FOOTBALL

There was a point at which you called yourself good at something and you were just being foolish. All that had happened was that you hadn't come across somebody really good. Bahman knew it. He knew all that as he walked home from the field. But there was a time when you weren't thinking it to make yourself feel good any more. You were thinking it to figure out what you were going to do with what you had. It was when you realized that you saw something different from other people when you looked at a football field. Bahman saw opportunities there. He did not see the obstacles. And then the game started, and he could keep that first vision all the way through.

It was what you did on a football field, just like there were things to do with every other part of life. It was like eating or sleeping. On a football field you ran away from the people chasing you. There were oceans of creativity inside of that. But the basic idea was to move. It was not complicated. It was something that the uncertain parts of life had all been pointing towards. He might as well take advantage of it when he had one place like that.

It was like he could finally say what he wanted to say on a football field. People would attack him directly, and he would try to escape them, but he would try to escape them respectfully. It was respectful because their goal was as reasonable as his. They could hit him as hard as they wanted, and their goal was still as reasonable as his.

It was all right to wonder about what you could do if you did it only as far as you could do it. Where did it come from? he thought. It was one thing if he were American and he could point to a personal history that included football in it. Then at least he would have some background in those movements and in the feelings around them. Football was an American feeling, and it was funny to have it begin and grow and dream all within one generation. It was an American feeling, but its motivations went past any one country: To escape from the people coming after you. To make them think you were doing one thing when you were doing another. To be ready to take any possible approach at any time. It was those things that he wondered about. It was like it was really your story. It was like it was really your story when you had the ball. You could define what the field was, what the other players were, what the place where all this was happening was. Nobody could be too attached to their definitions because you were proving on the field that the day was brand new. They had to admit that you were defining your time alive as much as anybody.

He only wondered about it because it seemed like a fragile thing. It was something that he couldn't put into words. It wasn't speed in particular, or strength, or even quickness. He just knew how to move. It was something that went with football and went beyond football too. He didn't know what he would do with it if it wasn't for football, but he believed he would do something. All that time that he'd spent watching America and Americans - when he got on a field, it was like he knew the players already. He knew them and he knew what they were going to do. It seemed unfair sometimes because they didn't know what an Iranian would do. They looked at him and didn't know what he would do and he would pretend like he hadn't noticed.

It wasn't anything to spend too much time thinking about. He certainly hadn't developed it by thinking about it. It was best to leave it for the field. But he only wanted to know if it did go back, if it went back somewhere. He already knew it didn't go back to the places it went back to for the other boys, to places where the poetry of the game was part of the common language. And he really didn't mind if he was the only one at his home who spoke it, but if there was a way to understand the game and its movements as part of their common language, that would be good.

"Baba," he said to his father that afternoon when he got home. "Did you ever play any sports in Iran?"

His father was washing the dishes.

"No," he said. "I played a little soccer when I was a boy. And we would wrestle sometimes. But I began working when I was twelve. And then by the time I started high school, I was busy with political activities."

"When you played soccer, " Bahman said. "did you ever feel like you could see things that other people couldn't see?"

"No," his father said. "I wasn't very good. There were some boys who were very good. In high school I tried to convince them to join the cause. They had a lot of influence among the other students. There were two of them that did join. They were a great help."

"The reason I ask is because that is how I feel playing football. I feel like I can see things that other people can't see. I don't know how it is. I was only wondering where that came from." He was trying very hard not to sound arrogant, just truthful.

"I don't know," his father said. He had looked very proud when he had been speaking of the cause, but he turned quiet. "I don't know. Maybe you should ask your mother. She played some sports in high school. I think you probably got it from her."

Bahman's father went back to washing the dishes. He did not think of telling Bahman about the nimbleness of hiding the paint they used on city walls to write their hatred of the Shah in hollowed-out watermelons they walked with at night. He did not think of telling Bahman about the agility of noticing a government-issue chair at the home of who they thought was a fellow conspirator, betraying no reaction when he did, just signaling to his friends that the house was that of a spy. He did not think of telling Bahman of how he knew how to move through a prison system - giving false names each time he was arrested. He did not think of telling his son about those things because his son had asked him about sports. It was all right to wonder about what he could do if he wondered only as far as he could do them, and they were already done. If there was any nimbleness in his life now, it was in washing the dishes. Still he had seen something. He had seen something that other people couldn't see, and he still saw it.

"Yes," his father said. "I think you probably got it from your mother."