I had him pegged as an ex con or former addict. He had the lean look and casual nature of someone who had survived hard things. And he wanted to talk.
Dario was a cab driver. He'd come to Nashville some 15 years before, during "the war" in Yugoslavia. He and his father were soldiers, and they both were wounded by snipers within two weeks of each other.
"I love the United States," he said. "Look at the life it gave me."
We talked for a bit about his experiences. He told me World Relief had paid for his flight out of Croatia: $735.
"My dad passed away six weeks ago," he said. They'd both survived bullets, but cancer had finally taken his father. And then he told me that a week before, he almost went to jail for assaulting someone who was speaking negatively about the U.S. government.
An easy-going manner can only mask the anger for so long.
