I’m Noah Schoen, and I’m Aliza Becker and this is October 27th, a podcast about the October 27th, 2018 synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. Aliza and I co-founded an oral history project that recorded over 100 interviews with local Jews and non-Jews about their life stories and reflections on the shooting. Our interviewees taught us so much and we’ve created this podcast to share their insights with you. This is October 27th. 

Over and over again, the Torah reiterates the obligation to help foreigners: “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” It’s a central thread of Jewish identity, amplified by a long history of expulsion, persecution, and displacement.

In Pittsburgh, many refugees are resettled through Jewish Family and Community Services. Among them are a large number of Bhutanese refugees—ethnic Nepali minorities who were expelled from their country in a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing. Because so many Bhutanese have been supported by Jewish Family and Community Services, they have strong ties to Pittsburgh’s Jewish community. 

Upendra Dahal is a Bhutanese refugee community leader. He’s worked closely with many Jewish leaders, and in this interview he reflects on the strength of that bond.  

Upendra Dahal: My name is Upendra Dahal. I came from Bhutan. It’s officially called a Buddhist country because the rulers, the political elites are Buddhist, but there are a lot of Hindus, too. So, it is a country well-regulated, well-controlled by absolute monarch.
And it's a small country, small population. I think even I would say it is less than a million population. And it is in the pocket of India, because mostly it depends on India for all its infrastructure. But still Bhutan successfully maintains its unique cultural identity. They did not allow foreign influence in the country. We never watched televisions when we were in Bhutan, because they were not allowed. But my memory of Bhutan was very lovely, when I was a small kid. 

Our house was very close to a river. And it is a quiet village. There was one main road. We had like five acres of land. And my school was maybe two kilometers away from my home. I used to walk bare feet, no shoes. And yah, it is quite a different type of life. 
Despite our cultural differences, we lived in so much harmony. We loved our kings and it was such a beautiful time. 

Things started changing rapidly after the late 80s. The regime got alarmed. They got insecure, so they started devising different ways to cut down on our population size in the south where we lived.

There used to be communication in English and Nepali at one time, but after the 90’s, the communication used to come only in Dzongkha. Nobody could understand in the south. Even in the north, not everybody could understand that language. It was just a language of the ruling elites, which were like 15% of the total population who had all the control. 
They used their new law to make a lot of people non-citizens overnight. They broke the families. Like in the family, they had one person as a citizen, then they would make a spouse as a non-citizen. That person who is a non-citizen has to leave the country. Now the whole family has to leave. 

So, so many administrative measures were designed in the 80s and the 90s that led to a mass demonstration against the government in 1990. But the movement could not sustain. The leaders were arrested, and they closed all the schools in the south. And they started using forced labor in the camps. After that, people started leaving the country en masse, because they make situations inside the country so horrible for the people.

So they left for India. But India did not give us shelter there. Because Nepal had more goodwill towards us, so they gave us shelter, at least. And then, as people came in more and more big numbers, the UN bodies came in and then they started refugee camps in eastern Nepal.

Nepal's political situation was very volatile. And we didn't have much freedom because we are refugees, but we had access to news. So, we got into the whole world of information. 

Staying in Nepal, the biggest positive side was our political education, I would say. 
It is not a great time otherwise. Everything is slow in the refugee camp, because you want to escape that situation. It is psychologically suffocating. You never thought that life would be ended in a refugee camp like that where you had to leave everything behind—your land, your house, and whole history—and every day felt like equal to one year.

Becker: How long were you in the refugee camp? 

Dahal: I lived fifteen years in the refugee camps from 1993 to 2008. And suddenly, in 2007 came the news that we might get an opportunity to get resettled in other countries. And people were so frustrated of waiting, waiting, and waiting and the younger generation don't want to wait any longer. They want to start a new life. 

And the older generation, like our parents, they cannot forget Bhutan. They always wanted to go back. They want to reclaim their land, their house—they lost everything. And the parents and the grandparents, they had the living memory. They were born there, they were raised there, and they love their country, their neighborhood. They cannot forget it.  And the younger generation didn’t have a real living memory. So as a result, when the talk about getting resettled started, the older people and the younger people in the families had a conflict. 

Now the younger people want to move on with their life, have a state of their own. Whereas older people, "No, we don't want to go, we are not comfortable.” 

People are mostly worried about whether they will be able to practice their religion and culture—whether they would be able to get the food they want to eat. And sometimes there were groups in the refugee camps who were opposed to resettlement in the West. They just spread false rumors: “You have to eat beef, and you have to eat this and that." Right, Hindus don't eat beef, that's why. So those are some of the fears that political groups played on us. 

And eventually the parents and grandparents, they had to accept for the sake of their children, and they finally accompanied us. Nobody in our life thought about being in the West and becoming an American–never, ever, never ever. And then 2008 we started people moving to the West. 

When we reached here we feel our life changed radically. And for me—I even had a master's degree from Nepal, so going into an entry-level job was a big frustration. And many people with good education they were so frustrated and depressed that they committed suicide. So we had the mental illnesses, because they thought their education is no use here. 

When somebody who is having zero education and the one who has a master's degree goes to the same work for the same pay per hour—that was so unaccepted. 
Almost one year, I worked like that. I worked in a commercial laundry facility operating a machine. Every day I used to remember about my past. What was the use of an education? My co-workers, they had no education at all, and I'm here with a degree doing the same thing.  But I always felt, "Okay, better days might come. This is not the end of the world." 

And I went to graduate school. I did my MBA, and then I worked as a project director in a non-profit in the Bhutanese community organization for four years. And after that I am self-employed as an insurance agent.

Becker: Did you have a relationship with the Jewish community when you got here? 

Dahal: So in the beginning our first point of contact, in terms of institution, was Catholic Charities. Catholic Charities moved out and Jewish Family was the biggest one. Our people were resettled by them and that's the way that we came in touch with one another. 
So, later on more families came to Pittsburgh and the population size is growing from a few families in 2008, maybe ten or fifteen families. Now we estimate the population to be close to 10,000 in Pittsburgh—Bhutanese. And then when I started working for my Bhutanese community as a volunteer, then we became more close, because the Jewish Family started giving us guidance. So they really cared about us. 

And through organization to organization, we build better relationships with the community. They help us grow and prosper. And even now, the organization is running so well. It’s one of the most thriving, most successful community based-organizations in the Bhutanese community in America, I would say. 

Jewish community is the big one behind us all the time. So they came to our events. We used to go to their events. It became a very interlinked community over time. 
And people saw that. They thought the Jewish community is here to bring in illegal immigrants from outside. Especially for the right-wing media— that's how it is portrayed as.The Jewish Family became a target of hatred as an institution, and that is a scary, scary thing for us. That culminated in that shooting in October 27th, 2018. That was the ugly result of that type of disinformation and hatred that continued for years. 

And we thought that attack on Jewish community was attack on everyone, especially the refugees and the Bhutanese community, because the guy lived in that neighborhood where the mostly Bhutanese lived. He lived in that deep pockets of the same neighborhood where most of our people lived. 

He was probably familiar with our faces, and I felt that in Bhutan, when we were living there.  Men of the Bhutan government, looking into our face, they would feel the feeling of hatred. That's how I think he also felt. He saw many of our community faces in that neighborhood every day, and—he probably felt that he hated seeing each and every one of us around him. And the scariest thing is that you do not know who is your neighbor. You do not know where the next will happen.

The shooter knew that we were resettled by the Jewish Family. We felt that the refugees in general, we were actually attacked and targeted for the first time in Pittsburgh. 
We thought that Pittsburgh was the most friendly city. We felt proud about this city. But when it happened in our own city, in our own town—that was really, really scary. 

And of course, you have a bias based on how you are brought up, based on what you consume, what you read online. And based on that, he acted on that philosophy saying that refugees are a threat to the country, or the Jewish community is a threat to the country—the country that he says that belongs to him. We have such people everywhere. 
We were treated the same way in Bhutan, too. That's why we became refugees. The result of that philosophy or thought process has an impact in the whole community, in the whole world.

And I don't know how it will end. We say education, but I don't know how we'll carry out that education— each and every individual. We can only contain, but I don't think we’ll be able to eliminate totally 100%. And moreover, when it came out the truth about the motives of the shooter. And it was even more scary for us. So, that was too much to bear, and both in terms of grief, also in terms of the fear it unleashed in the community. 

Becker: Can you elaborate? 

Dahal: I would say the grief—mostly when I heard that most of the victims in the synagogue were elderly people who were in there for the morning service. That was very sad. And they had no direct part in resettlement, right. So, the general atmosphere was of fear. The fear gripped. Personally, I felt that there is no safe place for us anywhere— anywhere.  

I feel insecure in the sense that Bhutanese refugees or refugees in general cannot go back to their country of origin. And we are not accepted by Bhutan or Nepal or India—that's why we came in here. And we thought that the legal system and the dominant political culture did accept us in the beginning, but as things are changing rapidly since 2016, the communities of color like us and new immigrants do not feel that much secured. 
And I don't know which country is safer. I don’t know—for people. I personally don't think that there is any country on earth where there is 100% safety and security for anyone. 
I would advise my fellow community members, my family members to be always mindful and careful at the big gatherings. I would feel so scared about my own son just because of the school shootings. Because there’s nowhere to go living in the United States, right. This is my new country.

This land has no fault of its own. The rivers, the mountains, the valleys, it is not sinful. Only the people who are misguided, they are the ones who are committing it. And such misguided people are everywhere on earth. They are in Nepal, they are in Bhutan— they are everywhere. 

And there are also good people, a lot of good people. That's why we are able to get past this particular horrific incident, and we were able to come together, different communities in Pittsburgh: the Jewish community, Buddhist community, our community, the faith communities. And there was an outpouring of grief and support. And, I felt that the Jewish community felt that brotherhood—that connection. 

We know the Jewish history, and the Jewish community had suffered in the past, And now, they are in the forefront of helping the humanity get on track with their life in America.

So, I like to say that such incidents, when it happens against a particular community— community of color or LGBT communities or religious communities— I would stress on building relationships with everyone—wherever we live, wherever we go—learning from each other. 

Personally I felt that there is no place in the world that we can go and live peacefully where everybody loves everyone. I don't think that is possible. I think about heaven, right, And we can make that heaven only in a small setting, not in a big setting like a country. 

October 27th is written and hosted by Aliza Becker and Noah Schoen, and it’s produced and edited by Carly Rubin. We get administrative support from Tina Stanton Gonzalez of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and our closing theme is Tree of Life by Nefesh Mountain. 

If you want to support our work and the creation of more episodes like this one, you can make a donation at October27podcast.org where you’ll also find episode transcripts, a link to this full unedited interview, and more. That’s October27podcast.org. And lastly, thank you to all of the amazing Pittsburghers who shared their stories for the Meanings of October 27th Oral History Project. We’re so grateful for your trust and your generosity.