Thirty-One Nil

by James Montague

  This time FIFA and the IOC had put pressure on the Israelis to stop this happening. Almost the entire squad got out without any problems. Almost. ‘I was at the border seven hours,’ laments Moussa. The coach was now packed with sleeping players and swaying through traffic to the airport. ‘I tell them [Israeli border guards]: “I’m the coach of the Palestinian national team.” The border guard looked at me and said: “NATIONAL team? Wait here.” I did, for seven hours.’ Other players weren’t so lucky. Many of Palestine’s best footballers come from Gaza, but ever since the militant Islamist group Hamas took control of the strip in 2007, Israel and Egypt have been loath to let anyone out of ‘fighting age’ just in case. In fact, Palestine’s best player, defender Abdelatif Bahdari, was sent back from the Gaza border by the Egyptians, who had banned any men between the ages of eighteen and forty from crossing for fear that extremists militants might cause trouble in the semi-anarchy of post-revolution Egypt. He now wouldn’t be playing in the first leg.

  Others had much further to travel. At Queen Alia airport Moussa meets his left-back for the first time. Roberto Bishara, the Chilean, has finally arrived and is waiting at the departure gate. Omar, Moussa and Bishara try to make small talk, firstly about Real Madrid’s recent transfer activities. Bishara looks back blankly. He doesn’t speak French, Arabic or English. Omar and Moussa give up when they realise none of them can really understand each other. Unsure how to communicate with his new player, Moussa slaps Bishara on the arm. They stand looking at each other for a brief moment before they awkwardly both stare down at the floor. ‘Good,’ says Moussa finally in English, declaring their meeting over. They shuffle off in different directions.

  The Palestinians are a patchwork of bureaucracy, languages and cultures. They travel on eight different passports: some have the black Palestinian Authority passport, others a special permit from Gaza for those lucky enough to get out and play in the West Bank’s newly established professional league. A few have East Jerusalem ID for those from the city who didn’t want to become Israelis. Several have Israeli passports. The rest come from all over the world: Chile, France, Jordan and, of course, America. At each border the team is stopped, checked, checked again and treated with the utmost suspicion. The Palestinian Authority passport is, after all, possibly the least useful passport in the world. Yet all are joined together by a common purpose: to return home, even if it is a ‘home’ that Omar Jarun had never seen before. ‘Their first impressions were: “Who the hell is this guy? How the hell is this guy Palestinian?”’ Omar explains on the short flight to Dubai. I had asked him what the Palestine players had thought about him joining the squad. He points back to his team-mates. Everyone is sitting in economy. A few have found a spare row of seats on which to curl up and sleep. ‘They welcomed me in like I was one of the brothers. It wasn’t like I was an outsider. No one was judging each other.’

  Omar’s journey from Georgia to the West Bank actually began in Kuwait, the country of his birth. Born to an American mother and a Palestinian father born in Jordan, his family fled the country before the First Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein invaded in 1990. ‘I remember bombs going off. Missiles shooting off near the apartment. I remember grabbing my bear, me and my sister running to my dad’s bedroom and saying: “What’s going on?”’ he recalls. ‘The next morning my dad would come in shaking ... my mom managed to get the entire family into the US. We left everything behind. My parents had nothing.’ He is a Muslim and, despite first impressions given by his apple-pie American good looks, identifies himself as a proud Arab. He prays every Friday at the only mosque in Peachtree City, in a hotel. Football, too, is in his blood. His father taught him the game in his backyard and although he always held out hope of one day playing for Team USA, when the Palestinians approached him he didn’t think twice. ‘In my heart I feel like an Arab, a Palestinian. I see what happens to the people over there and you know the world needs to know that the people from Palestine are stuck like rats in a cage,’ he says as the plane begins its descent. ‘I knew it wouldn’t be particularly professional. But I could do my part. I didn’t know what I could do for the Palestinian people apart from play football. So when they told me I could play for the Palestinian national team, I said yes.’

  We arrive in Dushanbe at 1 a.m., but this isn’t the end of the journey. A coach takes us two hours south-west to Tursunzode through the pitch-black countryside. The national stadium in Dushanbe is being renovated. There are no street lights. No one really knows anything about Tajikistan, other than that it is a former Soviet republic and that it was from here that the Soviets launched their disastrous invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, a decision that costs thousands of lives and convinced a then little-known but devout son of a filthy rich Saudi construction magnate to declare war on the heathen West. His name was Osama Bin Laden.

  The hotel in Tursunzode is closed. There is no drinking water, no electricity, no internet, no food. The water runs black from the taps. One of the coaches is sent out to look for water and food and finds five large watermelons outside, enough to avert a brewing mutiny. The players take them upstairs to the kitchen and break them open on the metal tables. We all devour red chunks of melon like animals, spitting the black pips on to the floor. Downstairs, Omar sits shaking his head at anyone who will look in his direction. He has forgone his share of the watermelon. He had expected his experience of representing Palestine to be a little rough around the edges, but he hadn’t expected this. ‘This place reminds me of a bowling meet,’ he says, looking around at the cheap Soviet-style wooden panelling on the walls. ‘Some butt-fuck shack in the middle of nowhere.’

  **

  The taxi bumps its way back along the broken highway. It is daylight now, the morning after our arrival, and Tajikistan is, for the first time, spread out before us. It is a country whose sole natural resource appears to be water. It is green and lush: water from the mountains cascades through the towns in specially built concrete channels. Thousands of watermelons are piled carelessly on the side of the road, like severed heads collected after a bloody battle. Everything seems to be flavoured with watermelon: the chewing gum, the soft drinks, the air around the painfully thin girls who smile to reveal rows of gold teeth. The Soviet Union has left its scars, too: drab rectangular housing blocks, red and white smoke stacks reminiscent of Chernobyl and wide concrete boulevards just wide enough to fit a column of tanks down all sit incongruously against the sub-tropical greenery. It is racked by poverty, too. On the side of the highway gangs of men carve bricks out of the mud, leaving them to dry in the sun.

  Coach Moussa, striker Ahmed Keshkesh and I watch the alien land roll away from us. Keshkesh’s presence had solved an ongoing mystery. We are travelling to a FIFA press conference, a mandatory requirement for the coach and team captain before any World Cup qualification match. The issue of who was to be captain had been a divisive one. ‘In - tha - Middle - East - tha - issue - of - who - is - cap’n - is - important,’ Omar had explained slowly to Roberto Bishara earlier in the day during their first training session, as if talking to a child. ‘It - is - always - the - player - with - the - most - experience. Under - stand?’ Bishara was silent, blinking hard.

  Bishara had somehow got into an argument with Keshkesh although it was a mystery how. Having been part of the team that tried and failed to qualify for the 2006 World Cup, by rights Bishara should have been captain. He, after all, was the most experienced player in the squad. But the rest of the team had disagreed and quarrelled openly about it. Bishara may have been Palestinian, but he wasn’t a Palestinian. The players believed that one of the players from Gaza or the West Bank, who had the Israeli ‘occupation’ in their marrow, should have that honour. The players bickered constantly about it. That and the facilities, the heat, the water being too salty, the terrible meals. Coach Moussa finally snapped a few minutes before the team’s first training session. ‘It is no one else’s fault that we are playing here. Palestine lost its previous matches so that is why we h
ave to play in places like this!’ he shouted in French, before being translated into Arabic in a friendlier tone by Noor Eddine, his Algerian assistant. ‘Stop looking for excuses and feeling sorry for yourself … I don’t want to hear about the captain, or the water or the food.’

  Keshkesh had already made history in Palestinian football. Until 2008 the Palestinians had been effectively barred from playing any home games thanks to the security situation and movement restrictions imposed by Israel. But with money from the Saudi king, the French government and FIFA they managed to build a stadium on the outskirts of Ramallah. The Faisal al-Husseini Stadium was named after a local politician. An ugly construction, it seemed decades old even after it was just finished. But it was home. It stood a hundred metres from the West Bank separation barrier controversially erected by the Israelis to keep Palestinian suicide bombers out. On a good day the stadium could host perhaps as many as 15,000 fans, as it did for Palestine’s first ever home match a few years before. Keshkesh scored Palestine’s first ever ‘home’ goal in a 1-1 draw in a friendly match against Jordan. He was young, handsome and a good choice as captain for such a symbolic game.

  **

  The press conference is held on the top floor of one of Dushanbe’s best hotels. Moussa and Keshkesh walk into a long boardroom where ten or so Tajik journalists have gathered to eagerly ask questions about the Palestinian coach and his captain. A few minutes later the Afghan coach arrives with his captain. All four acknowledge each other’s presence as they sit down. The two coaches (and the two players, for that matter) are of similar age and build. It is the first time either coach has garnered any information about their opponent. Such is the confidence among the Palestinian players that they have already started talking excitedly about Thailand, their next opponents should they beat Afghanistan. They are extra-confident given that the Afghan government has intervened to try and prevent the team from travelling to the away leg near Ramallah. ‘It was clear that their players and officials would not be allowed by the Afghan government to come because they didn’t want their passports stamped with the Israeli [border] stamps,’ explained Jerome Champagne, a former special adviser to president of FIFA Sepp Blatter, who now worked as a consultant to the Palestinian Football Association, when we had spoken in the West Bank before the trip. Afghanistan doesn’t recognise Israel and the government feared that the match would be seen as a form of recognition by the back door. The press conference meanders on. Keshkesh doesn’t seem to understand what a press conference is and refuses to speak at first, before giving one-word answers to any question asked. The Afghan coach, Mohammad Yosuf Kargar, sporting a huge moustache, knows how to handle the Tajik press. He plays down his team’s chances. He explains all the problems. The lack of money. The security situation in Kabul. The suicide bombings. He emphasises that Afghanistan is the true underdog here and how his team is training in conditions far inferior to those of the Palestinians. I thought of the mysterious black stuff that had oozed out of the taps of our hotel on our arrival and involuntarily shuddered at the horrors that must have awaited the Afghan team. But then he drops a bombshell. ‘We have nine players who play professionally in Germany, Cyprus and America,’ he casually tells the gathered journalists. They dutifully note this down. Moussa’s head pings in Kargar’s direction. The Afghan coach also explains how his team has been the fastest rising on FIFA’s rankings in 2011, overtaking Palestine in the process. Keshkesh refuses to answer any more questions. It is enough new information for Moussa, who quickly leaves once the conference is over.

  Afghanistan’s captain is more talkative. Israfeel Kohistani is a softly spoken twenty-three-year-old midfielder who plays for Kabul Bank FC in the Afghan Premier League. He is missing four fingers, his thumb the only reminder of a left hand that picked up an unexploded grenade when he was a boy. ‘When the Taliban came to Kabul I was eight years old, I found a bomb,’ he says of the day he lost most of his hand. ‘It was difficult for me but I became national captain so it hasn’t affected me,’ he explains, sliding his hand behind his back as we speak, as if embarrassed. I feel bad for asking about it. Still, it was tough being a footballer in Afghanistan. There was no money. Security outside Kabul was impossible. Security inside Kabul was still tenuous. ‘People don’t think about football like they used to,’ he says. ‘They are always thinking about fighting, fighting. We have difficulties with our government, they don’t give us any money.’ But he was here, with his team of professionals that weren’t quite the whipping boys the Palestinians had expected. The big question was: would they even play both matches?

  Will you make it to the West Bank for the second leg? I ask him.

  It seemed improbable given the high level of Afghan governmental resistance, not to mention what the Israeli security forces would make of a coachload of Afghans turning up at the border. Israfeel shrugs. ‘It is not clear whether we go there or not.’

  In the taxi on the bumpy road back to the hotel Ahmed Keshkesh and Moussa Bezez sit in silence. Keshkesh falls asleep, but Moussa is wide awake. He is troubled. ‘Nine professional players,’ he repeats as we ricochet from one pothole to another back towards Tursunzode. ‘That is more than we have.’

  **

  There were few benefits for the Palestinian national team being hosted in Tursunzode, but the isolation had one positive effect. There was nothing to do in the city, nowhere a group of cooped-up young men on a rare trip abroad could cause trouble. The streets were empty during the intense heat of the day. At most you might catch a glimpse of a colourful skirt disappearing into a doorway. The factories appeared to have stopped functioning decades ago. Occasionally a shop would appear to be open, its young attendant snoozing by the till. A lone car trundled around a wide roundabout with a huge, garish green and red portrait of the country’s long-time president, Emomalii Rahmon, gleaming at its centre.

  The Palestinian players pack the hotel’s one vaguely functioning internet café, sitting three to a chair, immersed in various Facebook girlfriends. Omar Jarun sits on his own, researching the Afghan team they are due to face the next day. News has spread that their opponents might be better than they first thought. ‘They even have some players from the States,’ he says, his eyes never leaving the screen as he clicks through the Wikipedia profiles of those Afghan squad members who have them. ‘They look pretty good,’ he concludes.

  Moussa decides it is time for some fresh air. He gathers up his players and marches them out in single file for a brisk walk around the town. His charges mooch behind unwillingly in the blistering heat. They pass a gaggle of curious old ladies with gold teeth, sun-beaten skin and pink dresses sweeping the streets with straw brooms. The old ladies laugh like hyenas and hide behind their brushes. Fahed al-Fakhouri, one of the goalkeepers, seems preoccupied. ‘I had a dream last night,’ he explains when I ask what is wrong. Fakhouri is unlikely to play a part in either match. He is third choice, and was only drafted in after Palestine’s first-choice goalkeeper (and first-choice captain), Ramzi Saleh, had been injured in the run-up to the fixtures. His dark hair and goatee give him an uncanny resemblance to Spain striker David Villa. He seems happy just to be there, until now that is. ‘I had a dream that I shot someone, a man,’ he elaborates.

  Why did you shoot him? I ask.

  ‘I don’t know, he wouldn’t let me leave.’

  Fakhouri and Jarun have struck up a friendship. Fakhouri plays for one of Tulkarem’s local teams. He has promised to show Jarun his ancestors’ home town once the game is over. ‘You will come too, yes?’ he asks me keenly. I agree. The heat has now become unbearable. The column of sweating, surly players follows Moussa past one identical grey Soviet housing block after another. After a few minutes, he gives up and walks them all the way back, surrendering them to their Facebook girlfriends, three to a chair.

  But the trip wasn’t a complete waste of time. The outline of what appeared to be a restaurant was spotted. Later that night Stéphane, a six-foot-six French cameraman there to fi
lm a documentary on the team, and I sneak out to see what Tursunzode has to offer. The open-air bar is almost empty. In the centre a fountain gushes water as inflatable watermelons bob in its flow. We are ushered to the main table. Two businessmen inquire as to why a Russian and a six-foot-six black man are in their restaurant and their town. We explain that I am not Russian and that we are journalists here to cover the football match. They shake our hands and introduce us to the city’s chief of police. Still in uniform, he has his wide-brimmed Soviet-era hat tucked under his shirtsleeve as he slams vodka shots. This is a majority Islamic country, but only nominally. The police chief explains that he had been in the Soviet army that had invaded Afghanistan. Now his job is to hold back a different invasion, one coming the other way: the opium flowing from Afghanistan, through his borders, and all the way into the veins of the West. He has a shaved head and mean scowl, which becomes harder and meaner the more he drinks. The night blurs as one shot follows another. The police chief’s hat ends up on my head. He snatches it back, cursing such disrespect in Russian. We stumble through the dark, unlit streets back to the hotel and collapse into bed.

  The Palestinian team greets us with silence at breakfast. Something is wrong. Moussa has a face like thunder as we gingerly ease into our seats. ‘Where did you go last night?’ his assistant asks. We tell him about the vodka and the businessmen and the chief of police.

  ‘Who were you with?’

  ‘The chief of police.’

  ‘No, who else? Which players?’

  The coaching staff had heard rumours that we had broken some of the players out of the hotel and taken them drinking and dancing at a local nightclub, carousing with the local women. Behind Moussa and his assistant, Fahed and Ahmed Keshkesh are in hysterics.

  Kick-off is a few hours away.