lillistar

Thursday, October 27, 2005

commuter train, h 7.53 (the late train, quite empty and quiet), am reading my favorite sci-fi novel and trying to ignore the woman snoring and coughing next to me.
she is laying across two seats, and is covering herself with a small blanket. her cough is pretty ugly, and her snoring is even worse. i don´t think she sleeps on the trains, she would have chosen a longer distance train to spend the night on; this one only covers a 200 km stretch. nevertheless she is not in a very good shape.
she is black, and when two train cops walk past i am surprised that they do not stop.

5 minutes before my station.
the cops walk past again, this time thay stop, and one of them, tall and big, starts shouting at her to wake up, over and over again. he claps his hands in front of her face too, over and over.
for a moment i am paralysed by the violence of the scene on this quiet commuter train.
and then i explode, instinctively, and start shouting at the cop, telling him how awful he is and how does he dare treat people like that, completely losing it.
"what do you think you can do about how i behave?" he answers, with the worse shit face i have ever seen. he stands tall over me, looks down with surprise, anger and then contempt in his eyes. he knows his power, his strength and my and the womans´powerlessness in front of his uniform.
i can´t take being so small in front of him, so i stand up, and he still looks down at me, as i say something about reporting his behaviour, myself not very convinced about this.
"show me your i.d." he resonds.
i think about this for about 2 seconds, and remembering last time i refused to show an id to a cop, with my friend ending up spending the night inside with a resistance to pubblic official charge, i swiftly produce my i.d.
he writes down all my data.
in the mean time the other cop (playing nice cop) aks the woman for i.d. and for the right immigration papers. she produces all her documentation as well, and fortunately she seems to have everythig they want.
my station is approaching, i tell the cop who holds my i.d., he plays with it, gives it back to me one second before the train stops. as i walk down the corridor, he shouts after me: "´signora, go and protest as much as you like. we´ll see what good it does."
"VAFFANCULO" i scream
and i get off the train, adrenaline pumping, wanting nothig else but to brake his face with my hands.

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