In August 1989, the German public was shocked by a violent confrontation between two policemen and a West African refugee that left all three men dead. The media raged against the black "cop-killer", but no one considered why an otherwise peaceful man, a resident of Stuttgart for eight years, would allow a routine check of his subway ticket to escalate into tragedy in the course of a single day. Ten years later, a back story to these events is imagined--deconstructing everyday racism, its petty humiliations, its deprivations both great and small.