This just in from Milan — and it’s too good to keep to myself even if it didn’t happen in Venice.
A 32-year-old Somali man is in Italy illegally. This isn’t news. He is arrested and found guilty of the crime of “clandestinity” (being illegal) and slapped with an expulsion order. Normal so far. A large number of illegal immigrants who are arrested and sentenced to return immediately to their country of origin just put the document in their scrapbook and keep on with whatever they were doing.
So he doesn’t leave Italy. But he does need to do something. So one night he makes his way into somebody’s apartment to steal stuff. For reasons difficult to determine from where I am, instead of nabbing some valuables and getting the hoo out of there, he is overcome with somnolence and sits/lies down on the sofa and falls asleep.
I grant that it’s easy enough to fall asleep on the sofa at night, especially in the dark (which I presume the room was) even if you’re not watching Formula One racing (oh wait — people think that’s exciting) or a bridge tournament or a Japanese political debate.
But in any case, Morpheus sneaks up on him like a thief in the night and out he goes.
Meanwhile, the homeowner has heard something suspicious (snoring?), discovers the interloper and calls the police, who appear in a trice.
The patrol-people’s first question is not “What the hoo are you doing here?” It’s “May we see some ID please.”
So he reaches into his pocket or scrapbook and gives them a piece of paper. Sure enough, it’s got his name on it. It’s an expulsion order. I have no idea how long he’d had it, but it’s not a document you’d normally consider flashing to somebody in a uniform, given that if you do have one you’re not supposed to be lollygagging around the country that doesn’t want you, you’re at least supposed to be at the airport pretending to look for a flight to somewhere else.
In any case, you’re not supposed to be busy committing yet another crime.
And then I ask myself, “How exactly do you manage to fall asleep when you’re in somebody else’s house committing a crime?” I mean, it’s not as if he turned on the TV and started watching a bridge tournament.
So now I presume he has another expulsion order, possibly one that categorizes his status a bit more forcefully. To go in his scrapbook.