'I am so worried'

Fear, anxiety grip local Burmese as they wait, search for news on relatives after deadly cyclone

On the outskirts of Rangoon, Burma, yesterday, residents rebuilt their homes after cyclone Nargis. (KHIN MAUNG WIN/AFP/Getty Images)

By day, Thawdar Kyaw is the gracious owner of Yoma Burmese Restaurant in Allston, serving cups of tea from silver pots and delicacies like green mango salad.

But every night since a cyclone slammed into her homeland Saturday, she has awakened bolt upright in fear. Her thoughts flash to her brother's small wooden house on the Rangoon River and the giant tropical tree that towered menacingly above.

His telephone rings, but no one answers.

"I don't know what to do," the slight mother of two, her hair pulled into a hasty ponytail, said yesterday at the restaurant as her smile disappeared. "I am so worried."

Anxiety swept through the community of several thousand Burmese living in Boston, Quincy, and beyond as they made frantic calls and constantly checked e-mail for signs that their relatives were safe.

Frustrated that the remote, military-led nation has been cut off from the outside world, Burmese refugees from here to New York quizzed one another about what they had heard and organized fund-raisers. Yoma is holding one Saturday, and a nearby church plans a fund-raiser Sunday.

With overwhelming silence from the Southeast Asian nation, many Burmese residents here turned to one another for comfort.

Kaye Lin, a 21-year-old senior at Boston University who was born in Burma, said she and her parents are worried about the fate of her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins there.

For Lin, the worry mixed with pangs of guilt: Unlike her relatives, she and her two brothers are in college and living middle-class lives with a house on Long Island. Because her father is the oldest of seven children, his mother gave him money to bring his family here when Lin was 6 years old.

"It's so unfair because I have the rest of my cousins and the rest of my family back there," she said. "I wish I could help them somehow."

At Yoma restaurant, Kyaw and others battled their emotions. She was reluctant to break away from the constant media reports at home, but her relatives in Burma depend on the $200 she sends every month. Now, they would need it even more.

So by noon, she was waiting tables, describing green tea leaf salad to a party of six in the half-empty restaurant. In the back, her husband prepared dishes while wearing a "Free Burma" T-shirt.

A bullet is still lodged in his back from gunfights with government troops, the former rebel said.

"When our people are free, I will take it out," said Sai Kyaw, showing a dimpled scar. He fled in 1988 after a government crackdown left thousands dead, and later came to the United States.

Eleven years later, he sent for his wife, who was his best friend's sister. Now they have two children. In Burma, she has two sisters and a brother, three nephews, and one niece. He has four brothers and four sisters.

Zaw Wynn Tan, a construction worker, stopped by to say that his sister in Rangoon was safe. But there was no word from his best friend, Maung Maung Htwe, a pastor who had lived for nearly a decade in Boston. Last week, he was visiting near an area devastated by the storm.

"He was supposed to be back home this Monday," Tan said, looking exhausted. "If he's in that area, I don't know if he's OK or not."

Anger mingled with fear as reports poured in that the military-led junta failed to warn residents about the cyclone.

Thawdar Kyaw said the recovery would be long. In Burma, people clear roads by hand. Even before the storm, treatable illnesses could become fatal because of lack of medical care. "I'm worried about all my people," she said. "I know how they're feeling. They are hopeless. They are helpless."

Burmese refugees make up the largest group of Asian refugees being admitted to the United States - with 6,000 arriving last fiscal year and 10,000 more expected this year. Massachusetts resettled 126 refugees last year and 59 so far this year in Springfield and Worcester.

A state official raised concerns that the storm, coupled with government repression, could cause a spike in refugees. "Will it result in even more refugees wanting to leave the country because of further political repression?" asked Richard Chacón, executive director of the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants, which is responsible for refugee resettlement in the state. "That has to be a really big concern for all of us."

Maria Sacchetti can be reached at msacchetti@globe.com.