Ghetto of Chicago

It’s a quiet night in the Italian Ghetto of Chicago, the West Side to be exact, in the 1940s. Carmolina is at her grandmother Doria’s and Doriana is in the kitchen with Sarah. Marco is sitting on the bed in his small bedroom, exhausted from work. Being an Italian American policeman is not an easy task. He’s tired of receiving such little respect from everyone and especially his coworkers. The thought makes him want to smoke a cigartette. It’s times like these that he has second thoughts about becoming a policeman in the first place. Maybe things would have been much easier if he would have just taken over his father’s store. His relationship with his father would definitely be a lot better anyway. But Marco does not regret what he has become. He’s proud of his new life and job and it provides enough for his family, which is most important. Feeling exhausted, Marco decides to go to bed early tonight and hopes that tomorrow will be less stressful than today.

In the middle of the night, Marco begins to have dreams that aren’t making sense but at the same time are very surreal. Marco is outside of a warehouse-type building, which seems to have been a victim of a disaster. He then sees a man walking out of the building toward him, uninjured. Marco has never seen this man before, but just by the looks of him he can tell he is Italian (tan skin, dark hair and eyes, short etc.) Actually, this guy looks like any other guy Marco has seen from his Italian neighborhood. And then the man came up to Marco and they had a conversation that regardless if this was “real,” Marco will never forget it.

“Ciao Marco,” the unidentified man greeted Marco in Italian. So Marco was right, he was Italian. Marco greeted the man in Italian as well but his English was stronger. He finds out that this man is Geremio, a worker from the destroyed factory. Geremio starts to give Marco the story of what had happened to him the day of the accident. “It was Good