Yesterday I went to the Men's campus to play soccer. Most of the players are North Africans as in Magrebis from Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. We had eventually eight to a side and then had substitutes rotating every ten minutes ostensibly because no one had a stopwatch though I offered mine for use in the form of my mobile phone which has that function.

I had been told the last time we played to bring both a white and blue shirt so I wore my old UAE university shirt and brought a white v-neck t-shirt. At one point after the play had started a newcomer joined us on the pitch (playing the width of the 'gros tena', a term used for pitch in Magrebi Arabic that I learned yesterday when I heard it for the first time) and I offered him my white shirt but quickly realized that I shouldn't have proposed that he take off his shirt in public like that so I changed shirts and wore my white v-neck.

Said knows that I speak French but Omar another English instructor from the Magreb hadn't realized, so he was surprised since he knew at least that I was American. I rattled off in French that yes one would think that I was Canadian since Americans don't usually speak French. Said was kind in saying "and more Americans are learning how to speak French and Spanish." Later when I spoke with Grahem about his remark he laughed at the magniloquent generosity of his statement, at least implying that he was giving some credit to Americans I suppose. But, perhaps Said was being ironic, I can't really tell since he always seems to have a very polite demeanor, no sign that one would get from, say, a New Yorker whose tone of voice would parallel the irony at the same time as uttering the ironic potshot.

The Algerian who repeatedly declared that he never made mistakes in playing, "Je ne fais pas de fautes", the last time we played was not as adamant yesterday in his pride of knowing how to play football though I have to admit that he was right when I spoke with him after the practice last week that his team mates were not practicing one of the basics of play--looking up to pass the ball to an open team mate. I was sitting next to him in one of the stadium chairs whilst everybody else was sitting with a number of chairs between us and them. He was so adamant last week that he had allowed a goal to be scored against his own team out of a sense of showing his outrage though I felt like saying he was cutting his nose off to spite his face though perhaps that idiom might not have been understood by all. I also, to a lesser degree, felt like saying that only the Pope is infallible though that definitely would not have gone over at all, let alone understood.

We were all pretty exhausted as the heat is still pretty intense at 30 degrees C if not more, we started playing at about 5:30p.m. and stopped at about seven when the sun was going below the top of the stadium we were playing in. I walked out with a portly Pakistani or Indian guy who is quite a jester. I had said good-bye in Arabic, a common enough phrase to learn, "ma'asalamah" and he asked me if I were Saudi and I quickly riposted that I didn't realise that my Arabic was Saudi (I did live in Saudi for a year and that was enough) and we both broke out in laughter (like in Tutuola where Laughter is personified as if almost a kind of loa taking possession or appearing out of the thin air between two interlocuters). Another player I hadn't met, a Magrebi?, said that he thought I was Inglezi (English) and I offered my hand and asked him if he wanted to bet. He clasped my hand and I said "you lose, I'm American." He said "you look English." I suppose it is unusual for an American to play football. I don't play in the heavy footed style of Americans who have taken up the game late in life and are consequently clumsy on their feet. I am proud to say I was taught by an Englishman, a Jesuit priest in fact that had played semi-professionally at one point in his life, Fr. Reddy.