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MOHAMMED HASSAN
ALWAN
When I learnt of my
father’s death, I played football until my feet were sore. I did not
know of any other way to mourn his death, except to play football in
the space of that square-shaped field whose walls were worn clean of
paint at least ten times every summer and winter, ever since I
rolled my uncontrollable ball onto it for the first time. It was the
only way possible to trigger in my breast the gasps for air that
befitted the terrible shock that had stunned my young brain. I would
kick the ball against the wall, and it would bounce back and I would
kick it again and again. It was not until I had kicked it hundreds
of times that I realized the wall was not going to swallow the ball,
it would always bounce off, and heaven was not going to annul what
it had decreed. It would never reconsider.
I sat on the grass, whose edges the summer had begun to nibble away,
and allowed my ears to be inundated with the heavy sound of the
mid-afternoon call to prayer, thinking how my father’s hand would no
longer lead me to the mosque again, and that from now on I would be
going to God alone. I hugged the ball, tenderly rubbing my cheek
against it and smelling the fragrance of its leather mixed with the
paint of the wall, the wilting grass and my salty tears. The ball
was the first to have witnessed the beginning of my long grieving,
and it alone could understand my mourning. That I did not doubt one
bit! Was it not the only thing that I can kick and hug at the same
time without it being punctured by this strange behavior?
* * * *
I was walking on the
pavement, which was aligning my steps since I entered the main
university avenue, my eyes riveted on the pavement’s square tiles,
each one of which I stepped on to get to the lecture hall. My mind
was swirling in the whirlpool of ideas that usually preoccupy the
mind of a student before a lecture. Suddenly, that polished white
object came rolling into my field of vision, a splendid ball more
expensive than the one I had dreamt of in my childhood, especially
after my father passed away. When I stopped it with my foot, it
turned out to be even more attractive not in motion. The six wide
squares of the ball’s surface were like six wide eyes glancing at me
from below; it caressed the sole of my foot as if it were an old
friend.
I did not wait for
the ball to flirt with me any further; I lifted it up quietly with
one foot, and it bounced up to my hand. When I held it close to my
chest, hugging it with both arms, I felt my heart beating fast as if
I had just scored a goal. As I looked up, I saw the university
women’s football team warming up on the open green space
—
a group of blonde women kicking tens of
bouncing balls with their white legs, the sunlight glancing off
eleven golden ponytails.
I handed the ball to the girl who came to collect it; she thanked me
and I returned the greeting with the best friendly expression my
English could allow me to say.
* * * *
My punctured football remained under my bed for a whole twenty
years. The bed was replaced many times, but neither the ball that
was under it nor the boy who was sleeping on it changed. I still
remember when I bought the ball in such photographic detail that no
time can alter. For my father, the ball was like an expected
daughter about whom both of us had to make many promises to each
other some of which I abided by, others I broke. He had promised to
buy me the ball if I learnt the chapter in the Qur’an. I committed
it to memory in a single day, and in return I promised not to lose
the ball, break the hall light or the car window, or play ball in
the street. He took me to the nearest shop after evening prayer. I
saw his hand, on which the marks from the feeding tube were clearly
visible, take a fat wad of notes from his pocket, from which he
selected a black ten riyal note and a pink five-riyal one which he
handed to the shopkeeper. Holding my Dad’s hand, I carried the rough
ball under my arm, my face breaking into the biggest grin in the
world.
I forgot that chapter of Qur’an, along with many other chapters. I
broke almost all the electric lights in the hall and the left-side
wing mirror of the car. I played long games in the street,
especially during prayers on the nights of Ramadan, in which my
interest had waned since my father passed away. My mind had been
beguiled by that ball with which I used to comb the street and
dribble past the boys’ thin legs, one after another, declaring
through the eloquence of my feet that I was the best and they were
no match for me the king of football with my colorfully laced shoes,
which I had invented myself and which became a short-lived fashion
in my district.
I broke all the promises I had made to my father, except one: I
never lost that ball.
* * * *
Sitting on a chair by the window at a lecture, I began to watch the
team’s pre-match warm-ups through the thick glass. The female team
members stood in two parallel lines kicking the ball in response to
the coach’s whistles. I thought: there is a particular angle that
the legs of a female player just cannot reach, which makes it seem
as if there is some kind of natural obstacle between football and
women. Is this the case, or is it just because I was not accustomed
to seeing a woman play football until this morning? There is no
doubt that their soft feet, molded by high heels, do not really
master the language of football.
I bit my bottom lip when I saw the women players block the ball with
their chests during the warm-up match. What does the breast have to
say about that, I wonder!
I did not learn much from that lecture; even the lecturer’s repeated
comments about my continual looking through the window did not
dissuade me from glancing at the players. A longing for the ball had
suddenly begun to surge up inside me, and I felt a slight tremor in
my feet as though they were getting ready to receive the ball. The
warm-up game that was taking place in front of me was changing into
a small orchestra, as eleven blonde obelisk-like women sprang up
from the grass, with the ball traveling between them like a white
cloud. I touched my knees, but there was no response. I did not know
why they were so calm.
* * * *
I had never imagined that pain in the knee would be any less sharper
than in other parts of the body. In my ignorance, I used to believe
that a knee was nothing more than just a lifeless bony curve. When I
hit my knee against the iron pole in high school, so acute was the
pain that I thought I was in the throes of death, and I wept hard
even though I had celebrated the growth of my moustache just a few
months before. I did not pay much attention to all those eyes
watching me on the high school’s large football pitch. I had dodged
all the players and when I slammed into the pole in so huge a field,
the whole world shrunk and turned into a violent storm that
shattered the bones of my knee beyond recognition.
I underwent surgery twice,
after which the doctor said that my knee would never regain its
former state, for it seems my kneecap had been dislocated and full
articulation lost. From the doctor’s words I understood that
football was a thing of the past for me, but I did not grieve over
it very much. So sharp was the pain that it made me hate football
along with its deceptive enticement that had led me to collide with
the pole and to burst out crying in front of two hundred students,
and left me with a furrowed and deformed knee like a type of camel.
When I was able to walk again, my mother’s anguish died down, but
she never stopped repeating the phrase “a blessing in disguise” in
my presence.
* * * *
On the morning of the following day, I was sitting on the edge of
the turf, beguiled by the spring that had suffused the whole of
Portland, and by the blonde obelisks and the grass which never dies.
I asked the elderly coach for permission to take part in the short
friendly matches played by both male and female students, and he
agreed; so I put on my shirt, ignoring the five-year-old pains in my
knee. I missed the ball several times, maybe because it was too
slippery or because I was too heavy. I made a few unsuccessful
attempts to dribble past the girls, the purpose of which was to send
messages about my glorious past as a football player, but fifteen
minutes into the game I was panting, and after another fifteen
minutes had to sit down to draw breath and overcome my coughing.
Looking down, I allowed my eyes to wander in the small space between
my crossed knees and my arms. I felt so out of place. There is a big
difference between the matches played in my district during the
month of Ramadan with the Qur’an read every day and those the blonde
women play on the turf of Portland with a soft football.
I resumed playing, chasing away the cloud of an unjustified sadness.
I ran after the ball which some of the girls had been chasing, and
when I got close to them, I glanced at them and slipped. For several
meters I was traveling horizontally towards the ball. My eyes, which
were looking downward, caught sight of many things. I saw the sun so
close to the university church, a blonde ponytail arched in the air
like a gold umbrella. I saw beads of sweat running down her throat,
her breasts shaking, her feet glued to the ball kicking it high into
the air, her colorful shoelaces, and, as she jumped past me, I
caught a whiff of her blonde perspiration mixed with the pollen of
the surrounding trees. The ball was already some distance away very
near the goal; as for me, I was thrown off the pitch.
Portland, May 2007
NOTE: In 2005, the Portland Women’s Soccer Team won the women’s
Soccer Championship in the United States. Two women players were
selected to represent the first American team in the World Cup.
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