Playing cricket in no man's land

On Thursday, while running inside the old port of Trieste, it happened to me to hear some applauses and shouts, coming from the other side of the wall. I thought that a football match or something similar was going on, in the area of the former grain silo. Intrigued by the rumors I got closer and saw some guys playing cricket. This is perfectly unusual in Trieste and I wanted to learn something more, but I was not exactly decent (you can imagine me after one hour running at 25 degrees). So I decided to go there the day after, at the same time.

Photographers aren't' allowed to behave like that: they cannot wait for tomorrow which, as Jenis Joplin says in one of her songs, "never happens". But at the same time I'm aware of what's going on in my town and I trusted in a second chance.

Luckily I was right: yesterday, while approaching the entrance of the silo I met some guys and asked them if they were going to play cricket. They said 'yes' and came along with me. One of them told me that they were all afghani, waiting for the refugee status.

I don't know if you watched the movie "No man's land" by Danis Tanović. It talks about three wounded soldiers, in the midst of the Bosnian war, who are trapped in a trench in no man's land.
Well, keeping in mind the obvious and necessary distinctions, this is more or less the same that happens to asylum-seekers all over that big "no man's land" without identity, which is actually the European Union. They are trapped in a trench, in other words they cannot move from the place where they are confined. Without documents they cannot work, they cannot marry, they cannot neither find a lodge on their own. They can just wait and hope.

This is the situation which the afghani guys that I met yesterday are facing right now, together with other millions people who are fleeing from war, from terror, from torture, from other terrible experiences in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Libia and other parts of Africa.

Somebody dies during his "voyage of hope", somebody gets crazy, somebody commits suicide (as it happened last year in Trieste), somebody survives and holds out. This is exactly what the afghani cricket players in Trieste do: they hold out. And this is the reason why they are the winners of the day.

That's all.

Have a nice weekend.

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