Blind Faith

3 March 2021 · Jaffa

Alex's flat looked like the aftermath of a married couple's break-up. Most things were already packed: black suitcases to one side, clothes carefully folded, books ready for the road. The flight was booked for the end of May, when Greece would reopen to tourists, but Alex was packing now, like someone who wants to be sure he won't change his mind. Only the Hapoel shirt and the "Ussishkin" sign still hung on the wall. They would come down last.

Natalie sat on the sofa, looking a little sad, a little curious. "You're really going," she whispered, her voice almost vanishing. "Just like that? As if everything that happened here just stays behind."

Alex turned to her and sighed. "It's not running away," he said. "It's… trying to understand what freedom is. Paying the price of my own quiet, without eyes on me all the time." He smiled, but the smile was full of frustration. "You know, here every step, every laugh, every post – someone sees it. In Greece nobody expects anything of me. I'm just me."

Natalie touched his hand. "But you're not really alone. Even if no one's watching – I… we… the family, your friends. We're here."

"Yeah," he answered with a crooked smile. "But it's not the same. Sometimes, to understand who you are, you have to be alone."

They looked at the clock. Tonight, at Bloomfield, Hapoel were playing Maccabi Haifa. For Alex it wasn't just a game, but another thread tying him to the city he was about to leave. But he had no way into Bloomfield. The stands were still closed to fans, and when they reopened – people were saying in a couple of weeks – only Green Pass holders would get in. No vaccine meant no Green Pass, and no Green Pass meant no stand. And after the night at The One, when the police took down his details, he was in no hurry to go anywhere crawling with police and security either.

So they turned the living room into a small viewing room: a laptop on the coffee table, glasses of water and beer, snacks on the floor.

The game kicked off in front of empty stands, and six minutes in Chery headed Maccabi Haifa into the lead. The tension seeped through even the small screen. Alex leaned forward, his eyes burning. Then, in the twenty-second minute, Shai Elias let fly from twenty metres, straight into the far corner – 1–1. Alex leapt up and, out of sheer joy, kissed his sister on the cheek.

Four minutes later José Rodríguez caught a volley on the edge of the box, from an almost impossible angle, and the ball went in. 2–1 to Haifa. That was how it stayed to the end.

Alex fell back onto the sofa, his hands over his face. The defeat was a double one: the match, and the city he loved and was about to leave. And with it the understanding that very little ever really changes.

"It's like… we keep trying to hold on, but we keep losing," Natalie whispered.

"Fucking hell," Alex hissed, getting up, every muscle tightening. "No time to mourn. Bloomfield's waiting."

"What are you doing?"

"Going to say thank you to them."

From the flat in Jaffa to Bloomfield is a short walk, but every step felt like a journey between memory and future. He knew these were among his last moments in his real home. Outside the stadium, by the gates, a few dozen fans who refused to give up had already gathered. The movement, the smells and the shouting of the crowd he loved so much rushed into him like a wave of city life that never ends. The fans were waiting for the players, and he waited with them.

Natalie followed him with her eyes as far as the corner, then turned for home. "Even after a defeat he goes to cheer them," she thought. "Honestly, nothing stops him going his own way." And she understood that soon she would see her brother mostly through a phone screen.

Gaza · That evening

Mehran watched the game with a friend, on a pirate stream that froze every few minutes. When the referee blew the final whistle, he opened Facebook, found Hapoel's post, and wrote a comment in Hebrew, letter by letter: "Not shot. We go on together."

He had meant to write "never mind". In Hebrew the two words differ by a single silent letter, and he didn't yet know which one was which.

Two different people – one in the crush of Gaza, the other in the car parks of Bloomfield – lived through the same moment of disappointment. Both took a deep breath, looked up at the sky, and understood: this defeat would not change the need to carry on. That's how it is – life flows on, even when you want to stop everything.

Deep down, Mehran's dream was to stand at Gate 5. Just like the ones he saw on the broadcasts, singing and jumping with their shirts off. On the way home it was, of all things, the defeat that set him singing inside. There was one song he loved above all, with the words "You won't break us", and as he hummed it in his head, a wicked thought crept into his bones and swept his feet westwards, towards the sea.

He found himself sneaking onto a simple fishing boat in the harbour, looking for flares – the same red fire they light in the stands. On the first boat he found nothing, and so as not to raise suspicion with the noise, he moved to another. There, in an emergency box, he found a flare and an orange smoke grenade. He shoved the loot down his trousers and went home happy. Before going in, he wrapped the gear in a plastic bag and hid it under the stairs, behind the gas canisters. One day, he promised himself, he would light that flare at Gate 5.

His mother was sitting in the living room. She looked at him and said under her breath: "That Chery, that whore of a player."

Quietly, very quietly, she had already watched almost every Hapoel game. Because of Mehran.

Later that night

Before bed, Natalie was scrolling through social media and came across a comment from a boy called Mehran under Hapoel's post. "Not shot. We go on together." She smiled at the mistake – the Hebrew of someone who had learned it from screens. Then, for a second, she stopped smiling: of all the mistakes he could have made, it had to be "shot". She liked the comment.

The next morning Mehran saw the notification. He went into her profile, hesitated for a long moment, and sent Natalie a friend request.