The son honored his father’s words: Mirzat studied for five years at Xinjiang Medical University in Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in northwestern China. By the time Mirzat graduated, however, his parents had moved to Istanbul, where Abdusalam opened his own restaurant. Mirzat figured he would join them and start his career as a doctor — until he learned he’d need another six years of training in Turkey.
Mirzat moved anyway and performed odd jobs in Turkey: tour guide, translator, part-time businessman. But Mirzat also met Zulhayat Omer, five years his junior, and they became a couple, then husband and wife. One day in 2019, Mirzat realized, much to his horror, that his Chinese passport was set to expire. To an American, such a discovery might be a minor inconvenience.
But to Uyghur Muslims like Mirzat who have lived outside Xinjiang for years, returning to China to renew a passport was tantamount to a death sentence. In recent years, governments, nonprofits and news organizations have documented the systematic oppression of Uyghurs in “reeducation” centers, where prisoners are abused and brainwashed until they renounce everything dear to them, including their religion. China calls the campaign the “Sinicization” of Uyghur and other ethnic Muslim groups. Others call it genocide.
Mirzat didn’t want to end up like his best friend, who had lived in Turkey for several years before returning to China. The friend had just started a family when Chinese authorities picked him up. He’s been in prison for 15 years now. “I can’t believe it,” Mirzat told me.
So Mirzat and Zulhayat fled to the United States in 2019, eventually landing in Virginia, where they found a lawyer to help them apply for asylum. They were granted it last year, Mirzat said.
In his adopted country, Mirzat has found himself doing exactly what his father had warned him about all those years ago: working in a kitchen. He started by pulling noodles and preparing kebabs at Eerkins Uyghur Cuisine in Fairfax. Within a couple of years, Mirzat, 33, and Zulhayat, 28, launched their own place, Bostan Ugyhur Cuisine. Mirzat landed on the name Bostan — a Uyghur word that means “garden” in English, the owner says — because it was easy for Westerners to pronounce and spell. Unlike, say, Eerkins.
Yes, Mirzat Salam is a quick study.
Sitting one day at a table inside Bostan, extracting long, flat noodles from a platter of hot stew chicken, I was reflecting on the things that Mirzat and Zulhayat have had to learn — and let go — just to carve out a space for themselves in Northern Virginia. The English language, for starters. They knew little when they arrived. But they have also had to learn how to run a restaurant so that its many moving parts don’t create the kind of back-of-the-house chaos that led to two-hour waits for food in the early days of Bostan. They had to figure all this out while coming to grips with a basic truth: They might never return home again.
Their on-the-job education has led to this stark, imperfect, unfinished-but-beautiful tale of Uyghur food and culture. Nestled in a small shopping center next to Billy’s Deli and Cafe and a 7-Eleven, Bostan is a minimalist space, where traditional Uyghur music floats through the plain white dining room, its decor limited to a few framed prints and a cooler full of beverages in the corner. Often dressed in sweats, as if she has had to make a beeline from home to work, Zulhayat serves as the face of Bostan, both host and server. Mirzat leads the small kitchen crew, including Kenia Ilvvina Gutierrez-Acevedo, the cook dedicated to pulling noodles by hand.
Mirzat has taught Gutierrez-Acevedo how to prepare five kinds of noodles, each with its own characteristic texture, shape and chew. The strands coiled at the base of the lagmen, a signature Uyghur dish, unspool in long, winding threads, at once fresh and bouncy, perfect for the stir-fried beef and vegetables. By comparison, the noodles for the saozi are thinner and flatter, more absorbent for a broth invigorated with tomato paste, rice vinegar, soy sauce and much more. The thick ribbons for the cold-skin noodles are steamed and tinted yellow with food coloring; their striking hue matches the intensity of the vinegar and housemade chili oil drizzled atop the slivered cucumbers, chopped peanuts and spongy cubes of wheat gluten.
The kitchen makes its own beef-and-onion wontons for the chuchure, a small bowl of soup in which the submerged dumplings both enliven the beef broth and absorb its delicate, tomato-enhanced flavors. The wrappers for the manta dumplings, whether beef or a combination of beef and pumpkin, are fragile things, prone to split open to reveal their jumbled interiors. Uyghurs sometimes eat these bundles with a side of chili oil to amp up the flavor. I would take their lead.
Despite its name — and its implied promise of garden-fresh vegetables — Bostan is a meat-centric operation, reflecting the Central Asian and Middle Eastern cultures that have influenced Uyghur food. The kebabs feature chopped lamb or chicken, which are spiced and slipped onto skewers that are, in turn, placed directly over smoldering coals until the smoke, cumin and chili powder mingle irresistibly with the charred meat. The Kazan kebab entrees are slight variations in which pan-fried beef or lamb, fragrant with cumin, are spooned atop your choice of rice or naan, either of which becomes enriched with drippings. Bostan may not have much for vegetarians, but it does serve a sublime eggplant salad, the skin crisp and the interior lush, each bite animated with garlic and soy sauce.
On busy nights, the kitchen can still struggle to keep up with orders, especially on a weekday night when Bostan isn’t as staffed up as on the weekends. One recent Monday night, a friend and I waited an hour for our meals, which annoyed my buddy. He expressed his displeasure with a terse “it’s about time” as Zulhayat dropped off our dishes. I understood his frustration. I mean, I was hungry, too. But I also couldn’t get that worked up about it. The Uyghurs in general — and this fearless couple in particular — have experienced enough without needing to feel the sting of my American privilege.
3911 Langston Blvd., Arlington, Va., 703-527-2026; bostanuyghurcuisine.com.
Hours: 4 to 9:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday; 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Nearest Metro: Ballston-MU or Virginia Square-GMU, with a mile-plus walk to the restaurant.
Prices: $1 to $45 for all items on the menu.
