Heading to O’Hare airport by cab, we hit a wall of traffic. The driver recommends dropping me off at a train station. He’d heard me speaking in Spanish and asks me where I am from. I say Cuba, he says Somalia. I ask him how he likes the Chicago winters and he says he goes to Dubai for the winters to visit his mother who is also exiled. He says he can’t visit his country or he’ll be shot. As I get out I say I look forward to the day when he and I can both visit our homelands. He laughs. As I write this on a train in Chicago headed to a plane to Los Angeles I have tears in my eyes.