All I’ve ever known about Myanmar has been from the news: democracy advocates silenced with bullets; opposition politicians imprisoned by the government; soldiers opening a new campaign to oppress ethnic minorities. But in June, eating noodles with lemongrass broth at a rented high-school cafeteria in Queens, I finally got to see Myanmar as something else: a homeland, a people. Myo Moe, a photographer who grew up in Yangon, when its name was Rangoon,
when the country was still Burma, invited me to the Moegyo Burmese Food Fair, a fund-raiser for Burmese orphans. ‘‘Here, our community is very tight,’’ she said. ‘‘We come from different backgrounds, but the food connects us — it’s how we’re related to each other. We can’t get it in any store, so when we have our food, we don’t even care about our backgrounds anymore.’’ It was a lovely, hopeful thing to hear about people who come from a place in the midst of a 60-year ethnic conflict.
Dozens of tables surrounded the room, a dizzying tour of the cuisine: There were slippery rice noodles with rich, puréed chickpea gravy; salads made from fermented tea leaves, darkly herbal and invigorating; crisp-fried pork belly and sweetly stewed livers; mohinga, a tart and savory fish soup that tasted somehow like toasted nuts; a thousand more funks and flavors, all made by volunteers. Myo brought falooda, a rosewater ice-cream float with chewy tapioca pearls and bites of custard, a treat with Indian parents and Persian ancestors.
Hundreds of people had gathered: families, extended families, made-up families, impromptu class reunions from decades ago and 8,000 miles away, foodies excitedly jabbing spoons into unfamiliar pleasures. I talked with a man named James Hsu, who had the air of a beloved, retired mayor. He showed me around, stopping at each table to introduce me to the dishes and the cooks, who ranged from housekeepers to doctors like himself. A Bamar, like the majority of the country, he was forced after medical school into a post in the conflict zone between the government and Karen rebels from Kayin State.
Underequipped and unprotected from rebel kidnappers, he and his wife decided to flee. For seven nights, they walked with their infant deeper into Kayin territory toward Thailand. For seven nights, Karen strangers took them in, fed them, let them wash and sleep. I asked him if he had been worried about staying in these people’s homes; wasn’t he the enemy? ‘‘No, the thing is, their problem is with the government and the army and their atrocities, not the regular people.’’ In gratitude, he returns to Karen refugee camps every year to volunteer, for weeks at a time.
From: The New York Times Magazine
