“During this time, I have witnessed many of the so-called great national events; but, in my heart, they left little impression…but there was one small matter which did mean something to me.”

– Lu Xun, A Call to Arms, “A Small Matter”

The mother was short, but she wore strappy, light blue wedges to give herself an extra inch. The blue wedges matched her airy blue tulle dress, which rippled against the jeans of her son as she held his hand. She carried a black purse on her left shoulder and a small shopping bag in her right hand. Her face was hidden behind a pink hijab, decorated with letters, seemingly chosen at random from the English language, an alphabet soup hijab.

Her son dressed in an outfit that one might see at a less than formal church occasion. His green shirt was collared but not tucked in, and his jeans were baggy and faded. He carried a toy .357 in his left hand, the one not held by his mother, as they walked up one of the main shopping streets in Kashgar’s old town.

I was out to meet someone. The two of them were walking ahead of me. They were boringly normal, so much so that I almost did not notice them. But as we passed a small stall along the left of the street, the boy tugged his mother towards them. She stopped but did not look at the toys, despite her son’s fervent encouragement. He poured over the contents in the small display boxes that had been set up on the street, his toy gun hanging by his side in his limp arm.

He pulled at his mom, encouraging her to at least look at the toys, but to no avail. His mother did not budge. She continued looking ahead. The shopkeeper said something to the boy, but the mother was having none of it. She pulled at him, and they were off, continuing up the street, passing a man selling shoes displayed on cardboard boxes beneath an umbrella. The boy looked back toward the toys as the mother said something soothingly to him.

I observed this small matter on an afternoon three days after Eid Al Fitr, one of the most important Muslim holidays, four days after violent riots left possibly upwards of one hundred people dead in a nearby city and two days after an ethno-religious assassination had happened approximately seven hundred feet from the spot where this photo was taken.

All of these events, I will talk about in detail in later posts. Certainly, these great national events warrant more discussion. But before that, I want to establish that the people living here are just that, people. Though I have been reporting on issues of ethnic strife and larger matters, mostly what we see is the churn of everyday life.

This episode struck me specifically because the boy reminded me so much of myself, wanting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures. The boy was wearing clothes that my mother might have picked out for me. Like me, he was desperate to get his mother to buy him a toy. Like my mother, his thought better of it. Watching the boy wanting yet not getting the toy, I realized that the line separating me from him was really arbitrary. I just happened to be born in the right place, and he in the wrong place.