From Central Asia To A New Homeland

From her seventeenth floor apartment in LeFrak City, Gulchekhra Alimova runs Vatan Asia, 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 over 100 volunteers. Alimova has become the inadvertent go-to person for Central Asian immigrant needs.

Alimova 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.

This story was published in the Queens Tribune.

Poet pens love note to LeFrak City

My City is LeFrak by Gulchekhra Alimova

My Home, my sweet Home
You are my skin and bone
You have big country tone
Canada, London and Rome

Look, how better life living
How blue-sky pool swimming
Food-Bazaar is shopping
Library is in my building

View from my room dining
Express Horace Harding
Garages and public parking
Looking, thinking, loving

I want you always shining
People are lucky smiling
I hope you never crying
Oh, pray God blessing

My romantic wide park
Be never short and dark
I wish always Good luck
Oh, my City is LeFrak

Gulchekhra Alimova is a poet living in LeFrak City. She is also the President of Vatan Asia, Inc., an immigrant association dedicated to Central Asians living in the U.S. Other poems by Alimova include I love you, America! and Forgive Me Please, My Lovely Lord.

Bukharian Jews celebrate Sukkot at Queens Gymnasia in Elmhurst

Wedged in a quiet alley, workers constructed a wooden frame with a latticed roof that stretched across back of the building.

In celebration of Sukkot, the seven-day Jewish festival that ended earlier this week, generations of Jews have built these temporary huts in backyards, or on porches. Like their ancestors who wandered the desert for 40 years in search of the Promised Land, they gather to eat, entertain and even sleep in these temporary dwellings.

It was no different this year at the Queens Gymnasia (a Russian term for secondary school) where Jewish students decorated the three-sided sukkah to honor Jewish identity, history and tradition.

The Queens Gymnasia in Elmhurst is a private, Orthodox school steeped in the Bukharian (Central Asian) Jewish culture. The school was founded in 2002 by Lev Leviev as a tuition-free, alternative to public school to address concerns of assimilation in New York and subsequent dilution of the Bukharian Jewish culture and traditions.