The World as an Enormous Dinka Soccer Field

Tony Horwitz, although a funny guy and very brave, is nearly as intolerant as the Arabs he makes fun of for their intolerance. He views them with a prejudiced eye and makes many Arabs appear ridiculous caricatures rather than real people. He never edits their grammar, so we end up interpreting most of Arab’s comments as ridiculous and juvenile, rather than insightful. He seems to underline more than anything that they cannot speak English. When he meets Mr. Z in Tehran, he shrugs off Mr. Z’s name as pointlessly long and incomprehensible to him, a Westerner, while to Mr. Z himself his name is obviously of immense significance and pride. He does not even bother to discover the truth about someone, which might lie in a name. He portrays the Dinka as unable to comprehend the concept of shirts and skins. To his mind this is a simple concept. Misinterpreting it is ridiculous and asinine. But the Dinka have never come across it; their people would rather walk naked and they are happy enough to oblige the strange white man. Horwitz never considers that perhaps his directions were incomprehensible He laughs at their field and focuses on their physical attributes more than any personal ones. He does not absorb the sheer joy and bravery of these starving people playing soccer. He comes with the idea that there is a right and a wrong way to play, just like East and West come to the UN table. He wastes a lot of time discussing broken telex machines (does anybody know what these are, by the way?) and whining about the inconveniences of phones and travel instead of discovering what is so distracting these people from modernization or perhaps, what is more important to them. He makes fun of the quotations in his Yemeni travel book, certain that they are impossible to understand. But perhaps he has not opened his mind to different ways of thought. Well that sounds familiar doesn’t it? It is exactly what he says about Arabs. To the Arabs mind, he is a stupid, pampered American who plots to overrun their countries, while to his they are stupid, backwards and lazy. He refuses to look beyond his American mindset at the desert in front of him and try to understand why these people have become what they have, and, if what they are is so bad after all. Modernization is not a synonym for Westernization: what is so great about a telex machine in the first place? What is wrong with living in a city half falling down when its people are still standing up? What is wrong with playing soccer on a enormous field without keeping score? America keeps score and the Middle East keeps score and it has ended in two wars and thousands dead. Maybe we should try it the Dinka way. Modernization does not mean becoming enclosed by dull technology, but interpreting old ideas and the ideas of others in a way which allows for progress. Until Horwitz and the Arabs come to a real agreement, with true open minds, not just running up and down a field together thinking snarky comments about how the goals are too big. Maybe the goals are too big, but no one will know until someone tries to score by trying or thinking something new.