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       Sympathy for the Devil
       August 28, 2024
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       Written three days ago on an iPad, 
       while flying above France.
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  I have been pondering for a while whether to write about this
  or not. While preparing a list of things to write about in 
  the next 100 posts, this came second (right after the intro)
  so I guess I really felt the need to offload this.
  
  ”This” happened more than a year ago now. I was walking with
  my friend F back from the climbing gym to the Vauxhall tube
  station, a place we quickly learned to associate with drunk
  ppl, hobos, and pushers. I am usually not too concerned about
  that, aside from the fact that I always happen to be the one 
  they start talking to and then my friends have to pull me
  away from conversations before they get too deep.
  
  This time everyone’s attention was directed elsewhere. A man
  had just pushed a woman to the ground and was screaming at
  her: she had walked on some paintings he had left on the
  sidewalk and he wanted to make her pay for it. The woman was
  drunk and she was crying and screaming while moving away from
  him, her ass still on the ground.
  
  F and I were stuck, still trying to understand whether that
  was one of those everyday’s Vauxhall fights or something more
  serious, when a group of boys ran towards the scene and
  pushed the man away. The woman stood up and continued
  screaming at the man while he was still trying to understand
  what was happening. Things were fine now... Until they were
  not anymore.
  
  The boys continued pushing the man, then one of them hit
  him. Another one did the same. The man quickly moved from
  arguing with them to cowering away from them, an eye looking
  at his paintings left on the floor, the other following the
  boys who were making a circle around him. He was already far
  from the sidewalk now, into the street, cars honking around
  them.
  
  And then he was pushed again, down on the ground, in the
  middle of a road. The boys started kicking him. He was lying
  there, curled into a ball, a ball of meat kicked in turn by
  a team of four or five boys. He was not speaking anymore, or
  I could not hear him below the screams of the woman who was
  asking to hit him again and harder.
  
  And then I screamed: “Call the police!”
  
  This was enough to make then run away, proud of what they
  had done: defending a woman assaulted by a man, leaving him
  lying, beaten, in the middle of a road.
  
  I ran there, held his hand, told him not to move and that
  help was coming. I stayed with him, while people gathered
  around to assess situation, made phone calls, redirected the
  traffic, until help arrived. I then left, speechless at what
  I had witnessed, unable not to feel sympathy for someone who
  had, just few minutes before, committed a despicable act in
  front of my very eyes.