I'm back from an exhilarating week in Washington, D.C., still savoring the stories, the spirit, the shared conviviality of residents and visitors celebrating a milestone in our nation's history.
But the most profound message I've brought home comes from the cabdrivers who ferried me through the city's clogged streets.
Abass from Afghanistan. Mohammed from Israel. Kofi from Ghana. Abdel from Morocco.
Their stories were a window into the kind of hardship, pain and suffering most Americans will never see. Their success owes much to our country's generosity.
And they left me thinking not about politics or race or what's happening on Wall Street, but about how blessed I am to have been born at this time, in this nation.
It was a long cab ride from Dulles International Airport to my hotel near the National Mall. The river of brake lights on the freeway gave me a comfortable sense of familiarity and a chance to talk to Abass Murshaidi, a refugee from Afghanistan.
Like millions of his countrymen, he fled to Pakistan in the 1980s during the Soviet miliary occupation of his country. He was 19 and would spend the next seven years as a refugee, trying to get to America. "I kept getting turned down, again and again. But I would not stop trying," he said.
He learned English and penned long letters of appeal, and was finally allowed to immigrate. Now he is married, has a house in suburban Virginia and arranges his hours driving a cab so he can be home in the mornings with his two young children.
He still broods over the years he lost in Pakistan -- unable to work, attend school, see his family. But he has a citizen's pride in his adopted country. Barack Obama's victory is "a gift to my children," he said. "They can grow up to be anything they want to be. Here, now, I really believe it."
The next night I rode with Mohammed, a tough-talking native of Jerusalem. He's been here 20 years and was amazed at how many foreign visitors came to witness our inauguration.
He let me know how battered our reputation abroad has been. "Outside of the U.S, you were hated. . . . for your arrogance and bullying. Now, I'm picking up people at the airport from Europe and they are smiling, celebrating.
"This is more important to them than to you," he told me. This is America redeemed. "All over the world. It changes everything."
