It was hot here in Torino again today.  Of course that isn’t news: it’s summer after all.  After the heat of the mid-afternoon had started to dissipate, I went for a very long walk through the leafy paths that meander along the Po River and through an expansive park near my apartment, The Valentino Park.  All sorts of people were enjoying the late afternoon.  What lawns exist were crunchy brown from lack of rain and an abundance of pedestrian traffic. I saw a man fishing in the Po and people from age 6 months to 100 taking in the afternoon and leafy surroundings.

However, it wasn’t all peaceful.

I spent last winter living in Tuscany and one of the first things I noticed was the large number of African immigrants hawking selfie sticks and other cheap goods in and around Florence in particular.  The newspapers and international magazines are full of stories detailing the desperate conditions in Africa that induce the poor immigrants to go to hell and back to migrate here.

This is not the place to detail Italian/African race relations and I am obviously no authority.  But the heat produced an angry argument today between four men in their twenties or thirties in Valentino park.  Unfortunately, I can sense tension like a seasoned pro; I actually am one, sad to say.  I felt the tension between these four young men long before I was close enough as a passerby to hear the words.

I didn’t linger long enough in the vicinity of the arguing men to find out exactly what the topic of disagreement was: but it was clear that it was territorial and the Italian and African men were screaming at each other, arms dangling at their sides.  All parties had their chests plumped up and were chest butting each other; the two main protagonists were an Italian and an African and the other two men were acting like consiglieres.

Two things jumped out at me as I hurriedly walked away.  #1 I was rushing away because if this were an argument in the United States, I have no doubt a gun would have been pulled and shots fired.  A very sad, but true, statement about my home country.

#2 The men were fighting in English.  The African men didn’t speak English perfectly and neither did the Italians.  But it was their common language.

Nervous people all around kept glancing at and then averting their eyes from the scene.  As a tourist and a female, I felt the best thing for me to do was get the hell out of dodge.  But I keep thinking about it and my heart does go out to the immigrants. What a world, what a world.