Kashmir: The Soccer War

My apologies to Ryszard Kapuscinski for ripping off his book title.*

It's late afternoon in Srinagar,

My fixer, Yasin — a talented freelance still photographer — and I have finished our reporting day a little early. Aside from the potential of racing out to cover the next act of violence, I'm in for the night, needing to write my dispatch and transmit my video and pictures of the day.

But I can't get myself to sit down, can't turn on the computer and do the work I've done nearly every single night since I started this journey almost nine months ago.

Kevin Sites in Kashmir

I'm pacing my room, wearing down the already threadbare hotel carpet. I know what's bothering me, have felt it before, but I won't admit it to myself. Not yet.

Yesterday Yasin and I scrambled to the hospital to cover the aftermath of a grenade attack on a tourist bus.

The violence took the lives of four children. I know because I saw their bodies. Photographed them. Talked to their grieving parents, clothes still covered in their children's blood.

Unfortunately in my career, I've seen violent death too many times, and children have certainly been a part of that gallery of horrors stored in my brain.

I know what a body looks like after it's been hit with mortar fragments, improvised bombs, 7.62 rounds from an AK-47 and 5.56 rounds from an M16 or an M4. I know what a human head looks like after it's exploded from a sniper shot. I've seen bodies burned, blown apart, submerged in cars and wrapped around tall trees from the force of a tsunami.

Here's the problem, as any soldier, police homicide detective, doctor or coroner will tell you: after a while that pit in your stomach you first feel when you confront the aftermath of violent death goes away. The flood of emotions, the pondering, "what if it were my child, parent, friend, me?" stops. Soon you feel nothing at all.

When the security guard pulled out the stainless steel tables from the morgue vault holding the bodies of the children, I felt nothing. Well, not exactly. I felt bad, and correctly so, that I was part of a media horde descending on people during their most intimate moments of grief. I justified it, as I have had to in the past, with the belief that the world needs to understand the victimizations of war.

During a discussion about this occupational hazard, a close friend told me that the numbness was the survival instinct needed to do the job at the moment that counts, the strength necessary to hold it together to complete the task.

And while that may be true, there are times, like when my camera flash is going off within the grimy, white tile room of that Kashmir morgue, that I wish I felt something — something for those children still dressed like children, in T-shirts, jeans and sneakers despite their shredded bodies and burnt faces.

I am pacing and I know why. I'm angry, because it's the only emotion I can work up at the moment. In this place I'm in I know I will get no work done, but I also have no idea what to do with myself. It's not like I'm surrounded by friends I can chat this out with. I'm reluctant to walk it off outside, because I'm not in the mood to be the standout "gringo" right now. I just don't feel like answering the question, "where from?" one more time.

But then I get an idea. On the drive back to the hotel, I saw a park with a cricket and soccer field just a few blocks away. I will put on my iPod and run this anger off on that large grassy field. It's the perfect antidote for this restlessness.

At the field, I see there are soccer games and cricket matches already in progress — young men burning off steam like me, after work or school. As I begin my laps around the mesh fence encircling one of the fields, I quickly feel it in my lungs and legs since I haven't had an outdoor workout in quite some time. Almost immediately, however, my head begins to clear.

Seeing someone jogging — if they're not chasing a ball — isn't a common sight in Srinagar. And as I run, I begin to draw some stares from the players on the field, particularly three young high school boys kicking around a soccer ball on the sidelines to warm up.

End of a long reporting day

With each lap I pass, they get a little bolder, kicking the ball around a little closer to me.

On my fourth lap, pretending to pass from one to another, they kick the ball directly into my running path. I jump it without breaking my stride or even giving them a look. I'm in my own head now and not to be trifled with.

On the next lap, one of the boys, a stocky one, wearing blue soccer shorts and a matching shirt, does an overhead inbounds pass that whizzes past the back of my head. I can hear some laughter through the sound of Depeche Mode playing in my earphones. I'm beginning to be aware of their game.

As I blow by them on my sixth lap, I hear the ball being kicked hard from a distance and with good precision it slaps me on the back of my left arm as I round the corner.

Again, I don't acknowledge the effort to get my attention, but quietly make a plan.

As I approach again, I see the skinny one in a red T-shirt getting ready to toss the ball to the third one in a gray shirt, strategically positioned on the other side of me. I know where he will throw it: at my head. And he does. But I know it's coming. With my right hand I block its trajectory and pull it into my chest. Out of my peripheral vision I can see the one in red is very surprised. He's even more surprised when I take a few steps and then punt the ball hard, sending it bounding about 70 yards in the opposite direction of the three boys. I give them a quick wave behind me as I round the corner as if nothing happened.

Few things, I have learned, endear you more to Kashmir teenagers then messing with them. That kind of attention, they seem to believe, can't be bought. Especially when it's a gringo dishing it out. They all quickly run after me with smiles on their faces.

"Hey, where from, where from?" they ask. "How you like Kashmir?"

"It's nice," I say, "outside the grenade attacks." They laugh, like it's an inside joke that I understand.

As I stretch after my run, they want to know what the thing is on my arm is. I take off my earphones and let them listen to the iPod for a while.

The one in red speaks English fairly well. He points at the stocky one in blue and says, "he's what we call a Kashmir cow."

They ask me if I know how to play soccer. I tell them I know a little and we begin to kick around the ball, keeping it airborne between us using our feet, knees and heads.

Without even realizing the transition, I'm actually not working anymore. I'm playing. I have not played on the road, I think, since a brief game of three on three basketball in Iran.

I become aware, not acutely, just casually, that I'm actually having fun on a sunny afternoon in Kashmir — even though I'm thousands of miles away from where I would normally be having fun on another sunny afternoon, running or biking near my home in the U.S.

These high school boys don't want to talk about my work, they just want to know a little bit about how I live, what's different about Kashmir from America.

After a while we don't have to talk at all. We just kick the ball back and forth.

These boys, because of their curiosity, caught the gringo, got him to engage, and for that, they earned the attention and respect of others who come to join us. Some of those who gather around are other kids, but also a handful of adults still in possession of some tricky footwork they had when they were younger.

We are, despite the language and cultural difference, joined in this play. For a moment, I begin to feel something. It's not dramatic, not a revelation, maybe just a connection. And for me, at this moment, that's enough.

*Kapuscinski's book, "The Soccer War," details his life as the Polish news service's only foreign correspondent working on a shoestring, covering the wars of Africa and Latin America during the 1960s.

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