Glued to our chairs, we repeated our lessons like parrots. They taught us the glorious history of China – a sanitised version, cleansed of abuses. On the cover of the manual we were given was inscribed “re-education programme”. It contained nothing but stories of the powerful dynasties and their glorious conquests, and the great achievements of the Communist party. It was even more politicised and biased than the teaching at Chinese universities. In the early days, it made me laugh. Did they really think they were going to break us with a few pages of propaganda?
But as the days went by, fatigue set in like an old enemy. I was exhausted, and my firm resolve to resist was on permanent hold. I tried not to give in, but school went steamrolling on. It rolled right over our aching bodies. So this was brainwashing – whole days spent repeating the same idiotic phrases. As if that weren’t enough, we had to do an hour of extra study after dinner in the evening before going to bed. We would review our endlessly repeated lessons one last time. Every Friday, we had an oral and written test. By turns, beneath the wary eye of the camp leaders, we would recite the communist stew we’d been served up.
In this way, our short-term memory became both our greatest ally and our worst enemy. It enabled us to absorb and regurgitate volumes of history and declarations of loyal citizenship, so we could avoid the public humiliation dished out by the teacher. But at the same time, it weakened our critical abilities. It took away the memories and thoughts that bind us to life. After a while I could no longer picture clearly the faces of Kerim and my daughters. We were worked until we were nothing more than dumb animals. No one told us how long this would go on.
We were ordered to deny who we were. To spit on our own traditions, our beliefs. To criticise our language. To insult our own people. Women like me, who emerged from the camps, are no longer who we once were. We are shadows; our souls are dead. I was made to believe that my loved ones, my husband and my daughter, were terrorists. I was so far away, so alone, so exhausted and alienated, that I almost ended up believing it. My husband, Kerim, my daughters Gulhumar and Gulnigar – I denounced your “crimes”. I begged forgiveness from the Communist party for atrocities that neither you nor I committed. I regret everything I said that dishonoured you. Today I am alive, and I want to proclaim the truth. I don’t know if you will accept me, I don’t know if you’ll forgive me...
No comments:
Post a Comment