For the record, I’m not from Britain or from Kashgar. I’m from Urumqi, which is not important in and of itself, but important to my story.
In 2022, I watched Avatar 2 with my wife at a cinema in Leeds. On our way out, we saw a man who, judging by his facial expressions, was completely blown away by how amazing the film was. His eyes were lit up like full beam headlights and and his mouth was wide open. But what he said to his girlfriend was a complete mismatch to his face - “that wasn’t so bad, was it?” I later learnt that this was the highest level of admiration.
Between 2017 and 2020, I was a full-time freelance translator and interpreter in the UK, and I built my freelance business from scratch. If you’re a freelancer like me, you know what this means - networking, networking and networking!
I remember a LinkedIn message I sent to a connection in 2018: “I understand you’re coming to Leeds for the XXX conference next week. I was wondering if you have time for a coffee, please? It would be great to finally meet you in person. Best wishes, Faruk” I’d like to think that I scored at least 90% for politeness.
To my message, he simply replied: “I don’t see why not.”
Was that a yes? Was that a no? I pondered. Finally, I decided that it was a reluctant yes. I’m a married man who has mastered the art of milking every hint at ‘yes’, even if it’s a ‘meh’. I met up with him and impressed him so much that he remains a client to this day.
However, “I don’t see why not” bothered me for a couple of days. It felt like he was scratching head for hours to find an excuse to turn me down, but he failed. Poor him. It must have been hard to resist my mesmerising.
Getting a straight answer proved to be an arduous task. It took me a while to understand that when British people say “I’m alright”, they mean “no”. I’ve also lived in the UK long enough to appreciate that when you receive an email that begins with a long paragraph of what an amazing job you’ve done so far, the sender is plotting to strangle you or bang your head on the desk. I did not arrive at this wisdom immediately. It only dawned on me after a million email correspondences. I’m very slow on social cues.
I love making kebabs in my garden. It was a fine Sunday in the summer of 2023, when my neighbour caught a whiff of my kebab and came out to the garden. He joked: “Are some of those kebabs for me?” Being an Uyghur, sharing food with neighbours is a religion. It didn’t matter to me that he was joking. The next thing he knew, I was knocking on his door with a handful of skewers. The next day, he told me the kebabs were delicious but his wife told him off for being nosy. She made the comment that foreigners don’t always understand his British humour (not in those exact words, of course). He apologised for asking me to share my food and promised this would never happen again. I was shocked to say the least, and was sorry to have inconvenienced him. After all, us men should stick together. For the record, it happened again, and again, but I’m glad it did. I’m proud of sharing my food. We subsequently converted his wife into an honorary Uyghur neighbour. She loves our food and has started to share theirs with us.
I’m no stranger to witty comments and sarcasm. I’m not very good at them myself but I am in awe of people who are. On hearing my then 4-year-old daughter saying “I’m so beautiful”, a close friend, British, couldn’t help but added: “and modest too!” Okay, I was a little offended on my daughter’s behalf.
Even before I moved to the UK, I was no stranger to witty comments because I worked with a bunch of Kashgarians (people from Kashgar) for many years. They relentlessly ‘abused’ me with their sarcastic comments, so much that I grew immune to them, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself. Eventually, I decided to visit Kashgar for the first time in 2013 to have a first-hand experience in the birthplace of hardcore sarcasm. I was not disappointed.
In Kashgar, there was a quarter in the city named ‘doppa baziri’. It means doppa bazaar. A doppa is a traditional hat, which looks something like this:
Anyways, I went into a doppa shop and bought one without even trying it on. I don’t remember why. The next day, I came back to the shop because I’d realised that it was too small for me. I told the shop owner what had happened. He listened attentively, smiled and replied, “Sir, I wonder if you came with the same head yesterday?”
I was insulted but happy. On another occasion, I was bargaining with a street vendor for a pair of shoes. He asked for 120 yuan. “How about 80?” I proposed, to which he said, “Do you mean for one shoe?” I lost. I paid the 120 in full.
I remember a very popular joke about Kashgarians. If you forget to pay at a restaurant in Kashgar, they’d never say, “Hey, you forgot to pay!” They’d say something like, “Excuse me, Sir/Ma’am, you forgot to take the change.”
Here’s another one. If you stop your car beyond the stop line before a traffic light in Kashgar, a traffic police would approach you, knock on your car window, and offer you a soldier’s salute so you know you’re in trouble (it’s a common practice in China). They would then ask politely: “sorry to bother you, but would you like me to pull the line forward a bit?”
I went to a Kashgarian restaurant in Urumqi with my Kashgarian colleagues, probably in 2011. We ordered pilaf (we call it ‘polo’ in Uyghur) and we got our food fairly quickly. But there was no cutlery on the table. We asked for it and waited patiently. No cutlery. We asked again… and again. Finally, my colleague was fed up. He called the waiter next to him, and said: “could you please stay right here and keep an eye on my food? I have to go home real quick and fetch my spoon.” We got our cutlery in 10 seconds.
I had countless encounters with sarcasm in restaurants. It was another work lunch like in the paragraph above, when my colleague I were served extremely salty laghman. Come to think of it, it was the same guy who made the ‘spoon’ comment. We finished our food regardless, as it was rude not to, and went to pay at the till. The lady at the till said it was 15 yuan each (around £1.8, give or take, cheap, right?), and the ‘spoon’ guy asked, “does that include the price of salt?” She was not amused. I was, and I still am while writing this.
My Kashgarian colleagues would never make me forget that I went to Chinese school instead of an Uyghur school for my education. Instead of greeting me with an ‘assalamu alaikum’ like they do everyone else, they would always greet me with a ‘ni hao’mu alaikum’, to which I eventually learnt to reply with a ‘wa alaikum ni hao’.
Kashgarians seem to have a sarcastic comeback for anything that could possibly come out of your mouth. Sometimes they don’t even realise that they were being sarcastic. I was constantly at the receiving end of it. I was once in the house of a Kashgarian friend for a quick visit. His wife put the kettle on and was going to break a naan bread in half. I stopped her immediately and said: “No, please don’t bother.” His wife replied, calmly might I add, “Oh, sorry, would you like the whole naan bread?” I was a lamb to the slaughter. I took the small piece of naan bread she offered and ate it in silence, despite being in a rush.
I used to talk straight to everyone, but now I don’t, thanks first to Kashgarians and then the British. I’ve learnt the beauty of being subtle and perhaps adding a bit of humour in whatever I say. Especially when I deliver a piece of bad news, sarcasm seems to soften the blow. By the way, can you guess if I’m concerned about machine translation and AI replacing the jobs of translators? As long as Kashgarians and the British continue to exist, I wouldn’t be too worried. I’d be more worried about them breaking AI or at least causing ChatGPT a mental breakdown.
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