Lisa Biagiotti | multimedia journalist

Queens Tribune: From Central Asia To A New Homeland

Gulchekhra alimova helps take care of a large swath of new Queens immigrants.

A poster with four American flags hangs on Gulchekhra Alimova’s apartment door. Clocks on the dining room wall keep two different times – one in New York and the other in Samarkand, Uzbekistan.

From her 17th-floor apartment in Lefrak City, Alimova runs Vatan Asia, Inc., a grassroots immigrant association that helps the growing number of Central Asian immigrants assimilate into American life.

Since she established the non-profit organization in 2003, it has grown to approximately 25 active members and more than 100 volunteers. Alimova has become the inadvertent go-to person for Central Asian immigrant needs. She said Vatan Asia, which translates to “Homeland Asia” in Uzbek, has a network of about 5,000 in New York and 9,000 across the U.S. Alimova said she will now seek city grants or government sponsorship for her association.

“They are like my sisters and brothers, my small country in America,” said Alimova. “It doesn’t matter what ethnicity or religion, we are like one family.”

When she came to the United States in 1999, Alimova, 55, said she had no help. Because of the group’s diverse religions and ethnicities, she found no one mosque, church or organization that covered the needs of Central Asian immigrants, who come from the former Soviet Union countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

“Friends and friends of friends asked me how to [find a] job, money, find apartment, pay rent, and [cope with] depression,” said Alimova, who is an elderly caretaker and published poet.
“My friends send me so many people,” she said. “I went to my job for one day and my husband said there were 39 messages for me.”

Alimova said she has picked up Central Asian immigrants at the airport and has regularly opened the guest room of her three-bedroom apartment to them.

“When they arrive here they expect solidarity,” said Alimova, who worked as an English language teacher in Uzbekistan. “I know several families who returned because they didn’t have jobs and language skills, so I try to give them the right direction.”

She even has her children, Jaohiva Sadi, 22, and Hislatjon (John) Sadi, 16, serve as interpreters – they both speak Persian, Russian, Uzbek, and English. They accompany immigrants to the Uzbekistan and Tajikistan consulates and to the social security office in Jamaica. They said they often help immigrants fill out Section 8 housing or food stamp applications.

“We don’t sleep,” said Sadi Khamrokulov, Alimova’s husband, who was a pediatrician in Uzbekistan and now works as a home care attendant. “They call 24 hours a day, at 11:00, 12:00, 1:00 for any emergency.”

Many Central Asians help each other individually, utilizing personal and professional networks, according to Rafis Abazov, a Columbia University professor who has written extensively on Central Asian cultures.

Central Asians are a relatively new, but growing, American immigrant group, which began arriving in the U.S. in the late 1990s, according to Sam Kliger, the founder of the Research Institute for New Americans (RINA), a think tank for the Russian-speaking community in the U.S. Kliger is also the director of Russian Jewish community affairs at the American Jewish Council.

“It is not only because they are new or fresh that they don’t have a host organization specifically targeting them,” said Kliger. “They don’t trust any government or non-governmental organization.”
A recent RINA survey of immigrants from the former Soviet Union showed low levels of government trust, with trust of spouses below 30 percent and trust of doctors below 15 percent.

“But the good news is that as time passes, they adjust to the American lifestyle,” said Kliger. “They start to self-organize because this is the best way to improve their common goals.”

Alimova said it is now time for her to seek government grants. Her personal investment in Vatan Asia has cost her up to $5,000 – to organize Uzbek, Tajik, American, and Muslim holiday parties (with sometimes up to 40 people in her apartment), to help immigrants with application fees and to finance her monthly community newsletter, Vatan.

“I want to help people, but I pay rent, too, and should make money for my family,” said Alimova. “I want the government to help me to open a center.”

Ravshan Pulatov, 56, went to high school with Alimova in Samarkand, but 25 years had elapsed until she found him an apartment in Lefrak City five years ago. He now serves as Vatan Asia’s vice-president.
“We’re getting more people coming here,” said Pulatov, through an interpreter. “To not lose our culture, tradition, we need a place to go, talk, meet, and eat.”

“Gulchekhra is our direction,” said Pulatov. “She knows the rules and what an immigrant needs. Without her, we would be lost.”

From the balcony of her apartment, Alimova has a view of Manhattan, five bridges and the planes circling in and out of LaGuardia Airport.

“We only have this apartment,” said Alimova. “But it’s not enough.”

Queens Chronicle: Teens trace their roots at Bukharian Museum

Teens Trace Their Roots At Bukharian Museum
By Lisa Biagiotti
Chronicle Contributor

(Lisa Biagiotti) Visitors Michael Yakubov and Gabriel Khaimov don traditional Bukharian garb.

Aron Aronov ends internships at his Bukharian Jewish Museum in Elmhurst in a most unorthodox way — inverting himself and walking on his hands.

He begins this ritual by sandwiching himself between a 400-year-old deerskin Torah and racks of silk robes — relics of a rich Bukhori culture lost in time and place in Central Asia, but still alive in Queens.

“I walk on my hands to be in shape, to be with my museum,” explained Aronov, 69, the museum’s creator and executive director, who guides tours, curates the four-room exhibit and even vacuums the carpets.
This is not a traditional museum with daily hours of operation. Admission is free, but the museum is open by appointment only, because Aronov works full-time as a community liaison and translator at New York Association for New Americans.

In 2003, he and Yuriy Sadykov, the museum’s president, moved a collection of over 2,000 items — including gold embroidered tapestries, musical instruments, framed portraits of rabbis, matriarchs and merchants, Bukhori language books, Soviet money and cooking instruments — out of the basement of Aronov’s Rego Park home.

Lev Leviev, a prominent Bukharian billionaire diamond cutter, offered space rent-free on the sixth-story of his private Jewish school, the Queens Gymnasia.

“We have successfully immigrated into American society,” Aronov said. “(Now) we are trying to preserve our Bukharian identity.”

Today, there appears to be increasing interest by youths in their heritage. Every Monday night, seven teenagers from Forest Hills High School file in through the museum’s white metal gate on Gymnasia’s top floor. They are midway through an eight-week internship program at the museum, where they are learning about their ancestral identity and preparing to guide tours.

“There are many people (who) say they don’t care (because) we’re in America now,” said Dina Yusupova, 16, adding that her Bukharian culture thrives in New York, as opposed to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where her family migrated from two years ago.

Of the 300,000 Bukharian Jews worldwide, roughly 40,000 to 50,000 live in Queens — far more than in Central Asia, according to Aronov. For more than two millennia, the Bukharian Jews practiced the traditions of the Torah, but lived mainly among Muslims in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, speaking Bukhori, a Farsi dialect.

Feeling geographically and culturally isolated in Central Asia, the community eventually began migrating away from the region, primarily to Israel and America.

“A lot of (teenagers) don’t know why they are called Bukharian, or where they came from,” said Zhanna Beyl, of Jewish Child Care Association, a non-profit group that sponsors the internship program.

Beyl says she’s constantly receiving questions — like, “My parents are from Uzbekistan, I was born in Israel, what am I?” — from teenagers searching for a better understanding of their cultural identity.

And the many of the students are constantly searching. Some take weekly language classes with Imanuel Rybakov, 24, a Bukhori language instructor who guides tours in Aronov’s absence. As president of the 100-member Association of Bukharian Jewish Youth, Rybakov runs the youth group’s newspaper, Achdut, and also manages its Web site (www.bjews.com), where he posts online Bukhori language lessons.
In the densely packed museum, Aronov sits with his interns pouring over the treasures he has collected and quizzing them on topics ranging from the route between Jerusalem and Central Asia to the reason that Bukharians make round matzah.

“There (are) not too many of us,” said Liron Babishov, 16, a Bukharian, who was born in Israel. He plans to preserve his culture by going to a Bukharian synagogue, eating Bukharian food and trying to learn the language.

The interns draped scarves around their heads and handled antiquated objects, like an outdoor water vessel, that they said jogged memories of their grandparents’ kitchens and yards in the old world.

The session ended with one of Aranov’s unique lessons in tour guiding: How to end your tours — preferably upside down. He then performed his characteristic handstand, and the interns followed his lead.

The Bukharian Jewish Museum is on the sixth floor of Gymnasia, located at 60-05 Woodhaven Blvd., For more information, call Aron Aronov at (718) 897-4124.