From the first moment I entered Emanuel’s apartment I couldn’t fucking stop thinking about myself.
Emanuel was the taxi driver who picked us up from the Argentinean restaurant where we saw Argentina kicking Greece out of the World Cup . The air was already filled with optimistic tense about Germany game against Ghana and the TV announcers reminded the viewers that there are only 21 hours and 13 minutes before the kick-off for the decisive, to be or not to be, game. There was no discussion other then Germany’s lineup. Should they go 4-3-3? 4-4-2? 6-4-3 minus 2? If someone had decided to build up the wall, i don’t think it would have get the fifth item on the local news.
Emanuel told me that he arrived to Germany in 1978, when he was 22. I asked if I can invite myself for tomorrow’s game, and he said that of course I am. He lives on the third floor on a run down apartment building in Neu Koln, and he didn’t stop talking from the moment I stepped in. He talked about the African football and how it will never succeed without local coaches, and how the superstars of the national teams, who earn million playing in Europe will never respect local coaches. And how former stars who earned millions playing in Europe and whom the current players would respect, will never take the coaching positions because then the politicians will tell them what to do.
And then he complained about the uniforms and how it confuses him to see the Ghana players in white and the Germans in black, but my eyes were already glazed and I was far far away, on a futuristic voyage.
He told me that he run away from the mentality in Ghana and in order to give himself a better chance, and that he stayed to give his three sons better opportunities, just like the father of the Boateng brothers who always hang around the African store around the corner. Just like me who left his country at 22 to run away from the mentality and the pressure in order to give myself a better chance, and now I must stay here in order to give Maya a better chance.
And then I started to think about these words: immigration, immigrant, foreigner. In Hebrew they are coming from the root „Hagar“, which is the name of Abraham’s mistress. And I thought about how in this triangle of our first father and mother, Hagar was always the odd angle, the first outsider. Hagar’s son was named Ismael, which means, in Hebrew, God will listen, which I thought was quite ironic name.
And all of these thought were fucking rushing into my head from the moment I stepped in the crowded flat of Emanuel that was immersed with smell of African cooking. Emanuel opened the door for me wearing a shirt of Ghana’s national team with the flag of Ghana wrapped around his hips, like a skirt. Then he led me to the living room where his three boys-17,15,12-were sitting on the red-brownish sofa wearing the German national team T-shirts and scarves. We sat and Emanuel kept talking.
How, despite the fact that he is a German citizen for more than 15 years, he can’t root against Ghana, but how today he is rooting a little bit for Germany because he doesn’t even want to think about the reception his sons will get in school in the case that Ghana will eliminate Germany, but that didn’t stop him from holding his head in hands in disappointment every time Ghana misses an opportunity. And he told me how it tears him to walk on the tight rope between his homeland and the homeland he chose for his kids. And how Mesut Ozil‘ s father also came here to give his kids a better chance.
But all I could think of was a trip in the future, ten years from now: Israel against Germany in a decisive game, my daughter in the living room with three of her friends, with the German flag painted on her cheeks.
„Don’t worry“, my wife reminds me again why I love her before we go to sleep. „Israel will never get there“.
