At all times, even in the stillness of the Sakhnin night, there is an omnipresent scent of slowly smoldering, incessantly burning incense -Sakhnin is an Abu Abdo hookah. What's on fire? In Bnei Sakhnin's case, it's the team's passion to succeed, coach Elisha Levi explains. Otherwise, it's usually meat.
A girl was fanning the flames of her barbecue with a hairdryer some two months ago, as dusk was settling on a city seemingly abandoned. The streets, usually bustling at quarter to six, were hauntingly empty. Minarets spread a glimmering neon light and emitted a booming muezzin, the perfect soundtrack to a horror film. For the multitudes of slaughtered animals presently being feasted upon, it probably was just that. Especially if the way in which the men of Sakhnin tear into a shared chicken laid in front of them is any indication of the way the butcher treats it.
Encroaching darkness was pushing the setting sun out of sight, a curtain bringing another day of the month-long Ramadan to a close. Rarely is an entire city simultaneously engaged in the same act, and in that regard only the Iftar, the breaking of the fast - and breakfast, too - supersedes game day here. But while a soccer game lasts 90 minutes, their breakfast is as short as their fast is long, no more than eight minutes, to be precise. At 5:53, when I arrived, Hussein and his uncle Gazal's families were already finishing up. Which left me with the overwhelming task of finishing off what they hadn't. So there I sat, stuffing myself with soup, meat and pita bread. Rice, too, of course. As Hussein's brother said a few days later, en route to an Iftar at which food corporation Osem was announced as a sponsor of Sakhnin, "You make rice once a week, we eat it every day - they should be sponsoring us!"
I did as they bid me, resenting the unfairness of the onus placed on me. They were demanding more of me than they were of themselves, for it wasn't because they ate so quickly that they finished so fast, I learned later on, just that they didn't eat that much.
It's on Eid el-Fitr, the holiday which signifies the end of the Ramadan, that they truly gorge themselves, and since I hadn't quite recovered yet, I was slightly relieved to unfortunately miss it. But if Eid el-Fitr is only the "lesser Eid", Eid el-Adha, which began today and is known as the greater Eid, sounds truly daunting. When I recently asked Hussein if they do anything special in celebration of the holiday, he answered, "No, we just eat". (His brother complains of having spent all day in the mall buying his children new clothes).
Presumably, they have so few holidays because they literally can't stomach any more than two. To me, though, it seems tied to their utter lack of appreciation for the concept of rest. There is no set day of rest for the Arabs of Sakhnin, only a muddled arrangement: schools are closed on Fridays and Sundays, creating a cleft weekend shared by the municipality, whilst the rest of the city is on an opposite schedule. And yet, stores are open at all times. Wissam the grocer, for instance, arrives at his store towards noon and doesn't leave until late at night. He claims that his children fill his place on Friday, but he can frequently be found there by early afternoon, idly smoking his life away. Perhaps being open all the time is the price they pay for stoutly refusing to plan ahead - catching a ride to away games is always a last minute affair, even when I try to arrange it days in advance.
Understandably, then, Elisha Levy has disavowed the existence of fatigue - "There is no such thing as fatigue", he recently exclaimed although he and others have mentioned it quite often lately in explanation of the team's performance. Rightly so: they've played 6 times over the last 18 days, and because they sorely lack depth, the top 11 players have borne the brunt of the punishment. Like Muslims breathlessly awaiting Eid el-Fitr, Sakhnin's first team players, already out of breath, are eagerly looking forward to the upcoming winter break. After tying Maccabi Haifa 1-1 at home last weekend, only one game separates them from their much-needed rest - a rematch with Haifa, only this time the stakes are much higher.
Muslims honor Eid el-Adha by making pilgrimage to the Black Stone of Mecca, while Sakhninians will be traveling on Wednesday en masse to the awful national stadium in Ramat Gan, which is not as far from the Saudi city as it is from being a Mecca. But it may find itself nominated for the list of holy Muslim cities if Sakhnin beats Haifa there in Wednesday's Toto Cup final, doubling their celebration and their collection of trophies. The much-maligned Toto Cup is the third most important competition in Israeli soccer, far behind the league championship and the State Cup, which Sakhnin won in 2004 in Ramat Gan. Bestowing nothing in the way of honor or prestige, the Toto Cup's sole reward is money. No one bothers to put up much of a fight for it, and the unsuspecting victor usually finds himself blissfully surprised to come into such a tidy sum of money, like a Monopoly player landing on Free Parking. Of which there should, consequently, be quite a lot on Wednesday.
It seems fitting, then, that Sakhnin laps up the leftovers of Jewish teams so shamelessly. They play in the same league, but reside in different worlds. Never has a team been so determined to win the Toto Cup, willing to go all out from the get-go. Eid el-Adha commemorates the Binding of Ishmael, the Muslim version of the biblical Binding of Isaac, and Sakhnin has had to make a costly sacrifice of its own to get to the finals, offering up their players rest, playing them twice a week, wearing them thin. Like the Binding of Ishmael, they have lent their own alternate interpretation to the Toto Cup, seeing it as an opportunity to make easy cash, albeit cash that they desperately need in order to bolster their depth. The Toto Cup has proved valuable in other ways, too. While their opponents couldn't care less, the early-season wins they accumulated at their expense helped them gain confidence, crucial for any newly-promoted in the early going. Impressively, with a win they would join Haifa and Hapoel Tel Aviv as the only teams to win at least two Israeli soccer titles over the past five years.
The pungent aroma of burnt meat has never been fiercer than it is this Tuesday night, as Sakhnin kicks off the "greater Eid". Come Wednesday, though, the religious celebration may for once be trumped by soccer, if Sakhnin successfully adds a "little brother", so named by team chairman Mazen Ganaim, to the trophy won three and a half years ago, its "big brother".
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