Photo: Abdul (3rd from the left) with his family. Circa 1969, curtesy of Abdul Rakhim Khudayar

Chaï Latte & Salt podcast episode nr.1

Life can be a sorrowful place without a mother, especially for a small child. But how about finding her alive and sound after half a century?! This is what happened to Abdul Rakhim Khudayar from Pakistan. Somehow I, or rather my film, Letters from the Pamirs, played a role in discovering Abdul’s mother, after 50 years! Listen to his story here:

Here is the interview

Janyl Jusupjan: Abdul Rakhim, so nice to talk to you!

 Abdul Rakhim Hudayar: I am very excited to talk to you too! It is the first time in my life I’m talking to a Kyrgyz person. It was a very tragic story in the beginning, but thank god, it turns into a happy one at this moment.

I was 3 years old and my brother 5 when my mom divorced my father and left for Turkey. I am now 53 years old. So it was exactly 50 years ago!

My father, whose name was Ghulamjan (his name was changed in Pakistan to Ghulam Mohiuddin), removed all the photographs of mom. We did not have any picture of hers and there was not anything in our imagination – he completely closed the chapter of the mother for himself and for us too!

But somehow we came to know, after my uncle Ahmetjan visited us 20 years ago from the USA, that our mother might be alive. He told us that she lives in Turkey. But he did not know which city. He thought it could have been Izmir or Adana.

I started searching on the internet, making friends of Turkish people from those cities. I talked to them, but I was not able to find her.

There is a little twist here. I was told that my mother’s name was Gülshan Bibi. But it was the name given while she was in Pakistan. Her actual name was Gülsün!

I think that is the reason why my friends in Turkey could not find her. I tried hard but could not get the whereabouts of my mother.

I was nearly disappointed, maybe she is alive or not, I did not know.

20 years ago I came to know that she existed but after my fruitless searches, I thought maybe she was very old or did not remember us, or even that she had died.

But thanks to you, Janyl, and your film Letters from the Pamirs, I was able to find my mom. It all happened in December 2019.

Because of your film, I became interested in the Kyrgyz in Wakhan in Afghanistan’s the Pamir Mountains. Then I found out that their leader was Rakhmankul Khan who took some of the Wakhan Kyrgyz to Turkey. And I understood he had a son called Akbar. That way I found out some names.

Then I found your profile on Facebook, I sent you a message and you accepted my friendship request. Among your friends, I came across Akbar Kutlu, who turned out to be the eldest son of Rakhmankul Khan.

It was a miracle. Akbar Kutlu listened to my story. Then he said: «No problem brother. If she is Kyrgyz and lives in Turkey then maybe I can find her»!

JJ: Did you speak Urdu with him? You don’t speak Kyrgyz, do you?

ARH: No, I don’t speak Kyrgyz. People say that our mother taught us Kyrgyz, but my father never spoke Kyrgyz with us, so our mother tongue was washed out of our brain.

But Akbar Kutlu spoke some Urdu and a bit of English. He knows some broken Urdu because as a refugee in Pakistan when he was a young man, he learned the language.

JJ: When your mom divorced your father, he married another woman?

ARH: No, he never married again. He brought us up alone. He took that toll. He was a very dedicated family person.

JJ: So you were a motherless orphan, as we Kyrgyz put it. Then your father died?

ARH: Yes, my father died. It is very hard in a foreign country, because you don’t have any relatives. It is very difficult especially when you’re financially not in a good position. But somehow, we coped with all the difficulties.

My father always spoke of going back to Uzbekistan. He was Kyrgyz but his hometown is Khanabad in Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan. There are so many Kyrgyz living there.

JJ: Khanabad is a town now on the border with Kyrgyzstan. And yes, maybe half a million Kyrgyz live in Ferghana. After the Bolshevik Revolution, it was divided between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. That is why the Kyrgyz also became divided.

ARH: My grandfather Abdul Karim was an amin or a judge in Andijan. He participated in the Basmachy Movement, maybe you know it.

JJ: Of course. Basmachies revolted against the Bolsheviks. They led 10 years of war against Communism. For us, Soviets, the Basmachies were «the Enemies of People».

ARH: In the meantime, the war ended. The government started building schools in Andijan. My grandfather started to live a normal life.

But the pressure was very strong. They tried to locate the people who actively participated in the Basmachy movement.

My grandfather had two houses, one in the town, one in the village. The Bolshevik government told him that he can have only one property.

He opted for the countryside house in Khanabad. He had a very large area where he cultivated watermelon and wheat. He started to live there.

But one day someone came and told him that «tonight they are going to arrest you». He was worried because the people who were arrested were sent to Siberia and 99% of them died there, and only 1% came back to their homes.

My grandfather was thinking about what to do. He went to Jalal-Abad where his uncle lived. Later he had to hide in other locations. He struggled hard.

Somehow Russians wanted to arrest him. After some time, he decided to move to Kashghar (a town now in western Xinjiang Province of China) in Eastern Turkestan.

He went there and he was planning to bring his wives. My grandfather had two wives. He sent a messenger to his home in Khanabad. He tore the inner lining of a coat and hid a letter to his wives. It was a handkerchief – a big piece of cloth, over which he wrote that he was in Xinjiang, and that «you both should come on this date to this spot on the border». One of his wives wrote a letter back in a similar manner. She was a literate woman.

One of my grandmothers was left behind. She said: «I’m too old, I cannot come. It will be very difficult to travel in the mountains».

Everything was set up: the date and the month when they will escape from Uzbekistan, and that nobody should know about these plans so as not to endanger them.

In this way, my grandmother with two sons, one of whom was my father, came to Kashghar.

At that time my father was 10 years old and my uncle Akhmatjan was a toddler.

JJ: The passes they had to cross from what is Kyrgyzstan into China are 4-5,000 meters high. It should have been very difficult.

ARH: It was summertime when mountain rivers are not crossable. That is why many times they were stuck in the mountains. My grandfather went to search for wheat, rice or flour. At those times there were no shops or anything.

It was very difficult. But after they reached Kashghar, the Kazakh people came from the mountains and attacked the Chinese people. A fight started over there too!

The Chinese army recaptured Kashghar. It was war again. Also, the Chinese Government ordered all the foreigners to leave Urumchi and Kashghar. Grandpa had to move again.

That is why he went to Pakistan’s Himalayan range. At those times it was still India. He came to the territories ruled by the Indian-British government. Pakistan came into being in 1947.

They crossed the pass at 16,000 feet (5,333 meters). The highest point was 18,000 feet (6,000 m).

So he had to migrate from Andijan to Jalal-Abad in Kyrgyzstan, then to Kashgar, then Gilgit, and Chatral in Pakistan.

JJ: Your grandparents escaped into Pakistan and your father and his younger brother grew up there. What kind of life did they have?

ARH: Don’t even ask! You cannot imagine how difficult it was!

In the beginning, in Gilgit life was very good. Grandpa was a religious person, a Mulla. He started to teach the Quran to the chief of Gilgit. He got a house and everything was good.

But a few years later he died. He was buried there.

My grandmother was left to raise two children alone. It was very difficult for her but somehow she did the job.

She had a sewing machine that she brought from Andijan. It was a very amazing thing at that time, especially in Gilgit. The sewing machine was called Singer made in Germany. The daughters and wives of the elite class of Gilgit, for the first time, came to know that there was a machine that could sew. Otherwise, they used to sew by hand.

So she started sewing dresses for the women of Gilgit. My father and his brother then went to Chatral. My father heard that there were Kyrgyz people in the Wakhan Corridor in the Pamir mountains in Afghanistan, and he visited those places too.

He met my mother there and eventually they married. My mom told me now that they married in Rawalpindi near Islamabad.

JJ: Does that mean your mother is a Kyrgyz from Wakhan in Afghanistan?

ARH: They were the Kyrgyz from Kyrgyzstan, but they migrated to Wakhan after Kyrgyzstan became part of Communist Russia. They then moved to Chatral or Islamabad.

Their story is similar to the story of my father and grandfather who migrated from Uzbekistan while the parents of my mother migrated from Kyrgyzstan.

They met in Rawalpindi, they married. After 5 or 6 years, they separated because of differences in opinions. My mother was very young, she was only 15 when she married my father.

Things did not go well. She had other sisters who moved to Turkey. At that time the Turkish government took the initiative and started to accept the migrants from Central Asia. That is why they left. If there were 10,000 central Asians in Pakistan, all moved to Turkey. My mom and her family were among them.

JJ: Was it the 1960s, the time of the Shah in Afghanistan? The Soviet invasion was still to come, wasn’t it?

ARH: Yes, I think it was the 1960s, or even the 1950s, when people from Central Asia moved to Turkey in small groups.

JJ: This way your mother moves to Turkey, while your father stays in Pakistan and raises you singlehandedly. How was your childhood? You managed to get to university, I think!

ARH: Yes, I went to Karachi University. It was a very hard time, but there are some advantages and disadvantages of having a single parent.

On the one hand, you have all the freedom. There is nobody to take care of us, but we were free to do whatever we wanted to do.

Our father was busy at his job – he had a small leather business, so he was busy, and we were free. It was very good.

But on the other hand, we did not have relatives, we did not have a sister or a mother. We had to cook for ourselves and we had to study.

When I was in 10th grade my father became seriously ill. He became a victim of cancer and had a heart problem. He stopped working.

My brother and I had to study and work. I started giving tuition, so I could not complete my Masters. I left university at the Bachelor level and I had to earn bread for my family.

These were very hard times. There were riots, political unrest in Karachi, so many bomb blasts. Where we lived in Karachi was the most affected area.

But somehow, we survived and now things are going very well.

JJ: You grew up without a mother. Then your father died, and you still did not know your mom was alive?

ARH: Before my father died my uncle Akhmatjan came. He migrated to Turkey, then to the USA. Since then he passed away too.

He visited us twice. The first time he came in 1972 or 73 and the second time he came in the early 1990s. Then he told me that my mother was alive. My father was also alive, but he was not well and after a few years he died.

JJ: Were you able to talk to your father about your mother before he died?

ARH: From the very beginning, he made it clear there’s been no talking of mother.

I think it was in our minds, so we never asked anything about her. He never told us anything about my mother, what kind of person she was or what she looked like. We did not dare to ask him. So from the beginning, he made it clear that no one will talk about this topic, so we never asked.

JJ: After you found her whereabouts in December 2019, you got her contact and you called her. Although you don’t speak Kyrgyz, you were able to talk to her because she speaks Urdu, weren’t you?

ARH: Yes, that is also a good point because otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to communicate! She is very smart, speaks not only Turkish or Urdu in addition to Kyrgyz, but also some minority languages in Pakistan. But she cannot speak English. Now I know that she has a son and a daughter and they live in Istanbul.

First, she did not believe me. She thought someone was making a joke. People said different things about us. Some said we went to the USA to our uncle and some said we have died.

Therefore, in the beginning, she was suspicious that someone wanted to trick her. But when things became clear she talked to me and now she is very happy.

JJ: You first lost your father, uncle, then brother. You have a family with children, but you did not have other relatives, you were a total orphan, so to speak. And now you found your mom and two siblings. Now you are rich again!?

ARH: Yes, now I have a brother and a sister. I’m the luckiest person! I think so. God is gracious. I’m very thankful to God. And thank you to you too!

JJ: I did not know, but I am happy that my film was helpful. I understand now you will have a reunion. Will your mom visit you?

ARH: Yes, we are planning a reunion. My mother and my sister will come to Karachi. My sister works in the Istanbul Airport, so she has limited vacations. They will come for 10 days. Winter is very mild in Karachi and it is very harsh in Istanbul.

Then my family and I will go there in June or July. They say summer is good for visiting Istanbul.

I talk with my mom now over the phone for 2-3 hours every day, there are so many things to talk about!

Photo: Abdul with his wife Sadia and children – Tamer (left), daughter Dengiz and youngest son Saljooq, Karachi, 2020

Thank you Abdul, for sharing this wonderful story of yours and happy reunions!

I filmed Abdul on Skype, so there will be also a short video. Subscribe on my podcast to receive it!

There is the story written by Abdul himself, especially for my podcast, available for you. To receive it, send an email to me at janyl_j@hotmail.com.

This short text of Abdul’s is about his grandfather’s dramatic departure, almost 100 years ago, from what is now Uzbekistan, which was, at those times under the reign of Tsarist Russia.

If you know someone who might be interested to hear Abdul’s story, please share it on your platforms, e.g. on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and tag me – Janyl Jusupjan.

The full video interview and similar exclusive content will be available for Patreon supporters. If you are interested, find me at www.Patreon.com!

I plan to publish two podcast per month.

The next episode will be with Sashar Zarif, a Canadian-Iranian dancer and educator with Azerbaijani background.

Stay tuned!

Your Janyl Jusupjan.

DK