July 9, 2024

A strike! A strike!

It comes from so far out.
From so impossibly
far away.

A thunderous shot.
The boy. The boy.

Lamine Yamal,

the Spanish kid,

the youngest
ever to score

at the UEFA,
the Euro Cup.

Everyone
erupts.

There is screaming.
Holiness.

His magical foot.

They advance.

July 9, 2024.

From the United States,
another shot,

the blink of an eye.

The ball.

Its course is altered
imperceptibly.

The keeper
falls.

Messi,
the greatest on earth.

His steps.
His magical foot.

In the Copa América,
in the stadium
in the Meadowlands,
ten miles from Manhattan.

They are screaming,
waving

blue and white.

They advance.

July 9, 2024.

In the al-Awda schoolyard, many eyes
seek the same things.

Those moments, imperceptible
and vanishing,
where all else seems to fall away.

Nothing else exists.

False, flimsy, fleeting refuge
against horror.

Against, for a flash,
even genocide.

Even soccer is among the infrastructures
of existence.

Like holiness.

No.
It’s more complicated than that.

I have no idea what I’m talking about.

July 9, 2024.

In the al-Awda schoolyard, the keeper,
the boy,
takes possession of the ball from beyond
the goaline.
He hurls it downfield, toward a teammate
by the opponents’
goal.
The boys’ eyes follow it.

The boys.
Most of them younger than the players,
some sitting barefoot and shirtless.

Their souls follow it.

Even the youngest.

But before the ball

hits the earth, something else
strikes.

It’s the end of the world.

It’s the end
of the world.

Again.

July 9, 2024.

Where did it land?

The ball.

Perhaps not in one piece.

Exploded and scattered, pieces clinging
to bits of stitching

like flesh
to bone.

No.

You have no idea what you’re talking about.

It’s more complicated than that.

The IDF is reviewing reports
of whether
civilians were harmed

or not.

Again.

In the al-Awda schoolyard.

There are sounds of children

dying.

In what was once
the al-Awda schoolyard,
in Abasan al-Kabira,
east of Khan Younis,

what were once children
will never again

touch the earth
in Gaza

with their steps.

Only
here and there,
a foot
that once struck a ball.

A magical foot.

From the United States,
pieces of intelligence
breed pieces
of intelligence breed pieces
of children.

A universe, suspended in mid-air,

or not.

I have no idea what I’m talking about.

What was once a soccer ball.

What were once children
whose eyes,
for a moment,

once followed the flight of a soccer ball.

For a moment, imperceptible
and vanishing,
it was everything,

and everyone.

But it’s more complicated than that.

What was once
holiness.
Vanishing.

How old?

Children.

Sixteen years old?

Lamine Yamal.

The souls of children suspended
like the throw of the ball.

Lamine Yamal.

Even younger.
Even the youngest.

How many were screaming?

Their feet hit the earth.

Their steps are gone.

Perhaps the ball hit the earth
in pieces.
But never again
in play.

The fate of the children.

Or perhaps it just rolled away.

Everyone
erupts.

How many knew Messi’s name?

The keeper
falls.

How many screamed?

Lamine Yamal.

The youngest.

Even the video is buried under the rubble,
buried from memory
under the rubble
of massacres
that followed.

The eyes of children
following, the flight of the ball
before the strike,

the end of the world.

Where did it land?

The ball.

They advance.
There is nowhere to go,
nowhere safe.

They are caught in a net.
Blue and white.

The ball.

Caught in the net.

They are screaming.

Lamine Yamal.

July 9, 2024.

Nothing else exists.

There is screaming
of something beyond grief.

Suspended, sometimes,
in mid-air.

By the mothers in whose wombs
those bones grew intact.
Wholeness.

A magical foot.

Where did it land?

The sounds of children

dying.

Did you know
the mothers grew each of those organs
in the womb?

And they never saw them,
they never got to see them,

until now.

They never got to see them.

They never get to see them.

Again.

Messi.

Lamine Yamal.

Mothers who grew those bones they never
saw until this moment.
The end of the world.

The game ends
as holiness

does.

The end of the world.

The first moments of the Israeli raid on the entrance to a school housing displaced people in Abasan, east of Khan Yunis, where people are playing football. Video by Al Jazeera.

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