10 to six, yesterday evening, dinner on the roof interrupted by explosive sounds, so the usual question arises: firecrackers or gun-shots? On this occasion, after a week of loud cracking celebrations of mothers, the answer is the second one. Mattia goes with Michele&Sam to the roof's wall (we're high and far enough, no real danger), from where they can see people in the alleys below going back indoor. We hear about ten shots, then another round of ten, then nothing. It sounded to us as if they were coming from behind the last houses in an alley a couple of blocks away from our building and actually there are other people on their roofs watching in that direction. Michele and Sam ask whether it's another police operation against the gangs, but this time it's only "baddies" shooting each other and the saddest, most serious and hardest to explain aspect of it all is that the police won't come soon, or not at all: their presence is constant (we've got two policemen at the corner just under our place), but quite aimless, or at least it serves only to keep violence away from the main road, given that, as we can easily show our boys, those two are there right now, too... and there they stay, without budging, without any intention of moving less than two blocks down the road to do something or even only to check, just as if nothing had happened. The rumours go that it's not just fear or feeling powerless, but being on the gangs payroll, but that is still too hard to explain to M&S...
Anyway, once the shooting is over, life goes quickly back to normal, as around here all this is exactly so, normal.
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