Sun of Sakhnin: A Jew in an Arab city

I've been living in Sakhnin for three months now, and for the past month and a half I've been recording my experiences here in a Hebrew blog. Upon reading it, one subscriber promised me that I would be famous if I translated it into English, while another assured me that an international version would draw a far greater audience. So I took a few shots at translation, and I missed them all.

Which should have come as no surprise, considering that I just spent three and a half years translating in the army. Which isn't to say that I defrauded the Israeli Defense Forces ; just that translation, as one of my teachers in the military would exuberantly exclaim, is itself a form of fraud, or at least an exercise in futility, as Borges showed in his famous Averroes's Search. Besides, the army did much worse unto me. But anyway, the conclusion I came to was that if it is a future in writing that I aspire to, it is my past in translating that I must leave behind. And so it is from scratch that I begin.

Or rather, a clarification: it's not fame that I'm after, nor an expanded readership, although the latter would be nice, and I'll take this opportunity to cordially invite you to send this to anyone who may find it readable, especially anybody who could help me achieve the former.

Rather, it's Sakhnin's soccer team that I'm following: Abna Sakhnin in Arabic, Bnei Sakhnin in Hebrew, or the Sons of Sakhnin in English. I do so while living in this Arab city in the north of Israel which has a population of approximately 30,000, comprised of a Muslim majority, a Christian minority, and one Jew, more or a less. Me, that is.

I moved here from Jerusalem three months ago, with the intention of spending a year here. Why on earth would I do that while nearly every other Israeli Jew my age, recently discharged from the army and imbued with a drive to rediscover his freedom, sets out to find himself or herself - or, at the very least, drugs - in India or South America? I had three main goals in mind, none so delusional as the idea of finding myself, or as the drugs that so often accompany such a quest. Not that some people don't think that I'm deluded for doing this. Some don't even believe me, which is how I won a free meal off a friend who is still reluctant to accept that I do indeed call Sakhnin home.

If it's proof that you want, well, you'll just have to take my word for it - though you're welcome to visit. As for an explanation - here it is. And here's to hoping that after this I don't get any emails asking what brought me to move to Sakhnin, because the corresponding Hebrew explanation apparently didn't do the trick...

First of all, I wanted to get to know Arabs and their culture. When a friend, unabashedly liberal in his views, came to visit me here a couple of months ago he was struck by the stark differences between the Jewish Israel he knew and the Arab Israel which he did not. While he did his very best, he couldn't help but begin every comparison between these vastly differing realities by saying, 'In Israel'. Nor could a Dutch girl volunteering in Sakhnin restrain herself, try as she might, when speaking of the relations between Arabs and Isra...er, Jews. The great Welsh striker Ian Rush is said to have said of his time in Italy that it was "like being in a foreign country". (For his part, he denies saying that - but it's a wonderful quote nonetheless).

If being in Sakhnin does not feel exactly like being abroad, it also does not feel exactly like being in Israel. Not the Israel, at least, that I know. So while the experience of traversing India can be eye-opening and mind-blowing and valuable in many ways, I felt that spending time among Arabs is all that and more - it's significant, and perhaps even critical, if at some point Jews and Arabs are to carve out a peaceful coexistence here.

Second, I wished to learn to speak Arabic, and make peaceful use of skills that I acquired for purposes which were less than peaceful. I'd gladly go vindictively on about the essential evil of the military, but at least for one thing the Israeli army deserves credit - for teaching soldiers Arabic.

Regrettably, it does so far better than the schools. Six years of studying Arabic in school, which is all you can get, enables one to make out a few headlines in the newspaper, provided the syntax isn't overly complex. Not many get even that far. My high school offered the choice of French as an alternative to studying Arabic, as if its relevance or importance were even remotely comparable. All of which adds up to a widespread Jewish ignorance of Arabic which is quite embarrassing, if not downright disrespectful. If not for its exquisite syntax, it seems to me that the next best reason to learn Arabic would be that in a country where one out of every five is Arab, having a passing knowledge of thy neighbor's tongue is no more than common courtesy.
 
Finally, while all that sounds grand indeed, though not pompous or self-righteous (I hope), that's not the real reason I moved to Sakhnin. That would be to follow the local team for a season and write about it. Sports literature has no existence as a genre in Israel. The few books written about sports in Hebrew are academic, bogged down by jargon that renders it all but unreadable. But while I struggle to explain to Israelis what it is that I'm trying to do, there should be no such problem with an English-reading audience.

David Halberstam and David Maraniss, among many others, have provided eloquent examples of how sports writing can be not only eminently enjoyable but also transcend the scoreboard. As the sublime Steve Rushin wrote: "Any dink can give you the score, but only a man of books can reduce you to tears. Or laughter. Or both." Or something to that effect,  which is precisely the effect I'd like to have. I'l do my best.
 
Pulitzer Prize-winning H.G. Bissinger's name belongs in any discussion of great sports writers. It was his Friday Night Lights that first planted the seed of the Sakhnin idea in my mind some three years ago. In the late 80s Bissinger moved to god-forsaken Odessa, Texas, for a year, where he documented the perverted, convoluted culture which enveloped the local high school football team and consumed it. Bnei Sakhnin struck me as something of an Israeli version of the story, with the Jewish-Arab conflict to boot. Were Sakhnin situated in the States, it would have long ago been overrun by authors eager to seize on this perfect storm of a story. As it is, Bnei Sakhnin has been the subject of two movies, two sociological books and countless articles, including one in Sports Illustrated.
 
For good reason. While Arabs constitute one-fifth of Israel's population, two-fifths of its soccer clubs are Arab. Yet Sakhnin is the lone Arab club in the twelve-team top Israeli soccer division, just the third in nearly sixty years to make it to the top and the only one to survive for more than one season. They lasted three, during which they shocked the world by improbably winning the State Cup, and subsequently representing Israel in European competition, which was a sight not devoid of bitter irony.

Now, after a painful relegation and a swift return, they're back! Fittingly, they ensured their return to the top division on the same sunny spring day last April that Major League Baseball celebrated the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's barrier-breaking debut. But Sakhnin is fighting not only racism. The economic forces of Israeli soccer are arrayed against it, too, for Sakhnin is not merely the league?s poorest outfit, they are an economic anomaly. The rest of the league?s teams have long been privately owned, but Sakhnin alone remains a relic of days past when teams were run by political organizations.

While the Israeli championship has for over 20 years been the exclusive property of teams hailing from one of the big three cities, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, Sakhnin is 178th(!) among 210 municipalities ranked socio-economically. The defending champion and current frontrunner, Beitar Jerusalem, boasts a payroll 13 times Sakhnin's, a figure which would make even George Steinbrenner blush. And yet, eight games into a 33-game season, Sakhnin impossibly sits atop the league standings, second only to their racist archrival, Beitar.
 
But their astounding success on the field is easily explained in comparison with the complex questions they pose off of it. It is those questions that I'll attempt to tackle, while trying to paint the picture of a city and a culture far removed from anything I've known. I'm not sure yet of the format or the frequency of the posts, but I'll go with the flow. Hope you do too. In any case, I'd be happy to hear what you have to say. I can only hope that you'll do it while laughing or crying. There is enough in Sakhnin to warrant either - and both.