A group of Iraqi and English boys show their elders how to make peace.
Clissold Park, Hackney, isn’t the obvious setting for an international peace conference. But here on an improvised football pitch, kids from England and Iraq are learning to live with each other.
Sadiq, an Iraqi football coach who lives in London, has organised the trip for the boys from Baghdad, 11 and 12 years old and terrier-like in the tackle. The English boys are a couple of years younger, and prefer to dribble.
It cost £25 000 to bring them over. Sadiq reckons it’s worth every penny and hopes to make it an annual event. ”It’s my dream to engage the new Iraqi generation with the world. If kids can come together, become friends, there will be no war in the future. I want the children to have the opportunities I didn’t get in my life.”
”Ahmed, Ahmed, wide, wide, wide. Ahmed, penetrate, take him away,” the head coach Malcolm shouts. Ahmed looks confused. Malcolm looks at me. ”My Arabic’s good, eh?”
In matches the boys play against each other, in training they mix it up. They communicate largely in sign language. Sean, a mini-Thierry Henry with pace and attitude, gestures to the Iraqi lad who has let the ball go out of play. He pushes his arms out to indicate the touchline, once, twice, thrice, and makes a ”You blind?” gesture.
”When we play football we don’t need to talk because we know where each other’s runs are going to start and stuff,” says Zach with a silent H, who is taking a breather after being hit on the head. Has he discovered much about the Iraqis’ home life? ”I asked one of them how many times a week you have to get up for the blitz and he said ‘every night’.”
”It’s not like the Second World War, though,” says Oliver, who knows his history. ”It’s probably called something else. Blitz is a German word.”
Lunchtime and the Iraqi boys run over to my tape recorder accompanied by a 13-year-old translator, Emir. They all gabble at once. What is today’s Iraq like? The boys are not as optimistic as Sadiq. ”Saddam bad man,” Ahmed says. He makes a throat-cutting sign. ”But now it’s more dangerous. There is kidnapping and bombing.”
Faris, a dead ringer for Gary Neville, says: ”It’s frightening to play out. There might be terrorist bombs.”
Have you heard of Gary Neville?
He nods.
You look just like him, I say.
He looks delighted. ”Thank you,” he says in English.
Shereen, visiting from the Iraqi embassy, thinks the scheme is fantastic. It gives children the opportunity to see the outside world. ”The trouble,” she says, ”is ignorance on both sides.” The English have preconceptions — Iraqis are terrorists. The Iraqis have their own — the West is the great Satan.
”Once they come face to face with these children they realise they are like them. This is just the beginning. You need to bring adults; they are the ones who teach the children. You need to strip politics out of it.”
But stripping out the politics proves impossible. One of the parents encourages the boys to have a sing-song. The English boys are dumbstruck — they don’t know what to sing. The Iraqis belt out their new national anthem.
The English fight back with God Save the Queen, hand on heart as if representing England. The Iraqi lads respond with an even more passionate rendition of another song — this one has chanting, chest-beating, finger-pointing, the lot. ”Excuse me,” an Iraqi adult says. ”Please don’t include this. It is a song about Sadr City — an anti-Western song.”
It’s surreal. Two sets of strangers bonding over football and their aggressive little nationalisms. (Luckily, the English lads did not get as far as the second verse of their national anthem: ”O Lord, our God, arise/Scatter thine enemies/And make them fall/Confound their politics/Frustrate their knavish tricks …”)
Yet for all the competitive intensity of the rival chants, the words seem to mean little to either side. Just as the English boys don’t care whether the Queen reigns victorious over us, the Iraqi boys don’t care for cursing the West. These are just the songs they hear at home.
When Iraqis finish the chest-beating Sadr City song, Ahmed says his hero is David Beckham and his ambition is to join the Beckham academy.
The week’s coaching finished, the English and Iraqi boys huddle together and whoop and jump in the air, just like they have seen professionals do when they win trophies. Finally they find a common language, singing the only song both groups know: ”Championes, championes, olé, olé, olé.” — Â