By Toto Imperatore
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Among the nights of my childhood, the ones when childhood was real were those at which mom tucked me in bed to sleep, and dad came in, kissed me on my forehead and wished me: "dream with little angels". It wasn't every night, because dad used to work until late and he often arrived home when I was already asleep. But at those "full service" nigths the whole meaning of childhood, of being a child, was to fall asleep under the protecting ceiling of my home, tucked in by mom, with my forehead anointed by dad's kiss and that omen of dreaming with the little angels slowly vanishing in my ears.
Four a.m. is an ambiguous border between today and tomorrow or maybe between yesterday and today, it is not clear. To my eyes, Buenos Aires does not look these days the same it did in my childhood. At 4 a.m. streets become sort of a huge bedroom for hundreds of homeless ("people in street situation", according to the politically correct, anesthetic euphemism). Some are jobless cardboard collectors who have just finished their work and lain down by the side of their loaded carts, waiting for sunrise to make their way back to their distant homes. But most do not have any other home than the openess of the hostile streets, which at that hour are empty. Many of them are children. Then, what this picture shows cannot be surprising, except for the fact that it happens right at the Republic Square that brackets the Obelisc, the heart of downtown Buenos Aires. These three little kids have chosen to sleep at the center of the tile yard, on a grill through which the subway's warmth breathes out.
I was lucky that the image is not neat. I was told that, if the children's faces had been recognizeable, I might have been sued and punished. That is because they are minors and, when publishing their identity, I would have violated their rights --rights the law protects. It does not look like that, does it? ... Sad nonsense! When I saw them I thought of the little angels to which my dad entrusted my dreams. Who wished these kids they dreamed with little angels a while ago, when they went to sleep? Nobody for sure. Maybe they cannot even dream with little angels, because they are little angels themselves. Sleeping is the most vulnerable situation a human being can be in. Not having a home is the most vulnerable situation a child can be in. A child sleeping in the streets is the most vulnerable of the angels.
I post this picture so that I, you, all of us, dream with little angels from now on. So that night after night the politicians, all the officials both of our Federal Government and of the Government of Buenos Aires City where scenes like this take place everyday, dream with little angels. With these little angels. With all the little angels like these who are left unprotected. Should that dream disturb us, disturb them, so that no single night we would skip dreaming with little angels.
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