Meeting the Chinese Enver in London

Enver Tohti

I tried to connect my tiny laptop to the internet but I couldn’t manage it. I called reception asking for help and a gentle voice told me that someone would come to my room and fix the problem. In less than a minute someone had indeed turned up to assist me. He was gentle and kind and I think he must have been around forty five years old and of Chinese origin. I like this about London: that you have the impression that you are living in five continents at once.

As he was fixing the problem, I glanced at his name badge on his uniform: Enver. For a moment a flash passed through my head, Is Enver a Chinese name?! I asked myself. I tried to forget about it but I couldn’t. It’s a name that has determined a considerable part of my life. I looked at it again: Enver. And I asked myself again, Is Enver a Chinese name? I made another effort to forget about it, in vain. I couldn’t resist the temptation to ask, ‘Excuse me, are you of Chinese origin?’ I asked him.
‘Yes,’ he replied gently
‘Excuse me for being indiscrete but is Enver a Chinese name?’ I asked again.
He smiled. ‘It’s a long story,’ he added. ‘My name comes from an Albanian dictator, Enver Hoxha’.

Enver Hoxha

At first, I thought he had learned that I was an Albanian writer and was playing with my nerves. I had travelled to London to talk about my book, The Short Border Handbook, which is about the Albania of Enver Hoxha and totalitarian borders. Now I was in the room on the 7th floor of a British Hotel, close to Thames on a rainy London afternoon and in front of me I had a Chinese guy named after Enver Hoxha. This was too much. I tried to recover. I asked him if I had heard right that he was called after Enver Hoxha. He nodded and, after recovering a bit, I explained to him why I was shocked. ‘I’m from Albania’ Ι said. It was his turn to be astonished. ‘Unbelievable,’ he said. ‘Unbelievable,’ I said. ‘Unbelievable,’ we said.

Then he began to tell me his life’s story and how he found himself with the name Enver. He was born in Xinjiang, in the Muslim region. He was born in 1963, when China and Albania were at the best point of their pure socialist love. At that time the radio in China – televisions had not yet reached China – used to talk all day long about Albania and Enver Hoxha, he continued. There was an explosion of the name Enver in China, especially among Chinese Muslims. When he was born, his parents wanted to be politically trendy and called him after Enver Hoxha. In his elementary school, out of a class of eighteen boys at least five of them were called Enver.

A Short Border Handbook

For a long time I have been obsessed with the idea of a trip to China. A mission to go there now and find the other Chinese Envers would be a good incentive. The other day we met again in the hall of the hotel. I gave my book to Enver and he told me his story. The painful story of a Muslim Chinese oppressed from the regime and abused by a British journalist who profited from him. In order to make a documentary, this journalist put Enver’s life in danger. Fortunately he managed to leave China.

He told me about his painful journey as a refugee in Turkey and afterwards in Britain, his feeling like a foreigner as a Chinese person in London, his struggle to survive, waiting for years for his refugee status to be recognized, his struggle to become a doctor in Britain, as he’d studied medicine in China and specialized in Istanbul. Talking about our journeys we forgot about Enver Hoxha. We felt much closer by our common syndrome: border syndrome...