Get out of the country? And go where?

“Get out of my country!” the middleaged white woman screamed at me and my brown skin. It was 2 a.m. one night in November 2018. We were inside a crowded pizza restaurant in, of all places, Palo Alto, Calif.

I’d heard the same message a month earlier from another fellow American in central California. But, somehow, when it happened in blue Palo Alto I was disoriented. Donald Trump’s America suddenly felt inescapable.

As someone born and raised in this country, I’ve always felt deeply loyal to the United States. My father was born in India and my mother in Iran, but they met and fell in love in College Station, Texas. There is a divisive history of violence between the home countries and religions of my parents and, as a result, I’ve always viewed America as a special setting where a family like mine could exist.

I was born and now work in beautiful New England. My family celebrates traditional U.S. holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. As much as I enjoy Iranian and Indian cuisine, I'd select a cheeseburger for my last meal on earth. Most of my life I feel like a typical American.

Following Donald Trump’s ascendance to the presidency, I’ve felt a palpable increase of xenophobia and racial hatred across the United States. Bigotry came out of the shadows in ways I didn’t expect. And, although I can pretend that being rejected by other Americans doesn’t bother me, it does. It hurts a lot.

Back in the Palo Alto pizza restaurant, a few Indian men advised me with words of peace and patience. “Let her have this,” they urged me. I understood the sentiments. A year earlier, “Get out of my country,” was yelled towards two Indian men before they were publicly shot in Kansas.

Since that night in Palo Alto, I’ve thought a lot about what that woman said. I confess that, since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, I’ve also thought a lot about leaving this country. Each time I envision leaving, I’m confronted with the confounding question of where I would go. There is no country where my ethnic makeup is the popular one, or even a common one. My sister is the only person I know that shares my heritage.

The woman in Palo Alto made me think harder than ever before about my place in America and America’s place in me. She drove me to confront lingering doubts. She served as a thunderstorm before clouds finally pass. She made me see clearly: America is my home. This country is the only home I’ve ever known and, for all its imperfections, it’s given me and my immigrant parents everything. America might be the only place on earth for a family like mine and that is exactly the place I want to be. In Palo Alto, it was my Americanness that pushed me to stand up to that woman and her racism. I would gladly do it again.

This country is the only home I’ve ever known and, for all its imperfections, it’s given me and my immigrant parents everything.