Nepalese in Queens Anxiously Waiting to Hear From Relatives After Quake
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Version 0 of 1. Under a low, pointed ceiling in the attic office of Sherpa Kyidug Hall in Elmhurst, Queens, Dendi Sherpa waited for his mother’s voice on the other end of the cellphone. Nothing. He tried again, as the hour reached midnight at her home in Katmandu, Nepal. Still nothing. Trying not to make too much of the silence, Mr. Sherpa slipped on a pair of gardening gloves and went back to watering the grass. In Nepalese restaurants and community centers in Queens, which is one of the fastest-growing diaspora communities in the United States, eyes were fixed on television screens on Saturday as the death toll from a devastating earthquake near Katmandu kept rising. A good word from home briefly steadied the nerves of Nepalese immigrants here. But the 7,500 miles that separates them from their friends and family weighed heavily, producing pangs of helplessness as they refreshed Facebook pages and listened for ringing cellphones. His eyes dark and sleepless, Mr. Sherpa recounted how he learned moments earlier that a friend’s wife had been killed. “We’re sort of here, but our mind is in Nepal,” Mr. Sherpa said. Adding to his worry were the very factors that had sent him from Nepal to Queens eight years ago — political instability, poor infrastructure — which were now compounding the threat to those who had stayed behind. “The government will be providing very little help,” he said. “That’s the experience we had for our whole life.” Many Nepalese began leaving in the mid-1990s amid political turmoil, and were drawn to Queens by bustling blocks filled with Tibetan, Indian and Bhutanese businesses. About 5,000 have settled in Queens, according to the 2010 census, a figure that experts say captures only a fraction of the true count. “Look at that,” said Hari Acharyu, the owner of Delhi Heights in Jackson Heights, nodding toward a television on Saturday as CNN reported a new casualty count, and then an even higher tally. His wife and young children recently returned to Nepal for a visit. He heard from them on Saturday. His mother’s home in Katmandu, he had learned, had collapsed while she was out. The last he spoke to his mother, Mr. Acharyu said, they were heading to a grassy field to build a tent for the night. Two of his childhood friends had not been so lucky. He learned on Facebook that they were dead. “I’m not concentrating today,” he said, standing near heated trays of rice and chicken as he viewed images on his phone of streets cleaved in two and four-story buildings tilting over. “My mind is disturbed today.” At the nearby Laliguras Restaurant, Tirtha Gurung leaned over a plate of steaming potatoes next to his young daughter Tirsana. They had immigrated to Queens five years ago for better jobs and more money, but the devastation of the earthquake suddenly made all that distance painful. “The feeling is very bad, very terrible,” Mr. Gurung said. “We cannot help now. Nothing.” Ang Chhiring Sherpa, the editor of The Everest Times in Queens, a newspaper for the Nepalese community, said that while people knew their homes were constructed using primitive materials, they did not make too much of warnings from geologists about earthquakes. “Normally in our country, we don’t have that kind of technology,” he said. “We don’t have that kind of expertise for the natural disasters.” Mr. Sherpa, who has reached the summit of Mount Everest, still had not heard from several fellow climbers who were on the mountain. On a sun-soaked corner in Elmhurst, as news of victims started filtering in, several men turned to comforting a friend who learned that his family had died. “It’s just going to take some time to really know exactly how many people have been killed, how many are wounded, and the loss of property and so forth,” said Tara Niraula, a Nepalese community leader. Sherpa Kyidug Hall is home to the United Sherpa Association, and Ang J. Sherpa sent messages through the group’s Facebook page, seeking information about family members. He typed a request for donations. (Many Sherpas, who are an ethnic group from high in the Himalayas in eastern Nepal, use the surname.) Outside, Dendi Sherpa was readying the garden for upcoming events, a task given greater urgency by the mourners he said would be coming to the hall to pray. As he waited for word from home, a row of Nepalese prayer flags rippled above him. “As the wind blows, the wind will carry the prayers,” he said. |