Doha. Football love can look different.
Amadou, 24, from Gambia, cannot buy a ticket but walks for hours from the immigrant accommodation to the square in Doha and sits outside.
And dream about what it looks like on the inside.
Al Thumama Stadium lights up the dark desert landscape like a giant lantern. The dry air mixes with exhaust fumes and the scent of jasmine, a scent that seems to follow you wherever you go in Qatar. About 40,000 people sit inside the stadium, many of them dressed in red, yellow or blue-red depending on the team’s sympathies.
It’s shaping up to be a miserable night for Costa Rica. After half an hour of play, the team is trailing 0-3 against Spain, whose boys Gavi and Pedri run eight times around the older Costa Rican defenders.
While the crowd in Al Thumama express their admiration or dismay at what is going on on the pitch, a lone man in a black hoodie stands outside and watches the match as if it were a radio broadcast.
Around his neck, there is a Haya card, which is a kind of credit for those who come forward and attend World Cup matches. A friend arranged it for him. There is no chance in the world that he could buy a ticket but there is a rumor that the guards sometimes open the gates at halftime.
The chance to experience an encounter with your own eyes outweighs the long drive along dirt highways required to get there.
Plus, he likes to stand there and soak up the atmosphere. albeit from a distance.
Personally, I recognized the 24-year-old Amadou about an hour after the final whistle. One of the advantages of the Hayya card is that it allows you to use free buses towards the center of Doha.
Amadou hops on a bus to Souq Waqif, which is actually a stupid idea because he lives in a place on the outskirts of the city where the metro doesn’t even go. He turns to me, who is sitting next to me in the cramped bus, and asks if I know exactly where the bus stops. When I gave him the answer, he sighed resignedly.
– are you from Spain? Then Amadou wonders.
I tell him I’m from Sweden, he says he’s from Gambia. He’s obviously curious about Europe, but his picture of the continent looks more like something out of a fairy tale.
Amadou says he arrived in Qatar in January this year for work. When asked how he was enjoying himself, he first looked around suspiciously. The majority of the other passengers speak Spanish, which seems to reassure him.
– If I’m being completely honest, that’s okay. It is not acceptable for it to be like this, then he says in a low voice.
The total population of Qatar is 2.9 million, of which just over 300 thousand are Qatari citizens. Work City, south of Doha, opened in 2015 and is home to nearly 70,000 of the country’s many expats. Most of them have helped in one way or another with toilet preparations.
Then there are guys like Amadou. He was not involved in building any of the flashy arenas or contributing to the infrastructure that works so well now. Instead, he cleans six days a week at one of the country’s largest hospitals.
At four o’clock each morning, the light turns on in Amadou’s room, which he shares with three other men. In each corner of the small room – about the size of an average Swedish student’s room – is a bed. In front of these there are also four small lockers where they can store their belongings.
Religious people start their day with prayer, washing and eating breakfast. Amadou does not talk to the others. Many workers from countries such as Bangladesh and Pakistan cannot or do not want to speak English. They do not understand each other either on the linguistic or cultural level.
Then they boarded a bus that took them to the hospital, 30 minutes away. The work shift starts at six o’clock and ends at two o’clock in the afternoon without a break. Then a bus comes and picks up the group and takes them back to Work City.
Amadou spends the rest of the evening indoors. Sometimes, if his Gambian friends in some other house are free, they go and play soccer in a nearby field. But he is usually alone and goes to bed early.
Amadou is keen to point out that the agency that brought him to Qatar is responsible for the food. He only wishes to call what is offered to him “food”.
Sometimes you eat, sometimes you don’t work at all. He explains that you are sick very hard in your stomach.
The lack of food quality is a frequent criticism of the situation of guest workers that aid organizations make. Above all, everyone is expected to eat the same food, no matter where you come from.
It’s been a few days since our first meeting. Now I find Amadou sitting on a skewed wooden bench outside Al Thumama Stadium.
I ask how long it takes him to get to the arena from Liberty City.
– It’s nice to walk, it’s very close, says Amadou and mentions that he usually enjoys singing along the way.
Later that night I realized why his answer was so vague. According to Google, it takes more than 2 hours to walk. But this does not stop Amadou, who wants to feel the football fever and meet people from all over the world.
Football means everything to me. Someone helped me arrange a Haya card and told me that sometimes they let people in for free. That’s why I’m here. To see if I have the chance.
It’s late afternoon, the last sunlight of the day is shimmering golden, and the boom from the square is a little louder than it was earlier in the week. This time, Belgium is playing Morocco and the latter’s fans are among the loudest in the tournament.
Sometimes I buy juice.
Amadou tells us that migrant workers should be careful not to get sick. A sponsorship application usually costs around 200 Qatari riyals, which is equivalent to SEK 580.
That may not sound like much but he earns just over 1,000 riyals (2,900 kronor) a month and sends almost everything back to his family in Gambia.
– Once I ate the food but I got very sick. He says I vomited several times that night.
– You can’t even imagine what it looks like, it really can’t be eaten. Everything is very expensive here but sometimes I go to the store and buy a juice and a piece of bread. It’s better this way.
Why would Amadou agree to say all this? Does he hope that I will be able to help him have a better life? Is he not afraid of the consequences if someone finds out what he shares with a journalist? According to Qatari law, it is forbidden to speak ill of the nation, but perhaps he will feel relieved that I promised not to use his real name.
Partly my feeling is that he is lonely and wants to be seen. There was also a kind of bitterness in the voice, as if this young man was angry at someone or something because his life had become like this and he needed to let out his anger.
Many of my friends went home to Gambia immediately because of the way we live here. Amadou says he is unworthy of anyone.
For him, this is not an option, as he has not set foot in his homeland since his arrival on January 13th. Amadou is the eldest of the siblings, his parents are getting old and his father is ill. If he left Qatar, his family would have no food on the table.
– If I go back to Gambia, I can’t contribute anything. There are no jobs, and if she gets a job, she hardly makes any money, he says.
– I take care of my family, so if I go back home I will still be challenged, albeit a different kind compared to here. But there is no way I can take care of it.
There was a time when Amadou was in school and the future looked bright. Then he had an older brother, Al-Amin, who provided the family financially.
Amadou points to the yellow splash-print shirt he’s wearing in honor of the day.
– My brother bought this for me. “He used to bring things with him when he came to visit,” Amadou says, smiling sweetly.
Because of Lamine, Amadou’s favorite team is Manchester United. For example, he is aware that Sweden’s national team captain Victor Lindelof was recently in Gambia in collaboration with UNICEF.
– Al-Amin bought me a United shirt with Ronaldo on the back. He says that every time they play I think about it.
In 2015, everything changed when a brother suddenly died in a car accident.
– He was in the Gambia on holiday and passed away, says Amadou, in a caustic voice indicating that there isn’t much to add to the matter.
Amadou began digging wells to raise money. The pay was low but he was fully focused on helping his parents and siblings, the youngest in the family being eight and five.
– I learned a lot and had to learn most of it on my own. I grew up in a very difficult place. But at the same time, in Gambia, we do everything for each other. I told my mother that “Mom, don’t worry, I’ll make sure we have food on the table and live.”
Interesting to hear him talk about the differences between Gambia and Qatar. At one point, a Qatari runs past us where we are sitting and Amadou is silent for a few seconds. It is easy to recognize the locals by their white clothes and headdresses.
– If my cat comes to our ears, I can’t do anything. If I had done anything, I would have been in trouble. There is no respect for immigrants, he says with a shrug.
– There are two million people living in the Gambia, everyone is mixed with each other, everyone knows each other. It is very open. humanity. free. You can say what you think and think.
Naturally, he adds, the West African country has its own problems. Otherwise it wouldn’t be the same here in Qatar. But there is a longing for a society more open than the one he lives in at the moment.
– Maybe one day I can move to Europe. But back… there is no way I can take care of my family.
What would you like to do with yourself if you could choose completely freely?
– For now, I only want one thing, to have the opportunity to study. Once this was done, I would have been able to find my calling. be something. I take care of myself and take my family to a higher level.
Besides football, there is another great interest in Amadou’s life: music. On his only free day of the week, Tuesday, he reaches for a pen and paper as soon as he gets up.
– My music… I write about different things. I never sing about love, only about my life. the life i live. There are a lot of people who live like me, so it’s mainly about not giving up.
Already during our first meeting he mentioned some Gambian rappers who have had great success in the UK. One of these is Pa Salieu who was born in England.
– One of the lucky ones, Amadou intervenes.
Suddenly the ground around Al Thumama Stadium started to shake. Judging by the hype, one of the teams inside the arena scored.
– I hope it will be Belgium, says Amadou, but it turns out that it is Morocco that takes the lead and then wins later.
We are silent for a while and look at the parking lot. Two Qatari children playing on an electric bike nearby. There are a few golf carts with fifa representatives dressed in swings.
Then appear the huge, off-white Land Cruisers. It is so shiny and clean that you can see your reflection in the paint. I know this because I tested, vehicles belong to VVIP guests (Very, Very Important Persons) and can be seen in every restroom lot when there is a match.
There are many countries where people live in different worlds. I’m talking about all the hundreds and thousands of people who roam the streets of my hometown of London. But no matter how much Qatar wants to hide the gap between rich and poor, it is all too easy to see the stark reality here.
– life is crazy, Brother. The way I live, I don’t wish this on anyone. The older you get, the crazier you get.
Amadou spreads his fingers over the Haya card that his friend had given him, adding:
– Then you’d better die.
