What Makes America Great.

On Wednesday I sat on the A train on my way from Queens to Manhattan. Across from me sat a young mother with her baby boy. Both of them were laughing and clapping along with a Muslim, Uzbek woman who had arrived late the night before, setting foot in the West for the very first time. They spoke not a word in common — this young American, Black mother and her son, and this sixty-something Uzbek lady — but their connection was instantaneous. The boy, Levi, one day shy of his first birthday, smiled broadly at the Uzbek woman when we first sat down, and within less than a minute she had crossed over to sit next to him.

Later, on the same long train to Manhattan, this Uzbek woman struck up a language-less conversation with another woman. This time the subject was a tiny dog that the woman had inside a mesh carrying bag. The dog wore a rhinestone collar. It was produced from the bag and proudly shown. Smiles were exchanged.

This trend would continue throughout a thoroughly tourist day in New York: Uzbek woman meets stranger, and laughter, photos, smiles ensue. Heads are shaken in happy disbelief that strangers could become friends so quickly.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the year 2000, I joined the United States Peace Corps and was sent to serve in the former Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan. Picture a map of the world in your mind; the part you have a hard time filling in is likely Central Asia, where Uzbekistan sits, surrounded by ‘stans. I was sent to a small town in the far east of the…