A Pitch for Peace

I came to believe in the cathartic power of the world’s game after taking in an impromptu soccer match between monks in a Burmese backwater. There, in an unheralded village between Yangon and Mandalay, lay a gem of earthly spontaneity. The pitch was a humble tract of sun-baked mud, but its unlikely surroundings brought a sense of eminence to the proceedings – a shallow lake became one sideline and two adjacent embankments provided elevated viewing for spectators. After a week of listening to my guide boast of how every landscape we observed was uniquely Burmese, I was attentive to a scene that proved him both right and wrong. Under the “uniquely Burmese” category might fall the holy men who checkered the pitch with their luminous maroon robes and jocular soundtrack to the match. In so much as my a priori ignorance of Burmese culture would allow, I also designated the rhythmic cheers emanating from the village crowd as “uniquely Burmese”. But if you were to zoom the viewing lens on the tattered ball that bounced from one spry foot to another, you could easily emerge in another part of the world, amongst another set of bare feet. Here, Kurdish children clad in European jerseys clamor for a shot on goal.

This is where my story dissolves and Ian Klaus’ fades into view. Where the touchline had been a lake in Myanmar, here it is a foreboding border with a hostile country. But these footballers are heedless of international fault lines and perhaps even of the wars endured by their forefathers: a boy casually hops the stone wall marking the Iraq-Iran border to retrieve an errant attempt at goal. For these young Kurds, their own touchlines trump those drawn by statesmen. The dusty pitch provides a stage for self-expression, much the way a dinner table provides a poor family confirmation of its self-sustenance. There is something primordial and natural in the rivalry between the Kurdish towns of Tawela and Biara and the molting of inhibitions on the pitch. There is nothing natural in the border post that stands within earshot of the match. Just as in Myanmar, where Orwellian edicts hover over the citizenry from billboards, Iranian theocracy is a ludicrous sideshow to the freedom provided by the pitch.

Some grassroots organizations are trying to expand the pitch’s touchlines, to claim more fertile land for the artistic minds of young footballers. The younger they start, the better. As Franklin Foer chronicles in How Soccer Explains the World, it does not take long for soccer to mirror sectarianism. Rival hooligans pivot effortlessly from stadium brawls in peacetime to shelling each other’s neighborhoods in guerilla war. The “beautiful game” carries the seeds of a beautiful but tragic life. The liberating bliss with which young players take to the pitch is menaced by the “realities” of war and staid conflict. It is all too often a cruel choice between staying at home and joining the thugs who practice ethnic sport. Either way, the primordial innocence of ball, feet, and dust is lost.

A few years after my trip to Myanmar, the world got wind of a tragedy unfolding in Yangon, the former capital. Thousands of monks were descending on the city in spartan defiance of the ruling junta. Soaring fuel prices had sparked the protests, but there was also a palpable purge of grievances held for decades against the government. The junta responded with the Tiananmen playbook, mowing down the revered monks and jailing thousands of sympathizers. Macabre, awful, and sorrowful though the 2007 crackdown was, it cannot disrupt the tranquil image in my head of monks as the sentries of Burmese society. They had found refuge in the village soccer pitch that day, a rare haven unfettered by tyranny. When it came time to leave the pitch, whether hours, days, or years later, the monks left in resolute columns and carried the dignity of a supportive people with them.