Interview Abide Abbas, 27 years old, residing in Turkey since 2015. Interview conducted in May 2019

Two months ago, while I was surfing the Internet, I came across an image showing the vicinity of the Grand Mosque in my hometown of Shixo (Wusu in Chinese). This mosque is supposed to be situated in a Hui Muslim neighborhood in Shixo, but from the image I could see that it had been totally demolished. The once recognizable minarets of the mosque can no longer be seen. I could not believe my eyes, so I kept on opening and re-opening the image. The two recognizable shops next to the mosque are exactly the way they were; however, the mosque itself is gone. Seeing an image like this is like the feeling one gets when losing a mother, so tragic, painful and traumatizing. Should I accept or reject this reality that is right before my eyes? I lost myself. I wept looking at the “Mosque-less” image with a history spanning more than a hundred years. It is as if the mosque had never been built. It has now been wiped out. I was saying to myself “curse the CCP.” I did not realize the value of this mosque until it was taken away from me. I decided to immediately get onto Google to try and find the mosque. When I eventually did, I was met with both before and after destruction images of the mosque. The differences in the images were immense. I could not control myself and my phone fell out of my hands I knew I had to accept this tough reality. After receiving this news, I felt that I needed to find out exactly when the mosque was destroyed. I did as much digging as I could, and I found that this mosque was demolished in 2017. At that time, I was studying at al-Azhar University in Egypt and the Chinese police arrested my father. The rest of my family deleted me from the social media app WeChat to protect them from arrest because of their association with me. The Grand Mosque was always such a precious place. The Athan, or call to prayer, could easily be heard at home. The distance from my house to the mosque was approximately 500 meters. Whether it was going to school or going on an errand, I would pass the mosque many times every day. Near the mosque is a small bazaar, with restaurants, a bakery, grocers, an ice-cream parlor, a newsagent, a spice store. Almost everything could be found there. As soon as the Athan was called, everyone would be eager to go and leave together. People conversed in front of the mosque and I can imagine the atmosphere of that place even now.