A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar

by Suzanne Joinson

  August

  We could not go to Aksu – too dangerous. We are on Nan Lu, the South Road. The merchants and travellers on Nan Lu tell us that blood flows in the streets of Aksu where there have been battles between the Hui and the Turkic men. This means we have not been able to replenish our supplies adequately and we have been forced to hunt out day-time accommodation in the primitive agricultural villages.

  Although it barely seems possible, each day appears to be hotter than the last. Sometimes I carry Ai-Lien on my back, sometimes in the basket with the shade contraption erected. I check and re-check the map, I dream of Kucha, where I hope Mr Steyning is waiting. Because we couldn’t go down into the city we are forced to drink brackish water. I am making up Ai-Lien’s dried food with this same water, too.

  Just as the day broke today, we witnessed an astonishing sight: a chain of camels, about fifty of them, being led by their Kirghiz driver riding a donkey at the front. They were crossing a dry stream bed, heading deep into the Takla. Even the carter stood to watch. The bells around their necks gave off a melancholy sound, evocative, I suppose, of the perils of loneliness and solitude. Without Ai-Lien I should feel unbearably alone, despite Mah and the carter. The camels moved slowly, attached to one another with decorated woollen tassels. I remember Millicent saying, ‘Too much mishandling of a camel and they lose the will to live and simply lie down to die.’

  August

  Mah remains silent for stretches of time, then when he does talk, slowly and sonorous-toned, I understand nothing. It is lonely, to be alongside a person who is an unfathomable distance away. I am inconsistent in my regard of him. I both want him to acknowledge me more – I suppose protect me – and am grateful of his distance. The way he spits his bones out appals me. This last part of the journey has been terrible: tents pitched in lonely plains, a series of abandoned villages now waterless and invaded by sand. The wind brings with it an almost unbearable sense of desolation and Ai-Lien is sore, uncomfortable and difficult to console. The skin on my cheeks is burned and peels and my feet are in agonies. I dare not even look at them.

  The carter is an irritating presence, demanding this and that, to stop here, to speed up or slow down, always in a state of agitation like a small puppy and this does not help my nerves. I have begun hallucinating. Occasionally, a streak of wind is laced with my sister’s voice and often-times I see Millicent, standing with her hair in its tight bun, just the one or two curls moved outwards, next to a boulder, with a hunting pistol in her hand, looking away. Mr Hatchett, in full dinner dress, waves at me from behind the tamarisk tree mounds and today, amongst the light-shimmers, I saw the entire promenade of Southsea, complete with Clarence pier and the memorial and the bright smell of salt and light, rotting seaweed.

  ? August

  I am a fool.

  I conveyed to Mr Mah that I must sleep on an upright kang, not one down under the ground. I must have a proper meal and I must bathe Ai-Lien who, I noticed, had black ridges of dirt behind her ears, and her hair was sticking to her head. I could not stand it one more moment. So, we made a small detour off the Nan Lu to a Moslem village where we took rooms at the Inn of Celestial Friendship. The village, like most Mohammedan towns, was surrounded with a protective wall. The gatekeepers were not friendly. Moreover, they were hostile, and I should have realised that it would be unwise to enter. Through one doorway I saw an elegant, long-stemmed blue iris.

  Our room was hot, but clean, and I paid extra for water to bathe myself and Ai-Lien. The cushions and the tea and bread, the glimpses of the colourfully covered women in their bright dresses and white and coloured veils, were restful and it was a relief to be away from Mah who was having tea and smoking with the innkeeper. After I had taken advantage of the peace, and the water, and had settled Ai-Lien, Mah knocked on the door and summoned me. Two military soldiers were arguing with the elderly innkeeper.

  At our request, the innkeeper had not informed the authorities of our arrival, and as a result was now being confronted by angry military personnel who had been alerted to our presence. The only way we could calm the situation was to bribe both the innkeeper and the soldiers. I gave Mah half of the money that Rami had given me and told him it was all I had. It was idiocy to have come out of the safety of the wilder part of the desert as my passport is not up-to-date and I do not have the official paperwork that allows me to travel through this region. We were forced to leave immediately, very much lighter of pocket.

  Back to the hovels and the road then; and what a turn in my mind, what a mix, with the sun taking off layer after layer of my skin, rinsing it through, sending it off. To make matters worse, the next day, or the day after – I don’t know now where we are – led us to an even more sorrowful part of the desert; stony waves crossed an empty plateau. The wind blew constantly, raging my face and I kept Ai-Lien tight against me, wrapped in silk and cotton cloths, but she grumbled and wriggled. In between each raised ridge of rubble and stone and boulder I noticed a raised square, covered with bones. As we passed, I saw that they weren’t just cattle bones but also horse skulls. I think these must have been troughs for nomadic animals to feed. I pointed at them, Mah said, ‘snow’. The animals must have been caught in sudden snowdrifts, buried at their troughs, where they perished from hunger, or froze to death, I suppose. It is impossible to imagine snow in this dreadful heat. If the weather holds, it is one day to Kucha, the Buddhist city, where I pray Mr Steyning awaits us.

  August

  Disappointment: he is not here. Instead, a Cingalese servant meets us at the city gates with a message: Mr Steyning is unable to reach Kucha, instead he will be at Korla, the next stage. He will arrange payments with guides when there. We will prepare to cross the mountain pass to Karashahr which will lead us on our way across the Thian-Shan mountains to his home in Urumtsi. It is such an interminable distance. I hold on to sweet Ai-Lien, thankful for the supply of dried food.

  August

  A group of priests and beggars came along the track towards us today making me think of Lizzie and how she would have liked to photograph them. I was confused; I thought that they meant trouble, but Mah stood talking intensely with one of them, who momentarily pulled back his robes to reveal the usual trousers and it occurred to me that they were scouts, or spies undercover. They invited us to a nearby village, telling us that it was safe. What could I do but trust Mah’s judgement? We travelled down and for the first time I saw for myself the evidence that some of the bandits that we have heard of have passed through on the way to Aksu and Kashgar: farmhouses burned down, leaving just scalded timbers; an entire village ransacked, apart from the blacksmith who had been forced to shoe horses and repair endless carts. All bread and resources had been forced over. Mah seems to know everyone on this road but this does not make me feel safer; the opposite in fact, I feel as though I am being marched to meet my maker. Frequently, now, we encounter straggles of weary-looking men and boys, some very young, deserters from the press-gangs. Each day, now, we see one or two of them hiding in the grass. I preferred the isolated stretches.

  August – perhaps September?

  Mr Steyning was at the camp outside Korla.

  My relief was like a plunge into water. We reached him yesterday night at a camp with Kirghiz tents, fresh water and food. The first thing he did was to take Mah and the carter aside and the payment negotiations went on for a good few hours. I attempted to contribute what I could but Mr Steyning refused. I promised to repay him in the future, but he shook his head. When the sum was finalised and handed over, Mah simply mounted his donkey and left, without looking round or saying goodbye. The carter, still grumbling and skipping about like a puppy, demanded a meal.

  I attended to Ai-Lien who was in a great need of a proper bath and change of blankets and clothes. Mr Steyning had thought of this and had brought with him clean bedding which I gratefully wrapped around the baby. He also arrived with a generous supply of cow’s milk and some bread and Russian jam. Once Ai-Lien was clean and se
ttled we talked.

  ‘Where’s your sister?’

  I told him. He stood with his Bible in one hand and his other hand on my arm and said sincerely, ‘My dear, I am so sorry.’

  He elaborated on the situation which I try, despite everything, to understand for my Guide: a defected Chinese General is leading a Moslem uprising and they in turn are being pursued by a Chinese army. Both the Moslem Brigands and the Chinamen are press-ganging local boys into their ranks, attacking villages for supplies and the all-round menace from both sides provokes terror in everyone.

  ‘The main problem,’ Mr Steyning said, ‘is that they keep poisoning and choking the oasis wells.’

  ‘The scouts I have spoken to suggest that they are moving towards the Gobi,’ he said. ‘Our route will be across the Celestial Mountains. Once over the pass, we will be safe from all of this trouble.’

  I was exhausted and overwrought. Kindly, he wrapped a blanket around me and I even leaned against his shoulder, I was so tired. I fell asleep with my head resting on him. When I awoke this morning I was lying down on a thin mattress and nicely covered; he must have done so himself, gently, without waking me.

  September?

  After a two-day rest, we are making preparations to go across the Celestial Mountains pass. The mountains stand up in front of us like monumental cathedrals. It cannot be possible to go beyond them; they are of such enormity that there simply cannot be a ‘beyond’. I am thus stalled in my preparations. I want to sleep for seven years.

  –

  Riding horseback with two of Mr Steyning’s servants, a Cingelese and a Kirghiz, and I have left my bicycle. It is not feasible to take it up through the mountains, though I cannot imagine motion without it. I remember that Lizzie and Millicent just laughed when I first raised the idea of bringing a bicycle on our journey. Then, when they realised I was serious, Millicent stipulated that I would personally pay any additional expenses for the bicycle.

  ‘Why do you want to bring it?’ Lizzie asked, but I don’t think I answered her. I did not tell her that it was my shield and my method of escape; or that since the first time I pedalled and felt the freedom of cycling, I’ve known that it is the closest one can get to flying. It will be left to rust in the desert, then, to become bones, and I am bereft.

  –

  Ten hours along a terribly narrow path on horseback. The weather, Mr Steyning says, is a blessing – cloudless skies. We have created a sleeping bag from a sack for Ai-Lien and sometimes she is carried on my back, sometimes on one of the servants. As our horses grind on, I become stiff and aching, and to keep my attention from the steep cliffs along one side of the road he tells me the love story of the Tieman Pass: a story from ancient times, of a princess and a commoner who meet and fall in love. The king opposes the union and so the two lovers leap to their death in the Kongque He, the Peacock River. I tried to listen, but I am worried. As we climb higher, Ai-Lien is listless, less rigid in her limbs than usual, and is not really looking around in her bright way. I am trying to make sure that she drinks and drinks, but it is difficult. Holding her limbs up, she seems rather weak.

  –

  The rocks were cragging, leaning. They rose up above us on all sides. The precipitous narrow road was only a couple of feet wide but the ponies seemed sure-footed. Snow-topped spikes touched the sky, some black, some grey, a Vatican of endless spires. We kept moving as night fell because we could not risk being caught if the weather changes. As we headed upwards I was worried for Ai-Lien. She was breathing, and drinking her milk, but she seemed too still. The smiling Kirghiz boy offered to carry her and I agreed – though I didn’t want to let her go – because as we embarked upon an even steeper passage, I could not cope with her weight. Next – there was a terrifying stretch, a grey blank cliff on one side, a sheer drop on the other. I talked to myself to calm the nausea: do not look down. Look ahead, at Mr Steyning, at his back, his steady pony marching, amazingly, up the narrow path.

  Fear for Ai-Lien tasted foul.

  My legs ached. Occasionally a loose boulder crashed down behind us, dislodged from its timeless place by our presence. Then, just before nightfall, Mr Steyning said, ‘Look’. Behind us there was an awe-inspiring panorama: purples, shades of lilac to violet to dusky black, and such impressive beauty in the jagged shapes that my eyes actually devoured the scene before me and the exhaustion and aches and dizziness faded.

  But we continued, as the darkness came closer, and at each twist in the path I thought this must be it: the flat pasture area for camp that Mr Steyning said was just beyond. I came to hate the treacherous shadows, and oh dear me, the ache in my legs. There were eternal twists of the road and as dusk engulfed us, various birds of prey, including vultures and at least one eagle, hovered above. We rounded a sharp corner and the pathway dropped, it began to descend but this was worse – the rubble and stones dislodging and rolling around the pony’s shaking bumping hooves – on, to another sharp turn until we emerged into the shock of a plain. Vast flat land, with soft grass, so that, if it weren’t for the difficulty of breathing properly, one would not think that one was up at such a height, already well on our way up into the Thian-Shan mountains.

  –

  We are in the inn but it is clear that they do not want foreigners here. This is Karashahr, ‘the Black city’, once a Buddhist centre but it is now Turkic, very much so.

  ‘I shall just go and see what the disruption is,’ Mr Steyning said, leaving Ai-Lien and me here alone in a cluttered, cushioned room.

  We entered the city through the Chinese area, which is surrounded by a wall and a ditch. Wanting to keep our presence unknown to the Chinese, we made our way to the primitive gateways. Along the mud wall were Turk-shops and the usual towers, with their pagoda-like roofs and at one of these a number of men watched us. They were young, but they did not look friendly; their faces were glowering and intimidating.

  We are very much used to being stared at, but there was something different about the atmosphere here and now, it seems, these men have begun jeering and throwing stones at the innkeeper’s windows and doors. It started several hours ago and when Mr Steyning went to unload some of our luggage he returned to report that their number is now approximately twenty.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked Mr Steyning when he came back.

  ‘Young Mohammedans. They resent us being here.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This is an ardently Turkic town.’ The landlord came at that moment, an elderly man, with hands twisted like sarkaul roots. He peered at us through his watering eyes and spoke fast, in dialect, to Mr Steyning.

  ‘They are throwing bits of earth, shouting. He fears the numbers are growing.’

  ‘We are being hounded?’ It seemed unimaginable that they would do this: we had done nothing to them.

  ‘He insists that we leave,’ said Mr Steyning. ‘Let me talk to him.’ He took the ancient innkeeper by the arm and they are in the courtyard, talking now.

  Later: there was no choice. We were forced to take the road that leads to the famous freshwater lake, Baghrasch kol, in the early evening and to shelter where we could. In the end, we slept in a cluster of poplars, each of us taking turns to sleep or remain awake. All night I fancied I could hear the crack of a step or see the glimmer of a young man’s dagger.

  –

  We are high in the mountains again, up on a plateau. Today we are in a beautiful, golden camp, in a deep valley. The air is colder, the snow-peaks seem closer, but they are welcome after the intensity of the recent heat. The grass around us is golden, the mountains in the distance are blue–golden and there is even a supply of clear spring water. Still, I cannot enjoy it as Ai-Lien is most definitely ill. She is hot and she cries constantly, only stopping to fall into an unnervingly deep sleep. Mr Steyning examined her but admits he has no medical training. It is his associate in Urumtsi who is medically trained.

  ‘The best thing we can do is get to Urumtsi as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Bu
t it is the travelling that is causing the trouble.’ I am sure that all she wants to do is sleep, still and calm, rather than being jolted around. Mr Steyning took my hand.

  ‘If you should prefer to stay here,’ he said, ‘we will do.’

  It was kind.

  ‘But we need a doctor,’ he said.

  My baby: not eating properly, and there was blood in her stools. I held her flat against me, willing her peace, but she did not stop crying for such long periods of time. Then, when exhausted, she fell much too still. Nothing has prepared me for this powerful urge to protect her, and the helplessness I currently feel. I rocked her for hours until Mr Steyning came to me.

  ‘Go and lie down for an hour, we are going to start soon and you have had no sleep. I shall watch her.’

  I stretched out on the rug and listened to Mr Steyning as he attempted to soothe Ai-Lien. I had travelled this distance half-believing that Mah would kill me (although I realise now that his desire to be paid would powerfully outweigh his wish to do me harm). The relief of being with Mr Steyning instead is profound. Even in the midst of worrying about Ai-Lien, the sense of security is great. Mr Steyning’s company is like being tucked in, covered in blankets, safely. If Lizzie were here I could tell her and I do believe she would understand. There is a calmness to him, a stillness that I have – I realise now – been looking for. Perhaps this is what Lizzie felt with Millicent? It occurred to me that if I were to love a man, then a man like Mr Steyning would be the sort of man I would, indeed, love. This is a confusing thought, and even more, it is tangled with memories of tenderness for my delicate, lost sister. I must have absolute confidence in him. Ai-Lien could not possibly die under his surveillance.