Every morning when I go for my long daily walk around the neighborhood, I see several Mexican gardeners hard at work cutting grass, blowing leaves and keeping the area nice and pleasant for me and my neighbors. They are usually hard at work and don’t even notice me when I quickly walk by them.

A few months ago, something changed. Right after Trump started talking about Mexicans as rapists and criminals, and “we need to build a wall to keep them out and protect ourselves”, I noticed that as I was walking by the Mexicans gardeners of my neighborhood, they would stop and look at me, as if they were trying to read my mind; “Does he think that I am a rapist and a criminal?”

And I would look at them with a big smile and say, “hola amigo buenos dias.”

You see, their stress and anxiety is very familiar to me. I was a student when the gang in Iran took over the US Embassy. And in a matter of days, all of a sudden, the Americans realized that there were tens of thousands of students from the hostage-taking land living among them on campuses and college towns. We were right there, living under their noses and they wanted to know who we were and what we thought about the chants, the flag burnings and the parade of the blind-folded Americans in front of the angry mobs and the world cameras.

There were also some violent acts against us, but in all, there was an overwhelming feeling of shame and helplessness that we all felt that made many of us unhappy and depressed. Here we were the guests of this great country, learning at their institutions, and enjoying a relatively quiet and comfortable lives, and on the other side of the world, our countrymen were doing such shameful acts to the innocent hostages.

Trump said whatever he wanted to say and did whatever he wanted to do to get elected and he did. But he left deep wounds. Not for a second, he thought about the Mexican kid that will be subjected to bullying in school, or the parents who have to worry about their kids’ safety when they walk to school. He never thought about the Mexicans that work all over this country in the kitchens, front yards or the fields. He didn’t care about the Mexican guys who skillfully put Koobideh on skewers at popular Iranian restaurants or make sushi at my favorite Japanese hangout. He just didn’t care.

We are better than this. America is better than this.

Picture: My Pomegranate Tree