Football

As usual he avoids all videos of violence in his country (his country?) published in youtube.com. He starts listening to songs. In T.V. he starts watching an Arabic Lebanese series named لو (=If), which is about romantic relationships. He chooses to write a new article on an Arabic website about some old paintings about hypnosis. He opens the newspaper less often and prefers to see anything but the first three pages. The other day he liked this picture in the first page of his newspaper. 

But as he flips the first three pages to that page of culture he found this caricature.

As he sees that caricature he remembers that the World Cup of Football is running in Brasil. He turns the page to read a story. It was a new short story by Ahmed Khalaf. He remembers that he wrote once an article about Ahmed Khalaf's novel, "The Death of the Father." The new short story starts with a man feeling numb and confused after an explosion and he sees a head beheaded on the ground. The gut-feeling, the feared gut-feeling says that this head might be the protagonist's head.

That was true, as he anticipated, the protagonist's head was in front of him on the ground.

He turns the page and reads about an idea of making a center in Berlin for Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. All can pray there. He remembers that he is in Ramadan. He wonders how Ramadan look like in Berlin. Or in Algeria. Or France. Australia. L.A. Anyway.

At night he meets his neighbors. He asks his friend to bring that small T.V. so that they can watch the match. His friend doesn't respond quickly. He knows that his friend is feeling tired and doesn't want to go to bring the T.V. but he insists and the T.V. finally comes.

A neighbor opens the issue of that Uruguayan footballer who bit an Italian one. The neighbors argue if that biting is a sign of mental illness. He thinks about the goalkeeper of USA team who talked publicly about Tourette's syndrome and how he made some tatoos in his body for the sake of animal rights. (animal rights?) He remembers how he once read about psychiatrists for pet dogs.

He sighs.