When the news broke, Reza felt the air shift in the small Italian café where he worked as a dishwasher. Trump had won again. The chatter of locals turned uneasy, blending with the clatter of espresso cups and muttered curses in a language Reza still struggled to understand.

He didn’t care about politics—not really. His life had been simple once, back in Iran. But sanctions and whispers of war had turned simple into impossible, and Reza, like so many, left to chase a dream that felt like smoke in his hands.

That night, walking home in the drizzle, he felt the stares burn hotter than usual. “Foreigner,” a man hissed, shoving past him on the cobblestone street.

Reza’s heart sank. He knew what came next. He’d seen it the first time Trump rose to power—a surge of hate that bled across borders like spilled ink. Back then, he had hope. Now, it felt like drowning.

Two days later, it happened. Reza was walking to the bus stop when a gang of men cornered him. Their words were sharp, their fists sharper. "Go back to where you came from," one of them spat before leaving him crumpled on the ground.

He lay there for what felt like hours, the cold seeping into his bones, the rain washing his blood into the gutters. His phone buzzed in his pocket—a message from his sister back home: "Come back, Reza. Things will get better here. We miss you."

But there was no going back now.

When the café owner found him the next morning, Reza’s notebook was still in his pocket, open to a page where he’d scribbled, in broken Italian: “I only wanted to belong.”

The story made the local paper, a brief mention of a migrant lost to senseless violence. The café closed for a day in mourning, then reopened, the espresso machines hissing as the world moved on.

And Reza, a man who had dreamed of building a life far from home, became just another story buried in the noise of a fractured world.