They were Uighurs from western China. After a long train of persecutions, their father, an engineer, had been rounded up and sent to a concentration camp (Ilham’s phrasing, which Laks construed as Ilham not knowing English very well until Laks learned more). The father had not been heard from in a long time. The rest of the family had fled, and—wisely—kept fleeing, until they had fallen in with some Tibetans who knew how to get across the LAC, and ended up here in Chandigarh.