ARTICLE: I Am a Stranger in This World

One day, a friend asked me a question that seemed deceptively simple:

 “Where do you truly belong?”

At first, I smiled, expecting an easy answer. Yet the question lingered in the air long after it had been spoken. It settled somewhere deep inside me, pressing against old memories and forgotten wounds. For days—perhaps even years—I have been searching for an answer.

For a long time, I have reflected on the concepts of belonging and estrangement. Sociologists may define them through theories; psychologists may explain them through research. But for me, they have never been abstract ideas or academic definitions. They have been quiet companions walking beside me throughout my life.

I have come to know them through longing.

I have come to know them through distance.

And above all, I have come to know them through loss.

I choose to tell this story not through definitions or frameworks, but by weaving it with my own feelings—shaped by my past, my present, and the uncertain contours of my future.

My first profound encounter with estrangement began when I left the land of my childhood and moved to Beijing for university.

Strangely enough, it was also there that I first tasted the sweetness of belonging. There are contradictions in every human heart.

On certain evenings, I would stand by the window of my fourteenth-floor dormitory room and stare into the endless sea of lights stretching across the city. Beijing glittered beneath me like another universe. Towering skyscrapers pierced the darkness, their windows glowing like distant stars.

Yet every time I looked at them, an inexplicable sadness rose inside me. The city was magnificent, but it was not mine.

I often imagined my future there. I dreamed of graduating, finding work, building a career, and creating a life. I imagined putting down roots in that enormous metropolis. But every dream ended the same way: something inside me remained untethered. No matter how hard I tried, I could not persuade my heart to settle.

From time to time, listening to my friends, I would hear them say:

“The moment I step through the university gates, I immediately feel safe—as though I were in my own home.”

After completing my undergraduate studies, I stayed at the same university at the same departament to pursue a master’s degree. During that period, my room moved to the tenth floor. It was slightly lower than before, yet the view beyond the glass remained unchanged. Across the horizon stood those same towering skyscrapers—silent, indifferent structures that, with every glance, seemed to unsettle my inner peace.

I have always considered daydreaming to be one of the most peaceful things a person can do, and so I frequently slipped back into those thoughts. Yet even after all those years, I never found a true bond tying me to that place.

During my time in Beijing, I explored the city thoroughly and learned its corners well. I met many people and built enduring friendships. But the sense of belonging I was looking for simply was not there.

Knowing a place well, or having lived there for years, does not make someone a native. Feeling that you truly belong is harder still. When I spoke with Uyghur people who had lived in Beijing for thirty or forty years, I often heard the same refrain, repeated with a strange mixture of acceptance and longing:

“We have worked here, our home is here, our lives are here. Even our children were born and raised here. But we are not from here. When we retire, we will return to our homeland, East Turkestan (Xinjiang), and live out our days there.”

Many of the Uyghur lecturers at our university, as well as Uyghurs working in other institutions, kept a home in Urumqi. They all dreamed of retiring there.

At the time, I arrived at a conclusion of my own: that nowhere can give a person a genuine sense of belonging except the place where they were born and raised. I believed people remained tethered to their birthplace, their family, and their familiar circle—that it was the only place where they would never feel like strangers.

Yet life would soon show me that this conclusion was incomplete.

A Fractured Journey

In July 2009, while travelling back from Beijing to East Turkestan (Xinjiang) for the summer break, we learned that unrest had broken out in Urumqi. A few friends messaged me urgently: “Don’t go to Urumqi. Get off the train in Turpan and transfer from there to get home.” Not long after, the internet was cut off, leaving us completely blind to what was happening.

The next afternoon, the train reached Turpan. I disembarked with a few friends and boarded a bus to continue home.

Turpan was actually closer to my home district, but my journey always passed through Urumqi, where I would spend a single night before continuing onward. It had become a familiar rhythm, almost a quiet ritual of return.

This time, we had even planned a few days of travel together—delicate, hopeful plans, like sketches drawn lightly in the margins of youth.

When we stepped off the train in Turpan, we immediately sensed that something was wrong. We saw the anxiety written on people’s faces, but since we were unaware of the scale of events, we paid it little mind.

The bus left Turpan and headed towards Hejing County. About an hour later, we were stopped at a checkpoint crowded with military vehicles and armoured units. There was no warning, no explanation—only the abrupt interruption of our journey.

For a brief moment, no one spoke. Then the driver, visibly unsettled, collected our phones and identity cards. His hands trembled slightly, as though even he did not fully understand what he was taking part in.

Without meeting anyone’s gaze, he told us to step off the bus.

When we stepped outside, the world no longer felt familiar.

Armed soldiers and police officers divided us into two lines—men on one side, women on the other—with a cold, methodical precision that left no room for questions. More than thirty passengers stood exposed beneath a merciless sun. The heat was oppressive, pressing down on us until standing still felt like exhausting work. The glare was so intense that looking up was painful, as if the light itself were testing us.

Then the questioning began.

One by one, the soldiers asked the same questions: where had we come from, and where were we going? Together with four friends, I explained that we were students in Beijing and had stepped off the train only an hour earlier. Our answers felt fragile, almost insignificant against the weight of the silence surrounding us.

Still, not everyone was allowed to continue. A few passengers without identification were taken from the bus. No explanation was offered; no one said where they were being taken. They were simply led away until they disappeared from sight, leaving behind only dust, heat, and a quiet that seemed to close in behind them, as if the road itself had erased their presence.

We were finally allowed to continue after long, exhausting checks.

What I witnessed that day felt like the first faint shadow of darker times to come. I did not fully realise it then—I was simply afraid. The journey continued, but an unspoken weight remained inside me, something I could neither name nor shake off.

Throughout the summer holiday, we watched endless news reports on television condemning the events. Accusations echoed daily from the screens, and bleak rumours reached us from every side. It became a holiday filled with unease and sorrow, where even rest felt uncertain. Days passed, and it seemed as if the color of life itself was slowly fading, leaving everything slightly dimmer and colder than before.

And yet, the real storm had not even begun.

The Beijing ID

After the summer break, I needed to take a train from Urumqi back to Beijing. From my home district of Hejing, I boarded an overnight bus, arriving at the Urumqi Nian Zi Gu bus station in the early hours of the morning. From there, I planned to take a taxi, rest for a few hours at a relative’s house, and then continue to the train station.

As our taxi reached the street where the Urumqi International Grand Bazaar is located, we were stopped by special police forces. A uniformed officer approached the vehicle and informed us that the street was closed to traffic until nine in the morning. He told us we would have to take a detour.

As my relative’s house was very close, I tried to explain the situation calmly. I told him I was a student, that I had travelled through the night, and that after only a few hours of rest I would be setting out on another long journey. The officer asked for my identification. He examined it for a moment, looked up, and said:

“Alright, you’re carrying a Beijing ID. You may pass.”

We were allowed through, but none of the vehicles behind us were permitted to continue.

In that brief moment, something painful rose within me. The driver beside me, relieved that things had gone smoothly, looked at my Beijing ID with a kind of admiration. Yet I felt no joy. On the contrary, I was struck by a bitter irony.

The realization that one’s identity could lose its value in one’s own homeland, while a document tied to another city could suddenly grant privilege, cut deeply. Perhaps the card in my hand had simplified my journey that day. But at the same time, it had alienated me from the place where I was born and raised.

For the first time, I felt like a stranger in the land of my own childhood. That day wounded my sense of belonging profoundly.

Goodbye to Beijing

Years passed. In a sense, I had become almost a local—not only of the university, but of Beijing itself. After my undergraduate degree, I continued directly into a master’s programme. Nine years in total.

It is easy to say, yet those nine years carried countless stories, friendships, dreams, and struggles—memories too vast to hold comfortably, yet slowly taking root in the heart like a lifetime gently unfolding.

And still, one thing never changed: each time I walked through the campus gates, I would take a deep breath as if returning home, a quiet ease settling within me that I could never fully explain. That feeling had a name: belonging. It was an invisible thread, silent yet sustaining, that kept me grounded through the years. It served as a refuge against uncertainty.

I still remember with striking clarity the day I completed my master’s thesis and finished my graduation procedures. I picked up my suitcase and walked out of the university gate.

At the western entrance of the campus, I stopped and looked back. It felt as though the sense of belonging that had accompanied me for so many years remained standing there, quietly waving goodbye. Only then did I feel the full weight of leaving it behind.

Afterwards, due to work, I lived near the university for another six months. Yet nothing was the same. Each time I entered the campus, I no longer felt like a part of it; I felt like a passing guest who had arrived by chance. What I once called “home” was turning into an echo preserved only in memory—a quiet page folded neatly into the past.

In October 2016, I arrived in Ankara, Türkiye, with grand dreams and great expectations.

Nestled on the quiet outskirts of Ankara, far from the city’s restless pulse, Hacettepe University’s Beytepe Campus became my sanctuary. I believed I was about to live some of the happiest days of my life.

Then came devastating news from my family, and in an instant, everything shattered.

I learned that my mother, my father, and my eldest brother had been taken to internment camps. My world turned upside down. Yet I knew I had to hold on to something—some fragile thread of hope—in order to survive. I had no intention of abandoning my studies or the life I had begun to build.

When my passport expired, I was unable to renew my residence permit in Türkiye. For a time, I possessed no official government document to prove who I was or where I came from. The only valid identification I held was my student ID card.

At times, police officers would stop me for identity checks. In those moments, my student card became my only safeguard—fragile and modest, yet the only bridge between myself and recognition; the only proof that I still existed within the system’s gaze.

I often had to explain why I lacked official papers. Yet I never complained. Most of the officers I encountered were kind-hearted people who had not lost their humanity. Sometimes, a few gentle words or sincere wishes were enough to ease the pain knotted in my throat.

For the first three years, I lived in a university dormitory before renting an apartment outside. However, none of those lodgings ever truly felt like home. The only place where I genuinely felt safe and at peace was the university campus itself. Whenever I passed through its gates, it felt as though an invisible burden was lifted from my shoulders.

I often said to my friends and professors:

“The moment I step through the university gates, I truly believe that nothing bad will happen to me.”

 This was not driven by emotion alone. The political pressures and uncertainties of those years fed that feeling. We heard whispers that Uyghurs living in Türkiye were being taken from their homes in the middle of the night and transferred to deportation centres. Because of my work in human rights, I knew I faced similar risks.

I was even given explicit warnings to cease my activities. During one peaceful demonstration, an official who had been monitoring us quietly noted that my student ID offered only temporary protection.

Perhaps that is why my bond with the university grew so strong. But it was never purely about safety; many beautiful things deepened my connection to the place:

• What I learned within its walls…
• The professors who shaped the way I thought…
• The friendships that carried me through difficult days…
• The experience of teaching the Uyghur language, and the students who entrusted me with their curiosity…
• The campus itself, where nature seemed to breathe alongside every pathway…
• The dogs that had become the joyful spirit of the university…

Among those dogs was the one I loved most—Şanslı, my companion for many years. (Sadly, Şanslı, who had become a symbol of affection for generations of students, lost her battle with cancer in September 2024. When I heard the news, I mourned for days. Losing her felt like saying goodbye to a family member found far from home.)

The campus cats, the deer, and so many other cherished memories slowly bound my heart to that place. In time, I came to love the university so deeply that I dreamed of staying on after graduation—building an academic career within the sanctuary that had protected me.

Unfortunately, life does not always move in harmony with our dreams.

In the summer of 2023, I defended my thesis and graduated. After completing the formalities, I was handed a document confirming that my affiliation with the university had officially ended.

It was only a small piece of paper, but what it made me feel was immense. It felt as though one of the final threads binding me to a place in this world had quietly snapped.

That day, I said to myself:

“Perhaps I will never belong anywhere again.”

From graduation until I left Türkiye in September 2024, I lived inside a vast emptiness. I found myself suspended between two worlds—unable to stay completely, yet unable to leave.

During my eight years in Türkiye, I was blessed with extraordinary friendships. Wherever I travelled across the country, I knew there were people ready to welcome me, homes with doors open without hesitation, and hearts that received me as their own.

However, kindness alone could not answer the question that haunted me. I was searching for something more than open doors; I longed for something tangible to bind me to the place where I lived—something that would allow me to say, without hesitation: This is where I belong.

Perhaps that something could have been citizenship. I pursued it with hope, but it never came.

When I arrived in Warsaw in September 2024, I had no idea whether I was stepping into a temporary chapter or the beginning of a permanent one.

Over the preceding two years, I had travelled through several European countries, visiting friends who had built new lives. Looking at them, I saw people who had quietly put down roots. Their lives had found a rhythm; their adopted countries had slowly become home.

What struck me even more was their children.

They never questioned where they belonged. Their sense of home was effortless, almost instinctive. The only places that stirred their curiosity were the distant homelands their parents spoke about—the faraway towns and villages where grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins still lived. Those places belonged to family folklore rather than their own memories.

Watching them, I realized how differently exile is experienced across generations. What remains an open wound for one generation often becomes nothing more than a cherished story for the next.

One day, I asked my students at the Uyghur Online Mother Tongue School: “What binds you to East Turkestan?”

Their answer was almost always the same: “Our relatives who are still there.”

Then I turned the question inward. What bound me to that land?

In truth, many things did. I was bound to it in my very bones and marrow. It was where I was born and raised; the land where my mother, father, siblings, and relatives lived. Every memory of my life—from early childhood until the day I left for university—belonged there.

It was once a place where everything felt familiar: its landscapes, its people, its animals. A homeland where nothing seemed foreign, and everything carried the quiet intimacy of recognition. It was also the soil where my grandmother and grandfather—who spent their lives waiting for my return during every summer and winter break—eventually fell into their eternal sleep without ever seeing me graduate. They rest there now, as if still waiting in silence.

So why had I spent so many years searching for a sense of belonging elsewhere in the world?

Now I must offer an answer that is both painful and undeniably true.

The Night of Departure

In September 2016, I left home for Türkiye. To catch my flight, I had to say goodbye to my family in the darkness of night and set out before dawn.

At that hour, the entire neighbourhood was asleep. Our neighbours and relatives knew I was leaving, but I did not go around to bid them farewell one by one.

Before leaving the house, I embraced my late grandmother tightly. How could I have known it would be our final embrace? As I stepped out of the door, I turned back one last time. I saw her hands lifted in prayer, trembling slightly. Even in the darkness, her tearful eyes were visible. I did not dare look again.

Then I embraced my mother. I held her as if trying to memorise her presence, kissed her cheeks, and breathed her in deeply, trying to preserve her warmth within me.

I hugged my father and my siblings. With trembling hands, my father gently stroked my head. He told me not to cry before a long journey, saying it was bad luck. Yet even as he spoke, his own voice broke.

In that moment, departure was no longer a simple act of leaving—it was a quiet fracturing of something far deeper than words could carry.

I embraced my six-month-old nephew one last time, drawing in the scent of his baby skin. Oblivious to everything, he slept peacefully, his breath soft and untroubled.

I could hardly bear to leave. For a brief moment, I wavered between staying and going, as if time itself had opened a crack through which I might step back into another life.

Then I tried to console myself: I would return in a few months for the winter break. If not then, surely in the summer. This separation would not last long. Wiping away my tears, I got into the car.

A question crossed my mind: If someone in my family had said, “Stay, don’t go,” would I have stayed?

I think I would have left anyway. They knew my dreams as well as I did, and even if it broke their hearts, they would never have asked me to abandon them. Throughout my life, they stood behind me like a mountain—silent, unwavering, immense.

Fading Maps and Lost Years

A full decade has passed since that night. A friend once said to me:

“If you wish to keep the memories of your past alive, close your eyes and try to redraw the house you grew up in, your neighbourhood, and its streets. Let the familiar faces rise again in your mind.”

I have tried to do this often. But ten years have gone by. The streets I once remembered in perfect detail now dissolve into mist whenever I close my eyes. I remember certain faces, but I have forgotten their voices. I remember houses, but I can no longer recall which corners they stood on.

When I try to redraw the map of my childhood neighbourhood, I can reach the beginning of a street, but I cannot follow it through. Every detail that fades feels like another strand of the thread binding me to my past quietly snapping.

Time distances us not only from people, but from our memories. At times, this terrifies me. I find myself thinking that I am on the verge of forgetting the way back to my own home.

So much has changed in these years; so many losses have been endured. Yet not for a single day have I forgotten what I left behind. At times, the longing becomes so heavy that I find it difficult to breathe—a physical ache settling deep in my heart. In those moments, I turn to old photographs and lose myself for hours among the pages of albums.

Yet I have come to realize that all my memories belong to a life that ended in 2016. Everything that tied me to that land belongs to that fixed moment in time.

When images of East Turkestan appear on my social media feed, I see familiar faces, streets, and landscapes. And yet, alongside them, I feel a profound sense of estrangement.

I see how much life there has changed—people’s daily habits, their everyday rhythms. I try to imagine myself within those images, but I no longer fit. Something essential no longer aligns, because what I miss is no longer there. What I long for is a time preserved only in memory.

My nephew, who was six months old when I left, is now nine. I missed his first steps, his first words, his first day at school. My younger brother has married and become a father; three new nephews have entered the world, yet they do not know me, nor have I ever held them. I do not even know their names.

My younger sister has completed her education and built a career, becoming a mature woman. But I was not there to be a sister to them. My mother and father have grown older—their hair turned white, their shoulders slightly stooped. I could not support them in their hardest moments, nor stand beside them in their happiest.

That is why I find myself whispering to my own heart:

I have become a stranger to my own home.

My sense of belonging remains tied to the past—but the past is now too distant to return to. For this reason, I sometimes feel as though I belong nowhere at all. I feel like a plant uprooted from its soil, left to wander without ground beneath its roots.

When I look back, I see a life that feels unbearably distant. When I look at the present, I struggle to find fragments of myself. And the future is a vast uncertainty. I find it difficult even to make long-term plans, living a life that can change direction at any moment.

Yet within this darkness, I am still searching for light.

To question where we belong is one of the most profound concerns of displaced communities. We all know where we come from. Each of us has a home left behind, a homeland, a history. Yet as the years pass, that sense of belonging shifts. We try to adapt to new places and build new lives, even as an invisible bond pulls us back. That bond neither allows us to fully sever ourselves from the past nor fully inhabit the present.

Recently, I read a book about living in the moment, and I asked myself:

“What do I gain by clinging to the past, by constantly questioning the present, or by drowning in anxiety about an uncertain future?”

The question shook me. For years, I had been trying to find where my sense of belonging lay, yet searching for the answer did not change my reality.

Yes, until ten years ago I had a good life—perhaps not perfect, but a good one. What followed was difficult. I lost much. I longed much. I waited much. And yet, despite everything, I remained standing.

Perhaps one day the identity card I carry will change. Perhaps I will gain citizenship in a country that offers me legal stability. But I am unsure whether I will ever find that deep, original sense of belonging again.

I once read a sentence that stayed with me:

“My body did not fit into the place I was born; my soul did not fit into the place I lived.”

If I were to describe my life in a single sentence, I could find nothing more fitting.

After all these years, I have come to understand that some questions have no answers; one simply learns to live with them. Perhaps I should stop insisting on belonging to a single place. Perhaps I must learn to become a citizen of the world.

After years of searching, one realizes that what we truly seek is not a country, a city, or a border, but a sense of peace carried within.

I have begun, slowly and deliberately, to let go of the questions that occupied my mind for so long. I have not found all the answers, and there are still missing pieces. Yet I can now say—without struggle or resistance, and with a quiet calm—that I have made peace with myself:

I am a stranger in this world, and I am learning, at last, how to live with that truth.