‘The Backstreets’ by Perhat Tursun (Review)

Today’s choice sees something a little different on the blog, with a trip to China, but not to the usual haunts.  We’re heading off to the west of the country, where we’ll encounter a new language as a writer tells of a clash of cultures in an enigmatic style.  He’ll be our guide through a region where fogs of many kinds, both literal and metaphorical, make it hard to work out exactly what’s going on – but then, you get the impression that this is exactly the point…

*****
Perhat Tursun’s The Backstreets: A Story from Xinjiang (translated by Darren Byler and Anonymous, review copy courtesy of Columbia University Press) is a short novel spent accompanying a man on a walk around the city of Ürümchi.  He’s a newly arrived office worker, and as his new employers have made it quite clear that there’s no point asking them for accommodation, he’s looking for somewhere to live, hunting an address in the maze of the city’s backstreets.

However, this short summary doesn’t even begin to bring across the feel of the book.  When the man leaves his office building, he’s plunged into a dense fog (identified in an early footnote as smog), an obscuring veil that hides anything more than a few metres away from him.  He wanders the city streets, with strangers occasionally appearing and then disappearing into the miasma, and the further he walks, the more futile his search for a place to rest his head seems.  For a man like him, there is simply no resting place in what has become a foreign and hostile city.

It’s impossible to read The Backstreets without having the Uyghur context firmly in mind, and even more so when we learn from Byler’s excellent introduction of the disappearance of the writer (and of the anonymous co-translator).  Through scenes such as flashbacks to the protagonist’s years of study in Beijing, or the reactions of people he asks for directions during his search, we’re shown how his mere physical appearance is enough to mark him as an outsider, and provoke severe consequences.

The novel moves seamlessly between a number of strands as the man switches between various memories whilst pounding the streets.  He occasionally looks back to his years in Beijing, a city he and his fellow students never explore, a mere backdrop to his classes, but more often he thinks about his new office, and the indignities he faces there.  A prominent figure is a severe supervisor, whose smiling face only covers the loathing he feels for the Uyghur new arrival.  An example of how the man is treated is the humiliation of his being forced to write out a document over and over because of errors he makes, both in Mandarin and in his native language, as the supervisor revels in finding the mistakes.

Happier memories are those of his home in the country, a place very different to the one he finds himself in now.  We’re shown a slower, more peaceful life, with blue skies, summer heat and the joys of nature.  As the novel progresses, we learn more about a slowly unfolding relationship with a neighbouring girl, and these warm memories help sustain the man in his current quest.

These memories stand out out all the more when contrasted with the backstreets of the city, a maze full of rubbish, filth and smells.  There are hints of sex everywhere the man goes, such as when he sees a woman walking out of a public toilet, then perceives the pungent pang of sperm in the air.  These scenes are reminiscent of the work of  Wolfgang Hilbig with their focus on the seedier side of life, and the search for something lost.

The story is put together wonderfully, moving effortlessly between the dreamscape of the fogbound backstreets and the man’s memories, and while it’s lazy writing to simply throw names around, it’s almost inevitable here.  It’s difficult not to mention Franz Kafka’s name at some point given the worker’s seemingly impossible journey, and the introduction also mentions Albert Camus, in particular La Peste for its focus on ideology and national identity.  Perhaps a less obvious comparison is that of Korean writer Jung Young-Moon for the way the writer allows the thoughts of his protagonist to flow:

When the shape of a man suddenly appeared in the fog and came close to me, I tried to ask him for directions, but when I paused he immediately quickened his steps and passed me.  It seemed as though he intuited what I wanted and intentionally avoided me.  So after he passed me, I didn’t want to call after him.  Immediately following this, another tall and listing man appeared.  So I didn’t need to call that first person to stop, I just asked the second one.
p.25 (Columbia University Press, 2022)

Overall, The Backstreets is excellently paced, comprising short sections that never overstay their welcome, slipping from present to past and back.

Beneath it all, there’s the knowledge of the hardship, the atrocities, even, that the Uyghurs face, making the wanderer’s repeated refrain even more pathetic:

I don’t know anyone in this strange city, so it’s impossible for me to be friends or enemies with anyone. (p.64)

Alas, it’s not enough to keep to yourself when your very appearance gives you away, and we see that while he may not want to be an enemy to anyone, others think rather differently.  The longer his search continues, the more violent the reactions to his polite requests, and the more unlikely it becomes that he’ll ever find a small corner of the city he can call his own.

Tursun’s a writer I’d never heard of before, so I’m very glad the publisher reached out to offer me a copy of The Backstreets, an excellent work and a pleasure to read.  In a relatively short novel, the writer manages to express a people’s plight wrapped up in a story of a walk, and in the pollution that surrounds the walker:

Now the fog was slowly flowing like filthy water in a ditch along the narrow street.  The shapes of people were floating past each other like debris in the water, with a slow but shivering force.  The lights of cars were like red tissues floating in the water or decomposing rags moving slowly through space.  I felt like I would choke in the sewage of this road. (pp.13/4)

Sadly, the writer is now lost in an even thicker administrative haze – here’s hoping he finds his way out to enjoy more days of sunshine…