What have I to do with the World Cup? I am really not a sports fan and I don’t pay all that much attention to news. So why say anything? But there’s this—
Ten years ago, I looked out the upstairs window of a Doha hotel— the hotel Matt and I stayed at for a rare date night while my parents, visiting from the States, babysat the kids. I looked out the window before going down to breakfast in a sunny dining room with floor to ceiling windows, white tablecloths, and fresh flowers. I looked out the window with my feet on plush carpet, a bed stacked with pillows behind me, my fingers pushing aside heavy curtains. For a few minutes, I watched the cars and people down below and the police cars across the street.
And then I went to breakfast.
Two months later, I looked out the tinted window of a prison transport van —the van returning me to prison after one of our numerous hearings. I watched with my hand cuffed to another inmates’, my shirt the same I had worn for the last few weeks, my fingers tugging at a borrowed shayla, wrapped not snugly enough around my face. I watched the cars, the shops, the people, and the sunlight that I would not see again until the next hearing.
That day, the van approached the facility from a different direction. Instead of the usual back alleys, we pulled into the parking lot from the main road. Then I saw it—a tall white building, it’s name in clear block letters down the side— the hotel. I now lived next door to the hotel.
That explained a certain tantalizing scent of sausages and potatoes wafting through a vent in the bathroom stall on weekend mornings. Breakfast.
But what has this to do with the World Cup? Perhaps nothing, except for this—
That in prison, I met an Indian grandmother who had arrived in Qatar to visit her daughter and newest granddaughter. Her plane had landed, but before she could reach her daughter, waiting in the terminal, or hold her granddaughter, she was arrested in front of them with no explanation given. “Why crying?” the police said to the distraught family, “Have food. Have bed. No problem.”
Though never given a reason for her detention, Jasmine was previously a domestic worker in the Gulf, so that must be reason enough.
And there’s this: the Kenyan woman escaping the home of her employer and bringing her friend with her, knowing that fleeing would mean imprisonment, but knowing she had to do so to save her friend’s life. So abused by the time she arrived in jail, the friend spoke not a word, ate and drank nothing, wept silent tears with her face to the wall, and that was all.
I met women who preferred to stay in jail than to leave the country because their employers had not sent their belongings. How could we go back with nothing? They implored. How could we face the shame of going home with nothing?
I watched women collect prison issued juice boxes to stash in amanat to take home as gifts for their families.
And perhaps Qatar could know none of this. Perhaps, like me from my upstairs window, they see from far away. While international reports estimated migrant worker deaths in the thousands, Qatar claimed that only three deaths have occurred in relation to World Cup infrastructure.
What, after all, does brand new stadiums, expansive malls, and luxurious hotels have to do with labor camps, confiscated passports and working without compensation?
There is food. There is bed. No problem.
But there is this also: an invitation. Come to the window with me.
Yet there at the window, I am still at a loss. How do we see when such things are so far away? Why should it matter?
Then I remember that it is Christmas. I remember that God came near, but not just near—proximity could still leave us worlds apart, as distant as a hotel from a jail—but he became one of us, by identity. Two worlds, impossibly different from each other, merged in the body of Jesus. He didn’t just see, he knew. From the inside.
So perhaps my invitation is not to the window, but to the bathroom vent, not to the hotel but to prison, not to the outside but to the inside. So enjoy the World Cup, celebrate your favorite teams, and perhaps see just a little more.