Guest workers at the World Cup: shadow games in Qatar

In the shadow of the city, where the faces of the faceless can be seen and the voices of the voiceless heard, men jostle and jostle into a cricket ground that night. So many that it is difficult to estimate how many they really are. They come from Bangladesh and Pakistan, India and Nepal, Ghana and Kenya.

They stand shoulder to shoulder in front of Gate 3, where they can already see the glow of the screen. They push and shove harder now, and the security forces can’t stop them because, one later says, they didn’t expect so many men to come. So they storm into the small stadium, where they at least want to look through a screen into the big stadium, where a world event is about to kick off on time and with an audience, because men like them gave everything for it. Some even their lives.

It’s Sunday in Asia Town, part of the Doha Industrial Area, and the first game of the soccer World Cup is only a few minutes away. Here, where workers from abroad live in camps, the cricket stadium has been set up. With screen. With moderators. With music. There the workers are allowed to watch the games that they made possible and make possible by building stadiums or hotels before the World Cup and preparing them during the World Cup.

Pictures contradict those for the world audience

And although you can’t shake the feeling that the world football association FIFA and its friends from Qatar, the masters of the pictures, want to ensure with the offer in the cricket stadium that the workers there are not only allowed to look at each other, but actually also at each other should look, you experience something nice in these moments with the men: Because those who are definitely the losers in the big game have not lost their joy for the small game. Because the ones in the small stadium go ahhh and ohhh and uhhh like the ones in the big stadium. Because those who are usually in the shadows are at least in the spotlight in this scene.

But if during these World Cup weeks you’re always in this place where the workers shine for 90 minutes of football, if you look at the faces of the faceless, if you listen to the voices of the voiceless, if you piece together story by story like this, an image emerges that contradicts what the masters of the images are presenting to the world audience through the screens.

One evening in Asia Town, when the German national team has already been eliminated from the tournament, two men from Kenya are sitting in front of the large mall. They shall be called John and Joseph in this text because what they are about to say – about what was before Qatar; what is in Qatar; what will be after Qatar – should not say by their real names. They can prove some of this with pictures, chats and documents. some not. And later, when they are back in their camp, they send stuff to make the story they told believable because they think people should know that they are suffering.