You look up, towards that light blue with clouds that should be the sky, and you think you find peace.
The perfection of skyscrapers is transferred to a clean and comforting nature.
But a simple blink is enough to realize that there, in reality, there is no sky.
No clouds.
no sun
Just a piece of paper stuck to the ceiling.
That false firmament accompanies those who dare to ride a gondola through the channels that tear apart the Villagio
shopping center
in Doha, with the corresponding Asian worker disguised with his hat and an oar that is a metal stick.
The golden metro line ends at that point.
From there, nothing to see and nothing to visit.
This is what those who established the borders of the tunnels thought, which are also the borders of life in Qatar.
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World Cup 2022.
Mbappé's France meets Messi in the final of the thousand and one nights after beating an honorable Morocco
Drafting: ORFEO SUÁREZ (Special Envoy) Al Khor
Mbappé's France meets Messi in the final of the thousand and one nights after beating an honorable Morocco
They cannot enter there as visitors -of course they can as employees- who are crowded in the
Industrial Area
.
This is an area of polygons and residences where Asian workers work and spend the night.
If one decides to walk the more than eight kilometers that separate the gondolas of the Villagio from the hornet's nest of workshops in the industrial zone -there is always the option of taking a bus-, one enters a world of asphalt, ships and dust.
A territory in which workers wander like zombies through streets that can only be identified by a number (25, 26, 27).
And perhaps, when the sun goes down, far away from the festivals that take place in the
Souq Waqif souk
, they can go to the shopping center that the government built for them three kilometers south of the factories, in
Asian Town
.
A place for them to see each other, but not for them to be seen.
Until then the organization does not mount excursions.
The contradictions in Qatar are perverse, and few escape them.
Hence, these weeks it has not been surprising to see a host of former players in the boxes, many of them with positions of FIFA ambassadors and participants in the nights of vodka and roses at the
West Bay
hotels .
But if there is someone who has tried to limit the smiles while the cameras have been focused on, it is
Lilian Thuram
, present both in the quarterfinals between France and England and on Wednesday in Al Khor during France's victory against Morocco in the semifinals.
And engulfed by that same contradiction.
Marcus Thuram, in the triumph of France against Morocco. MANU FERNÁNDEZAP
His fight against racism and his defense of Human Rights and the integration of the most disadvantaged classes has been very intense since he finished his career as a footballer (in 2008 due to a cardiac malformation), offering talks denouncing the world for almost two decades.
His son
From him Marcus
is also involved in similar fights - his gesture of kneeling in memory of the murdered
George Floyd
after scoring with Gladbach was famous.
The French team striker is also one game away from being proclaimed world champion.
His father already did it in the 1998 World Cup in France. It is an unprecedented situation in the history of sport.
Lilian Thuram, who only scored two goals for France and which were the most important of his career -in the 1998 semifinals against Suker, Prosinecki and Boban's Croatia-, is originally from the French Antilles.
Her ancestors were slaves.
“At one point in history, in order to exploit non-whites, you had to build their inferiority.
That is racism.
As for sexism, it is the oldest of the hierarchies that exist between men and women.
It is a construction to exploit women », she claimed in an interview with
Euronews
in 2014. Although these allegations have been defended vigorously by Thuram from her humanitarian Foundation and also from some of her four books.
The last one:
White thinking: how racial prejudices are built and how to overcome them.
In April 2007, Lilian Thuram was juggling his job as a Barcelona footballer and his position as high commissioner for integration in France.
In an interview with this newspaper, she spoke about how she began her story: «I come from a family in which my mother had to raise five children in France.
We lived in a neighborhood with many immigrants, and I know the problem of not having money at the end of the month.
That people came to the house to take a piece of furniture because my mother did not have the money to pay.
The police looked at us as if we were criminals.
I know what it's like to go ask the time and for people to be afraid of you."
She also showed her firm opposition to
Nicolas Sarkozy
, then in the middle of the race towards the Élysée: «His speech is racist».
Four years later, in November 2011, the former president of the French Republic had a key lunch with
Tamin Ben Hamad Al Thani
, the current emir of Qatar, so that the World Cup would be held under the protection of this Gulf theocracy.
Marcus Thuram, 25, has played eight games for France.
He still hasn't managed to score.
Meanwhile, his father handles that dichotomy in a World Cup in which, at the moment of truth, there was no trace of boycott.
And he manages, seriously, the love of a father.
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Articles Francisco Cabezas