A moment that changed me: I found a forbidden novel – it led to a dangerous, lasting love | Uyghurs

Many people have a book that changes their life. For me and my wife, one book in particular changed our destinies for ever. We have been in love since we were teenagers, and today we are happily married – all because I accidentally discovered a forbidden novel in someone else’s house.

It was a hot summer’s evening in 2009, in Kumul, Xinjiang. I was 16 and my father insisted I accompany him to visit a distant relative, where they would spend hours chatting about the old days and feasting as if they hadn’t eaten in years. As the well-behaved teenager I tried to be, I sat politely, nodding at their stories and pretending to absorb their “life lessons”, attempting to hide my boredom. The living room, with its small windows and bright lighting, was unbearable.

Desperate to escape, I asked for permission to explore the host’s study, a room lined with hundreds of books. As I browsed the neatly arranged shelves, a seven-volume Uyghur novel caught my eye. Hidden in a corner, perhaps intentionally concealed, it seemed to call to me. I asked if I could borrow it. The host lowered his voice. “It’s a well-written book about the brutalities of the Cultural Revolution,” he said quietly. “It’s banned by the government. Don’t show it to anyone, don’t take it to school, and return it when you’re done.” It was titled Leyighan Bulaq (The Muddy Spring) and written by the famous Uyghur novelist Jalalidin Băhram.

We arrived home around midnight, but curiosity consumed me. I opened the first volume and couldn’t stop reading. I became obsessed with its characters – teachers in a rural area of my homeland – who endured forced labour, assimilation and political indoctrination. Centred on three young couples, the story was all about friendship, love and resilience.

Despite my promise, I decided to share the book with another bookworm in my class – Rabia, my closest academic rival and secret friend. We exchanged handwritten notes about books, our only way of “talking” in a conservative Muslim town where friendships between boys and girls were unwelcome. Rabia was very shy, avoiding me at school, but the notebooks we wrote to each other in created a private world.

I couldn’t keep this precious novel from her. Ignoring all warnings, I smuggled it into school and slipped it into her bag along with my notebook. “The friendship in this book is so pure,” I wrote. “I cherish our friendship the same way.”

We had exchanged notes before, but this time something shifted, something innocent yet dangerous emerged: love. Through our notes, we talked about the characters and events, gradually blending our own feelings into the discussions, writing as though we ourselves were characters in the story. One day, citing the book’s main characters, I wrote: “I think I have feelings for you, just as Hikmet had for Gulziba.” And with that single sentence, our love story began.

About a year later, I left home to study abroad. Our relationship went through ups and downs but survived through phone calls and online messages. But for us to reunite and build a life, Rabia needed a passport, which was a nearly impossible task as the Xinjiang authorities tightly control the issuing of passports for Uyghurs. After being denied the chance to sit a university entrance exam because she wore a headscarf – another everyday indignity Uyghurs endured as the Chinese government tightened its social control in the region – she moved to Beijing for a language course.

That move turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it allowed her to bypass strict passport controls in our home town. Four years after I left home, she finally reached Istanbul, where I was studying, in 2014, and we got married in 2020. Many of our loved ones could not attend, including Rabia’s parents and siblings, and my father.

Most newly married couples are happy. We were, too, but we were also forced into exile as horrible things were happening back home. As part of Xi Jinping’s “strike hard” campaign, Chinese authorities arbitrarily detained hundreds of thousands of Uyghur people without due process, including my father.

Because the Chinese government punishes Uyghurs for contacting others abroad, we could not share important milestones of our lives with loved ones. When our two-year-old daughter died in November 2023 due to an incurable illness, we buried her – along with all the great memories she could have had with her grandparents back in our homeland – at a graveyard in Istanbul.

In late 2024, we moved to London and opened a new chapter of our lives. As we unpacked, we sorted through our old school notebooks – over a dozen of them – and sat reading the letters we had written to each other in secret more than a decade earlier. We realised that, like the plot of Leyighan Bulaq, our lives have always been full of tragedy but also friendship, love and resilience. We celebrate the love story we have created and the wounds we have healed together, all thanks to a forbidden book.