Sarajevo to Sao Paulo: A Letter to A Friend

Friday November 18, 1994

On the front page of the New York Times appears a photograph this morning. The caption of the photograph reads: “A Time for War, and a Time for Play: Using a barricade of bombed out cars as a cover against snipers, four Sarajevo boys played a pickup game of soccer yesterday. Bosnian Serb shelling has resumed from the hills surrounding the Bosnian capital.”

I thought of you as I absorbed the details. There are four Bosnian boys playing soccer. They look so happy. But behind them lies a barricade of cars which have been bombed out. The boys are using this barricade as a shield against the Serbian snipers who are aiming for them, especially since these boys are a bit older and therefore, potential recruits for the Bosnian government forces. But when has age mattered in this war?

Last year a couple of children died playing soccer in the open field where they have played for years. A Serbian shell exploded on to them.

My mind travels back to a walk on the beach in Casablanca. I took a photograph of boys playing soccer. I laughed and said thank you as the game stopped briefly to let me pass. As I walked around the souk in Marrakech and in Tunis I stopped in those stores where Bebeto and Romario’s photographs appear on the walls and the doors. And yes. There are boys walking around the Madina wearing T-shirts with the number 7 or the number 11.

And when I step out of my apartment in Karachi I do so at my own peril as a soccer ball misses my head by a fraction. I think about you and your friends playing soccer in Sao Paulo, in the field you pointed out to me. I recall not being encouraged to watch you play because it was not a safe place for me. I will always regret not being able to watch you play soccer.

If I am to identify just one commonality among boys from Sao Paulo to Karachi to Sarajevo then it is soccer. I wish the World Cup had been dedicated to Sarajevo.

The World Cup such a test of endurance, team work, dedication, skill and above all a test of wills. Under what conditions must the Bosnian boys have desperately tried to get news of the World cup games as they were being played? Was Brazil their favorite to win or Italy? We can only rest assured that they followed the games with as much enthusiasm and fervor as they would have had their lives been at peace.

Thank God the World cup was staged in the summer time, there were a couple of months this year when boys in Sarajevo could come out and play. If there was electricity, perhaps even sit near the window while watching a game on T.V. with their buddies.

And if we bother to look we could probably even find some boys still wearing T-shirts with the #7 and #11 that is if they are still wearing civilian clothing and if they are still alive.

Why doesn’t anybody help these people? Why is Sarajevo under siege for the third year now? When will these boys be allowed to play soccer in the open again without dying for it? And most importantly when will more and more Bosnian boys appear alive on the soccer fields instead of being buried in them?

This photograph is a testimony to the will of the human spirit to survive and to seek normalcy where only the abnormal rules.

And of course it bears witness to the ever enduring love of soccer.

With love,
Fawzia