«Let’s go into the restaurant. Out of the corner of my eye I see the shutter of the paint shop opposite lowering and it seems to me like the eyelid of the reception closing, the eye of civilization that averts one’s gaze.” A bitter consideration, the result of an experience of a few minutes under the Two Towers and of a common trend also found outside the region.
The musician and photographer from Rovereto in Bologna
In Bologna, as a resident in the province of Trento, Marco Olivottowell-known musician, photographer and teacher originally from Rovereto, there were only a few hours left, time to say goodbye to his niece – who instead lives in the Emilian capital – and a dinner at the restaurant Hong Kong in via Zanardi, but this was enough to save him from an attempted attack, just before 8pm, a street trader of Pakistani origins; that is, to assist and intervene in a five-on-one match within a fruit shop and vegetables from the same street, right next to the restaurant.
The intervention to help an attacked trader
Five young people, teenagers, noticed for “the big mess” they made when passing in front of him, Olivotto said: «Time 30 seconds, sound of scuffle – he added –: the owner with a bar in his hand. The boys must have gone perhaps ten meters back, then one, the only Italian of the five, came closer again, delivering a strong kick to the shopkeeper. And two others rushed forward again.”
The group of very young people: «Five against one»
A scene that induced Olivotto to go to the rescue of the trader, not to remain indifferent to an affair that could have ended badly: «The bar in the hand is never beautiful» to see, he admitted as he continued to retrace the evening in Bologna on Thursday, but «not even a five against one” it is.
The story: “I managed to push them away”
He therefore tried to reject the young people with good manners, with words: “Guys, enough, go away”, he tried to persuade them, also counting on his own presence (a five against twoin any case disproportionate), but nothing to be done at first: «One of them made a further leap forward – continued Olivotto –, with another punch narrowly missing the shopkeeper’s face” who, in response, returned to brandishing the bar. It was then that the artist decided to try everything getting in the way: «The blue eye helps: I can cast a look as cold as ice, if necessary – he said seriously, but perhaps also to lighten things up a bit to himself -. “Try it and see what happens. I don’t recommend it to you. Don’t get hurt, okay?” They mulled it over in a split second the boys turned on their heel and left.
«In Bologna for my niece’s graduation»
“They wanted to steal some vegetables, they wanted me to give them to them,” said the owner while speaking with Olivotto; underneath him, shown with a finger, some crushed tomatoes. «We are not all the same», Olivotto told him in response, but the trader in turn replied: «No, but no one defends here», in a limping Italian. In this case, at least, some do. «She thanked me and I stayed a few more minutes, waiting for my granddaughter to arrive, to make sure the boys didn’t go back – concluded Olivotto -. That was my biggest fear.”
