OPINION
Page 6 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
February 5, 2018
Volume 28 Number 3
February 5, 2018
ISSN: 1094-9453
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n Polo
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hakta and Yanuka’s apartment block is
hard to find at night. Harder still when
Oregon rain’s blurring your vision and East
Portland’s awful neon is distorting your windshield.
But really, the biggest reason their little
household is hard to find is on account of how far
they and their pretty babies live from River City’s
public-policy and business leaders. I mean this as
much a measure of social distance, as a matter of
actual miles.
To be clear — because clarity is necessary when
navigating winter nights — what follows is not an
essay on the disparities between Portland’s first-
world urban core and our outer eastside’s under-
development. Not at all. Not in the conventional
ways our policy and business leaders are already
adept at analyzing.
And to be fair — because sharing is so core to
those traditional communities living parallel to our
city’s robust mainstream — in trade for eight
minutes of reading, I offer three things Portland’s
ethnic streams bank in great abundance. Three
kinds of capital absolutely essential for happy
households, for healthy neighborhoods and nations.
Assets mainstream America likely longs for as
much as our ethnic streamers desire of our
dominant society’s political and financial assets.
We’re talking about fair trade.
My downtown colleague Joanne and I finally
found Yanuka and Bhakta’s place that night. The
night of their birthday party. Auspiciously, both
were born that day in their beloved Kingdom of
Bhutan. Less blessed was their king expelling their
entire minority community. Bhakta and Yanuka
were raised two countries over, in Nepal, in a
sprawling refugee hovel. Twenty-one years later a
generous United States of America accepted them
for resettlement.
From the moment their jumbo jet taxied to a stop
at PDX, an oddly asymmetrical alliance of deter-
mined East Portland ethnic associations and com-
munity organizations plus public agencies governed
from our town’s center, rapidly integrated them into
the accelerated life of our city. Despite consequently
lumpy outcomes, it’s all gone pretty well.
B
Precious cargo we carried here
I knocked at an apartment I thought was our
And to be fair, in trade for eight
minutes of reading, I offer three
things Portland’s ethnic streams
bank in great abundance .
friends’ place, but an Iraqi dad in a saggy white T
answered. With Arab hospitality typical in Raffa
and Aleppo and even in Sana’a, he opened wide his
household’s door. Joanne and I did a universal “so
sorry, sir” smile and reverse shuffle. He smiled
some more. So did we. Evidently, our birthday peo-
ple and their pretty kids had moved several doors
down.
Bhakta, sockless in rubber silapahs (slippers),
stepped outside waving his arms. In Old World
neighborhoods, back home and right here, news
radiates quicker than Xfinity’s tip-top speeds. And
surer than Mr. Trump’s tweets.
Once inside, heavenly Lotsampa curry scent
soothed us. Elegant elders and hardworking
parents and everyone’s squirrelly kids embraced us
as if we’re familia. Because in our bones and in
deeds, we are.
“We HAPPY you here,” Bhakta and Yanuka said
— well, not exactly said, because neither can hear,
which makes learning and speaking Nepali or
English hard. Real hard. “Happy you here” came
from Grandma Mangali, trying her best to be gay
though her lovely daughter just passed away,
leaving a grandbaby boy in her arms. And Grand-
ma’s translation came via kind teacher Shukun,
Continued on page 7
Opinions expressed in this newspaper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of this publication.