats, many kinds of vegetables, great clusters of grapes that sold for a halfpenny a bunch, or melons like marrows in size and of the most luscious flavour. Loess mud packs easily into sun-baked bricks, so that, in a week’s work, any active man could build himself a small house nearly free of cost. Cotton grew in the fields below by the river, and wool came from the thousands of sheep that graze in the mountains. Life, though austere and simple, was pleasant in the tiny country villages. Most Turkis are of an independent, generous and gay disposition and their traditional way of life has many enviable features. In Islam there is a fundamental sense of the equality of all men before God which gives self-respect and dignity, and the social graces of life are learnt and practiced by all.

The last of the five brief formal prayers of the day came after sunset, but Ali Akhond, and many like him, wanted to do more than observe the minimum requirements of their religion. They wanted power over their own lives, and the dervish orders taught that by following certain techniques during contemplation, the reason could be temporarily laid asleep and the soul liberated to realize its union with God. But God seemed far off: how could He care for so insignificant a part of His creation? How, too, could a man expect to live uprightly and to realize anything of the presence of God while his daily work had to be done, and his share of a man’s duties towards the community?

If only family life were not so restless and so uncertain! Ali was young and his wife was a quiet girl and seemed contented as yet. In the country they all worked together, and were not so likely to think a change of partners might be an improvement. But Ali was always having to advise or help his city friends. This one was jealous, and suspected a neighbour of sending messages to entice his wife to transfer her good cooking to a richer home. That one had got into trouble with the Chinese police for knifing a rival. A third was intending to divorce his childless wife as soon as he could hear of a good successor, and meanwhile she was pilfering everything of his she could get her hands on, against the day when a nest-egg would help her to a new husband. Then there were the expenses of those who had two wives and two households, and the miseries of those who had rashly attempted to have two wives in one household; besides many who had a divorced mother or mother-in-law living in their homes and interfering.

Thank God, it was more peaceful in the country. Divorces happened there too, of course, but marriages lasted much longer, and occasionally one might even meet an accidentally happy couple who had stayed together all their lives. But Ali could see no alternative way of life.

The day began as the cocks were crowing for the second time before dawn, and the muezzin called the Faithful, “Come to prayer, prayer is better than sleep. I bear witness that God is One, and Muhammad is the Apostle of God.” Then the scent of burning willow-wood hung in the still dawn air, as the women cooked the morning tea and the men tended their farm beasts.

Marriage was a necessary experience. Islam taught that men and women had duties to society, and ought not to seek escape in celibacy or free love. Even with marriage, three in four of the whole population suffered from the social diseases, so there were many who had lost babies and many were disfigured for life. There were forlorn children too, but that seemed inevitable. As the country rhyme had it

“If they call you, Orphan, remember God decreed it.”

“If your parents parted, ‘Twas fore-ordained of God.”

A curtain hung between God and man; and yet man must long to know what lay beyond in that eternal world.

Ali Akhond decided to take a job in the city where he could hear lectures on Islam. He left his old father and his wife at the farm, and moved into Kashgar. All his spare time he spent among the dervishes and in due course he was initiated into the outer circle of a dervish order.

Time went on. In 1906, Ali noticed that the old Dutch priest, Abbe Hendriks, died and was buried in the Russian graveyard, and he remembered with pity that strange hope of living for ever.

Then it happened one day that a friend suggested, “Let’s go and have a look at the Swedish Mission outside the Sand Gate.” There was the usual throng of patient’s friends sitting on the canal bridge by the hospital, and someone who knew the place well asked if they would like to see the compositors at work in the printing press. Ali Akhond could read and was interested in what he saw. Next he went over with them to watch the Europeans say their evening prayers in the church. They not only prayed, they sang, and the singing was accompanied by a comic sort of accordion that seemed to be played with the feet as well as the hands.

Presently a man stood up to read “Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.”

”Never see death!” Ali Akhond was startled. Here was the same incomprehensible word, uttered this time by a big, red-haired man in the prime of life. He looked up, and his eyes fell on the words, “This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”

“What do these Nazarenes believe?” he wondered. He had thought they were polytheists who worshipped a goddess, but every Muslim accepts that God is One and that Jesus Christ was a prophet. He decided to hear more about this.

One of the missionaries, seeing he could read, offered him a Gospel as he left. Ali took it home and read it over and over again. But one day someone happened to see him absorbed in a book and said, “What have you got there?”

“The Gospel,” said Ali.

“Good gracious, you mustn’t read that!” the man exclaimed, snatching the book and throwing it into the fire.

“Do you call that the way to treat a holy book?” asked Ali. But the man only swore at him and walked off.

Ali went to the Mission again and asked for another Gospel. This time he read it in secret. But when he thought he would like to discuss it with a friend the latter tore it up in haste, saying, “If you read that it will turn you into an infidel.”

Ali Akhond was not satisfied. He got himself yet another Gospel, and began to slip away on Sundays to go to church and hear it explained. Presently he gave notice to his employer and took a temporary job helping with some building that was going on at the Mission hospital: to help the sick could not be an evil action.

Meanwhile he watched the life of the missionaries closely, and quite enjoyed sharing their festivals. When the hospital rebuilding was finished, Ali Akhond took other local jobs. He could not but be impressed by the happy family relationships of the Swedes, and often discussed them with his friends. Their houses were peaceful; husband and wife had a mutual confidence which gave each so much more leisure and peace and encouragement in the service of God than anything he had ever seen before. Their neighbours in the Sand Gate suburb would frankly admit that the Swedes were a credit to their religion and an example to their Muslim friends in spite of being darkened Christians.

After a number of years it began to occur to Ali Akhond that the Swedes successful married life, their unselfishness, truthfulness and honesty might be due to obeying the teaching of Christ; so he began to try to follow that teaching himself. Then, perhaps to emphasize that he was nevertheless a true Muslim, he took a secondary wife according to the law of Islam. This meant having a second household in the city. His new wife was quite independent of his first wife and her son, and was not friendly towards Ali’s interest in Christianity.

About a year later he realized that though he still believed that God is One, and still believed that Muhammad was a great prophet, he now knew for certain that Christ was alive and that Christ was God. He saw the terrible thing that faced him. He would be cut off by his own people. But even so he decided that in common honesty he must throw in his lot with the despised Nazarenes. He parted from his secondary wife, making provision for her and undertaking to support their little son who stayed with his mother. Then he asked to be prepared for baptism. He was not the only Turki Christian. A number of others had come gradually to similar conclusions, and men of very varied ages and temperaments and from different walks in life were baptized within a few years of each other.

In some cases the wife was baptized with her husband, but Ali Akhond’s wife did not approve the step he had taken. She did appreciate, however, that she now held her position for life if she wished it and could never be dismissed. She took advantage of this and for some years the house-keeping was slovenly and very uncomfortable. But at last she was won by her husbandıs kindliness under conditions that no Muslim would ever have tolerated. She was converted and their home became a peaceful place.

The Church Grows

Ali and his fellow-Christians were closely watched by all their neighbours who saw that, in spite of difficulties and even persecution, they were much happier as Christians. Their example won their friends and the church began to grow fast, so that during the years between 1919 and 1939 the adult communicant members of the Christian church of the country grew to number over two hundred, almost every one a convert from Islam; and if their children be included the Christian community had about five hundred members. At this time there were more than thirty missionaries in the Swedish Mission in Turkestan (Sinkiang in Chinese).

In 1928 there was a baptism which attracted much attention at Kashgar, when a young man of twenty-six, Yusuf Ryeknan, whose father had been a prominent Shi’ah mullah, openly confessed his faith in Christ. Yusuf’s father had come to Turkestan from a Shi’ah Muslim district across the Indian frontier, and Yusuf Ryekhan claimed British nationality. So, though he had to struggle against the entreaties and threats of his own large family, once he was baptized the Turki Sunni Muslims did not attack him as they would have done a Sunni of the same standing. Yusuf took the baptismal name of John. At that time he held a post in the Kashgar Mission Press which printed not only Christian literature, but also the only modern school primers and secondary text-books that existed in Turki, besides ledgers for Kashgar merchants, and public notices for the Chinese local authorities.

Some years before this, Ali Akhond, now in middle life, had become the evangelist of the church at Kashgar. Though liable occasionally to boycotting and dangerous insults in the market-place, so genial and friendly a man had never been entirely cut by his own acquaintances, and he was a gifted preacher. At the services in church there were always many more Muslims than Christians present, and when he preached on the Story of the Prodigal, he could make everyone see the handsome young Bey in a striped silk coat, white turban and crimson leather boots riding away from his father’s house on a fine Badakhshani stallion. They followed his adventures until he had fallen so low that he kept pigs for Chinese idolaters to eat, and at last came creeping back, even poorer than members of the gild of the beggars of Kashgar, and they watched the joyful welcome of his return. At Christmas there were often congregations of two or three hundred for the early morning service: the children sitting on scarlet felt rugs round the pulpit which was flanked by two tall pines, brought by camel from the mountains and covered with white candles. The Chinese schoolboys hung the whole garden with rows of marvellous coloured lanterns. The men of the printing press and the Turki schoolboys formed a choir which sang carols, and all the Muslim neighbours came to hear the Christmas message and share the Christians’ holiday.

At that Turki school was a boy, Muhammad, who lived in the caravanserai next door. His father, Tokht Akhond, a carpenter, had a room next the merchants whose camels could be heard biting and squealing at night. When Muhammad was ten years old, and his little sister Hava (Eva in English) was four, their mother died. The father got into debt and into the power of a Chinese opium smuggler who employed him as an agent.

Two years later Tokht Akhond suddenly died. The children came that same night and begged the missionaries to save them, for they were so frightened of their father's creditor who had sent a message that he claimed them in settlement of Tokht Akhond’s debts. He could use Muhammad as a servant and he could easily sell Hava into some Chinese household as she was a pretty and attractive child. “ I can run away in a few years time,” said Muhammad, “ but Hava will be sold for a concubine and will never get free if he takes her.”

A message was sent to the Chinese that the father had owed the Mission a greater sum of money, since the children had had education and a free meal a day for several years. As he was engaged in opium smuggling, the Chinese dared not take the case to law. So the children stayed with the school boarders at Kashgar until the matter had blown over, and then went to be brought up in the Children’s Homes at Yarkand.

Muhammad at this time, 1926, was a sturdy little boy who at twelve was quite a useful player at soccer, even against boys several years his senior. He went to the home in the country some three miles from Yarkand where twenty boys were being brought up, but he used to come to church at Yarkand every Sunday and then spend the afternoon with his little sister, who was at the Girls’ Home where Miss Gerda Andersson was in charge. Once Hava was crying because she had no mother, and Muhammad was overheard comforting her and saying, “Don’t cry. You know we always have each other.”

As well as being given an education that is normal in Europe but very rare among even the daughters of wealthy men in Turkestan, these twenty-five girls were trained in standards of housewifery that made them extremely sought after as brides as soon as they were over fifteen years old: Miss Andersson would not give leave for them to marry sooner.

Both Muhammad and his sister were unusually intelligent and energetic children and did well in school. Muhammad’s hobby was bird-watching, and it was amusing to see how excited and pleased he was to learn that the cuckoo laid her eggs in the nests of other birds. He had not observed that himself and, of course, had no books on birds to read in Turki.

When he was about seventeen, Yusuf Ryekhan came to live at Yarkand. There was a revival in the church and several of the young men connected with the Mission came and asked for baptism, including Muhammad, who took the baptismal name of Habil (Abel). A group of these young men, among whom Yusuf John Ryekhan and Habil took the lead, were keen on winning their fellows, and the difference between their standards of honesty, charity and clean-living and those of their Muslim friends much impressed the latter.

This year, 1931, there were rumours of impending changes in the country which made people unusually alert and thoughtful, and in 1932 civil war broke out. In northern Turkestan it was connected with some Chinese misgovernment which led to local discontent, and with a Tungan invasion from China which, it was later suspected, was partly fomented and financed by the Japanese. In the south it began as a rising of a Muslim party in Khotan, a city that had always the reputation of being both fanatically Muslim and also possessed of a high grade of intelligence among its citizens. Bands of Khotan Turkis came west, overrunning the country, plundering the villages, murdering any Chinese they met and taking their wives and daughters as lawful prey. The rebellion, being in the nature of a Holy War for Islam, was primarily directed against the Chinese who, as idolaters, were mercilessly slaughtered everywhere.

In 1933 an official message came to the Swedish Mission at Yarkand that, as their position in the country depended on the treaties between China and Sweden, they would not be safe if the Chinese were out of power, and their presence would draw attention to the Christian church there. Miss Gerda Andersson was on leave and it was decided that the other women missionaries should go to Kashgar. But after saying good-bye, they turned back, deciding that they could not leave the children in the Girls’ Home. The possibility of moving out to the country was considered, but no village was safe, and owners of suitable houses were entirely unwilling to let them; while news came that some of the Kirghiz in the mountains were also joining the rebels so that it would not have been safe to go up there.

The girls, when not wholly orphaned, came from homes either where they had not been wanted owing to the remarriage of a parent, or which were of a bad character. And it was certain that were they sent home, all over twelve years of age would be married out of hand to Muslims, which their relatives thought the only possible means of protecting any teen-age girl just then. Some of the girls were already engaged to Christian boys, but these felt them to be safer behind the strong wall and gate of the Girls Home than in some village room which was overrun weekly by bandits.

There had so often been rumours of wars which came to nothing that the missionaries at Yarkand hoped this rebellion also might pass the south of the province by. But on April 11, 1933, the Khotan rebel troops, under the leadership of three brothers, made a surprise attack on the Old City at Yarkand and seized several strong points. The eldest brother was in general charge of the campaign towards Kashgar, and the Emir Abdullah, the second, who took the title of “king,” was in command at Yarkand. After some heavy fighting both at Yarkand and in other towns in south Turkestan, the rebels gained control of the whole area, slaying the Chinese in hundreds, burning their houses and taking their wives and daughters. It was now impossible to travel to Kashgar through the intervening desert. But just before this, Habil, who had become assistant schoolmaster at Kashgar, returned to Yarkand to keep an eye on his sister, and Yusuf Ryekhan was also at Yarkand. Habil was now nineteen and Hava thirteen years old.