Turin, Italy: Police stops young Senegalese boy at the train station: "Your bike is too beautiful, where did you steal it?"

The nightmare of Cheikh in Italy for three years: the bike had been offered to him by his Italian family to go to work, but he has to move around with the purchase receipt in his pocket to convince everyone that it is really his. 

"If I was white skin it would not happen"

His friends carry the bus subscription ticket in their wallets; but Cheikh, 19, rather carries the receipt of  his new bicycle , too beautiful for a black-skinned boy of Senegalese origin who arrived in Italy as a lone minor. He needs to prove that the bicycle is his, and that he has not stolen it. He recently needed the receipt a few days ago at Porta Nuova where the teenager had left  his folding bike for a moment, an expensive gift from the family who welcomed him  after participating in the project "widespread refuge" promoted by the diocese of Turin.

When he came back to pickup the bike, for a fast ride in order to avoid missing the train he was to go home with, he was however stopped by a police patrol  service at the train station. 

It was the boy that narrated this story at home to the couple who hosts him and that he now considers as second parents. "They told me that the bike could not be mine, they asked me if I had stolen it ... If I was white it would not happen" The issue ended there, at the Patrol office premises  but Cheikh was shaken as well as the family who hosts him. 

"They treat me as a son, but for everyone else I will always be that black kid" he confided with a migrant pastoral worker in the city of Turin.

The folding bike that was given to him since February   by the Italian couple(a financial advisor and a teacher) who host him helps him to arrive faster at the office where he works as an apprentice. But it's too beautiful, too expensive. 

The episode of Porta Nuova is not even the first. Cheikh is almost used to the feeling of being asked to whom does the 'jewel' belongs: a few weeks ago he was sitting next to his bike and before he noticed a boy was walking away with it; he thought it was abandoned - he then explained to apologize - saying it never crossed his mind that the the bike could belong to the Senegalese young man sitting next to it. 

That's why Cheikh travels with the bicycle's receipt in his pocket, the only certificate of property that can break even the prejudice.