I've been Ben Arfa

in

Originally published in Stadio

There’s an iconic photo of a young Samir Nasri, Karim Benzema, and Hatem Ben Arfa taken shortly after they’ve won the u-17 European Championship for France in 2004. Three young Frenchmen of Arab - North African descent. This photo once signalled the future of French football; but, one by one, these three players fell out of the national team’s limelight. The most enigmatic of the trio, and the one I think about the most, is Ben Arfa.

When Ben Arfa emerged from Clairefontaine, he was considered the most skilled player in the institution's history. Coaches said his potential exceeded that of other graduates like Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka and that his technical ability was possibly even greater than that of Zinedine Zidane. There were high hopes for all three players in this photo. But none were as high as the hopes for Ben Arfa. 

A couple of years ago, Ben Arfa signed for his hometown club Paris Saint-Germain. He’d just come off a season where he propelled OGC Nice into fourth place in the league through a series of his signature plays: dazzling solo goals after mazy runs past multiple defenders. Yet his mercurial talents didn’t fit Unai Emery’s system, and he was relegated to training with the PSG reserves. 

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Hi. I'm from nowhere.

in

Originally published on Latterly

I’m at a language exchange in Milan, Italy. The way it works is I pair up with an Italian native speaker. We talk in Italian for a few minutes and then we switch to English. I’m introduced to a new person every few minutes and the topics of conversation repeat.

The guy in front of me now is from Naples. He’s boisterous and affable. He’s also patient and helpful in correcting my fractured Italian. “You speak well,” he says. “Where are you from?”

I normally avoid answering this question, but he’s kind and engaged in the conversation. Also, I’m here to practice speaking, so fuck it. I tell him my dad’s family is Lebanese but I grew up in the U.S. We run over the allotted time, but my story isn’t finished and he has more questions. No, I wasn’t born in the U.S. Yeah, I know, I don’t look like most Arabs.

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