After this weird introduction, she tossed the coin to start the match, and my team won. She then went and checked on the two goal nets and spoke to some of the guards who were standing on the sidelines with their guard dogs. The Red Barbarians team now proceeded to launch a verbal attack on us, using every conceivable kind of abuse and vile language, all accompanied by threatening gestures. Some of my teammates responded with abuse of a lesser kind, and there were exchanges of spitting and punches as well. This totally unsporting conduct only came to an end when the female referee came back and blew her whistle to start the game.
For something like half an hour, the ball never left the feet of my team — more’s the surprise! We managed to score eleven goals, four of them by me. There were no serious attacks from their side and very little challenge or resistance. It reached the point that, every time our forwards were heading toward their goal, the goalkeeper would show his alarm by huddling up or run along the backline, yelling and screaming, while his colleagues simply laughed and guffawed.
But after we had scored the seventh goal, I got the impression that some kind of conspiracy was being launched against my team. I pointed this out to my teammates every time we scored another goal. However, most of them were overjoyed at the team effort and the success we were having; they accused me of being a pessimist and weakling. For them, the name of our team, the Black Beasts, was fully justified. But, when their bodies started to tire and it became much harder to get to the other team’s goal, with shots going wide or missing altogether, they started to agree with me. From then on, it was a matter of dragging their legs around in their own half and never moving out of it; if anyone did move out, it was as though we were out for a stroll — like someone playing golf or walking in a public park.
Just a few minutes later, everything changed completely, and went from bad to worse. Our opponents had already had their share of fun at our expense, and now they turned serious. It was time for attack and revenge. Showing us their muscles and powerfully fit bodies, they proceeded to turn the soccer field into a savage war zone with a series of nonstop powerful attacks. They forced us into our own half, moved toward our defensive line, and set about viciously attacking any of us who had the ball or were even standing anywhere close. Gradually, our team started to collapse with bruises, fractures, and severe wounds; players who lost consciousness were transferred to the clinic. The rest of our team was left spread-eagled on the sand, bleeding and groaning. One of them happened to be the man whom I had asked about the extraordinary difference between the two teams. I leaned over to offer him some comfort.
“Now I think you understand,” he told me between pants. “The team that resorted to such violence and aggression to win the match consists of prisoners who are acting as agents and others in preventive detention who joined our team as substitutes for our wounded. . If you yourself haven’t been hurt and evacuated beforehand, you’ll find that they’re all unhurt when the game is over.”
And that is in fact exactly what I saw: those men, the majority of whom had paunches and never did so much as break into a run, walked and strutted about slowly, smoking and quaffing beer. If the ball happened to come near one of them or they happened to collide with it by mistake, they would either get rid of it or, as happened most of the time, pass it to one of the opposite team in a scandalously obvious way. Some of them even clustered near the other team’s goal. Even if the ball had been presented to them on a golden platter, they would have simply toyed with it for a while, then got rid of it somewhere far from the goal itself. Meanwhile, a newspaper correspondent kept yelling into a megaphone, something that had been mostly inaudible up till now; he was spouting a lot of stuff that made no sense, but — by God! — it had not the slightest connection with the game.
With the sweat pouring off me from the heat and my own emotions, I rushed over to the referee — the bitch — who had moved over to the sideline and was lounging there smoking and showing off her stunning backside. She seemed to have forgotten what she was supposed to be doing and had either lost or swallowed her whistle. I told her about the way the other team had committed so many infractions and violent assaults on our players. She proceeded to twist the tie that I had forgotten to take off, slapped me on the head, and told me (as I understood from the French) that I was to get my stinking body out of her sight and take over from the goalkeeper who had fallen asleep in our goal. Failing that, she would issue a severe report against me, documenting my defiant attitude and contravention of the rules of the game.
I now headed straight for the goal, where I did my best to staunch the bleeding from the at least thirty wounds and cuts that the man in the goal had received. Once I had made sure that he was still alive, I took up position between the two goal posts, ready to fend off attacks. I saved two goals, but managed to lose my rubber sandals, which by now were in shreds. However, the third shot, kicked from very close range and with all the force of a rocket, hit me square in the face. I collapsed to the ground, feeling dizzy. Some of their players now rushed over and started poking fun at me because the ball had gone in. They kept on patting their backsides and stomachs in clownish gestures.
With a few deep breaths I managed to recover somewhat and once again stood in the goal, but without any shoes. I watched as those of my teammates who were still on their feet would receive a pass but be prevented from passing the ball on. Instead, they would be felled to the ground. This time, one of the other team got hold of the ball through sheer violence and moved in my direction. He stopped about a meter away from me.
“With this shot,” he threatened, “I’m going to fuck you! Here’s a finger to your mother’s religion!”
I looked at his face.
“Ilyas,” I yelled. “By God, you’re Ilyas! How are you, my friend?”
“No, I’m ‘Abbas ibn Firnas!” he replied.*
He now proceeded to do some clownish stunts, his hope being that, by kicking the ball between my legs, he could make me look stupid. But, to save face, I flung myself at the ball and managed to stop it going into the net. I stood up with the ball in my hands. He now hit me so hard that I fell to the ground, then shoved both me and the ball into the net. He started kicking me hard enough that I eventually lost consciousness.
10. My Worst Night of Torture
My sunny cell!
Here I lie, after being subjected to that slugfest yesterday that masqueraded as a soccer game. I’m stretched out under the bedcover, doing my best to keep my bruises and wounds to myself, and occasionally taking a bite from the meager portion of food on the table. I keep turning over my current situation in my mind and thinking about what might happen next. That is the way I stayed until my eyes eventually surrendered to a deep but restless sleep.
I was jolted awake by the sounds of loud footsteps and started to panic. The gigantic guard appeared, pointing the wavering beam of his flashlight in my direction. Forcing me to get up, he pushed me towards the door of my cell. I was eager to chat with him and so I asked where we were going, sharing with him my opinion that the weather was very nice. I had hardly opened my mouth before he showed me his semidetached tongue and pointed to his ears as a way of showing me that he was both deaf and dumb. When the air turned moist and foul-smelling, I assumed that we were now in some kind of cavern where foul and obscure purposes were being fulfilled. My intuition was confirmed when the guard made me sit in a corner alongside a row of other people. Now I was stunned to be confronted with a scene that beggars description. There was this female ghoul about whose barbaric cruelty I had heard so much, the woman I had seen close up at yesterday’s soccer game. This time, she was semi-naked, pouring with sweat and devoting herself to torturing a man strung up by his feet. She was beating him savagely and hurling all sorts of foul abuse at him as he hung there upside down — disgusting expressions peppered with phlegm-encrusted spit. She kept raking his skin with a sharp brass instrument that tore away at his body and made it bleed profusely.