ZERO - ZERO

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ZERO-ZERO (1–1=0–0)

T.Wignesan

“Tell Chef, Saah,” urged Mustapha, a twenty-year old Pakistani seasonal worker. “Now. Now.”

“Huh! What? Afraid of him? He’s after all just one of you,” retorted Devdas while preparing eight cups of piping hot, strong, black coffee in his studio kitchen.

From the local municipality’s motor pool in the distance, the siren wailed. Midday. Everything stood stock-still, hung in mid-air. Half-time. Lunch time. Only, normally, it could drag into the French XV’s third half-time period. The workers dropped their paint brushes and bricklayer’s trowels. For six months, they scraped and brushed years of grime off the outer surfaces of the tenement blocks, and then they lashed them with fresh paint. They had been toiling in this suburban Parisian cité, called Le Quartier des Choux or “The Cabbage Quarter”, which enjoyed national heritage status. Such was its reputation, non-residents were tempted to call it the “Sauerkraut ghetto”.

Devdas kept his kitchen open every lunch-break to serve the men water, soap, coffee, and the occasional fruit or chocolate bar.

The workers were at it since eight that morning. They then lowered themselves in their trolleys, anchored on the flat, round, fourteen-storey roof-top. Their white canvass overalls bulged with suffocating pullovers; their fingers and nails black with recalcitrant dirt, and their eyes barely visible from the brushes’ sputter. The usually clement Parisian winter remained, for the Pakistanis, Maghrebins, and Africans, bitterly Siberian until late spring. The dying siren sounded like a wounded hound at bay.

In the circular parking lot in-between two of the cité’s blocks, a white van stacked with rows of white upright pre-fabricated windows lay athwart entrances to garages. Two whites, François and Alain, busied themselves, making periodic trips up and down Devdas’ tower of cheap flats.

At his ground-floor studio-kitchen, Devdas handed out hot water in used mineral water bottles to the workers for their ritual ablutions. They then prepared to munch their baguette sandwiches. They had another four hours to keep, poised over windows. And the dramatic domestic scenes they witnessed and recounted made their day. It was left to their Pakistani sub-contractor Habidullah Khan to decide if they had to stay on after working hours. Khan stood under a cluster of bare linden trees, his cell-phone stuck to his ear; his smouldering eyes fixed on his workers settling down to a hurried lunch.

“Ooi, Haaan, give the boys a break, won’t you,” cried Devdas, sticking his bald pate out of the kitchen window. Khan pretended not to hear. His number rang but

elicited no response. The task of refurbishing the premises had been deemed necessary by the local co-proprietors’ councils, made up mostly of ethnic cliques.

“A chance to pile up more contracts and increase theirs and the country’s growth rate”, thought many residents aloud whenever they saw the previous year’s fresh coat of bright paint on other blocks turn sour and into soot before the year ran out.

“Old Chef Haan...he’s deaf,” said Meydi, a tall, imposing Algerian, resembling a Roman forefather with blue eyes. “Raise voice. Criez, Monsieur.”

“No, him not deaf, him what? just damn slave-massa,” cut in Mamadou, a stout African from the Ivory Coast with big bulging eyes. “Careful, he look here. Here he come.”

The rugged, sullen-looking descendant of the Pashtuns trundled over to Devdas’ kitchen. His Turkish-Afghan ancestors’ ferocious looks lay well-hidden under his bushy eyebrows and stiff straggly moustache. “Bonsuuur! What doingnk?”

“There’s a match on this afternoon. Qualifying round for the World Cup. Why don’t you let the men go after lunch? The match’s at three this afternoon.”

“Uhh! What match? Fut?” exclaimed Khan to himself. “You know, rain cause much much delay, Misyuur Devda. Anyway, what match got with work?” Khan had been to school in Peshawar but then didn’t quite finish it all in Rawalpindi. He held Devdas in some respect, in much the same way as he mistrusted the defiant Zulfikhar, a biology research graduate from Islamabad. He was grateful to Devdas for looking after his workers, but he didn’t quite trust teachers, they who, according to him, ruined children’s lives even before they left school.

“Where Zulfikhar?” Khan wanted to know.

“Him coffee now with Polka wumaan, Chef. Then, dance dance like this.” Mustapha held himself, and wiggled and giggled. “One cup minus today. I take two cup, Saah.”

“What Polka wumaan?” demanded Khan.

“Maddaaame up up there. Me turn tomorrow. Me polka class tomorrow. Every day one cup minus. Ooikay, Saah?” He asked, a hint of a smile sitting teasingly on his lips.

“Tomorrow Mustapha no polka. He go torch car, what! His car. What!” interjected Mamadou. “Then buy new car. What! With govenmen money. Big car, what!”

Everyone within hearing distance chuckled to himself.
“What maatch, Misyuur?” queried Khan, sounding inquisitive.

“France. C’est la France. Work must stop for the match.” Devdas tried coercion instead of persuasion.

“What France? There no French team. Only Africa team,” rejoined Khan with vehemence.

“You wrong. You damn wrong. Zizous who? If not Algerian, then what?” shouted Meydi.

“Who Ziziu?”
“Zizous? Who? You which planet, Chef? Zizous nomber one fut. Capitaine

France!” yelled Mamadou, his jutting belly folds tightening at the effort.

“Ooohhh, you angrey very very! Why you no say: Zinedine. I thingnk you say bad French word. Like zizzii.” Everybody was about to speak all at once when Khan bellowed, “Oikay, Zidane who? Not Africa. Uh?” Everybody there held his silence.

“But Zidane, born in Marseille,” retorted Meydi. “Zidane Marseillais first. Then French.”

“Come on, you. Zidane is Kabyl. Algerian but Kabyl,” said Devdas. Then, he turned to Khan. “What about Sagnol? Rothen? Lizarazu? and Barthés? And oh, yes, Coupet? They African too?”

“Rothin, Lisarasu, play right left only. No gol, get chuck out. Then Caramba and Cissé take over. Then ALL Africa team again. Barthés! He, he just smoke. Better change for seventeen year girl, what, that Salah Bouhaddi,” cut in Zulfikhar as he came into their midst. “If France want win every match, I say put Adriana Caramba in gol. All men in other half field then get into French gol minus ball.”

“Who? Who Whooddadii?” Mustapha wanted to know.

“She French wumaan team gol-keep.”

“Allah! What? Got wumaan team, France? Allah! Allah! Forbid! Shame! Shame!” Khan raised his hands to the sky, exclaiming. “Maybe that also Africa team?”

“No, noooooh. French wumaan team like French wumaan... very strong. Very very French. Just one two black, one two chocolate,” explained Zulfikhar.

“Oooh! That right...right. Then ...I say...watch good good, even all French team... want keep gol... with Adriana,” said Mamadou half-throttling each word with stuttering laughter. He missed what was said. He was still thinking of Adriana. “Then no game. Zero-Zero.”

“Only trouble, all the spectators too will miss the match. Everybody will want to watch Adriana all the time!” joined in Devdas.

“I say still best, bring Basil Boli back. He got only... one... underwear. Every match... same slip... so foren team ...run away ....from... gol.” Mamadou choked himself, squeezing these words out of his lungs.

“Finish laugh laugh. I go now send pray to Mecca. All, all, work, quick, quick,” commanded the Pashtun.

“But what about the match?”

“No maatch. No fut. Work. Work come first. If Saudi play, then Ooikay. I let all free see maatch.”

The workers, crestfallen, started to make for their trolleys.

“But, today’s match is between France and Israël, not France-Saudi,” yelled Devdas.

Like as if the tower itself had toppled on them, they all stood stock-still. Khan turned, the whites of his eyes gleaming.

“What! France-ISRAEL!” His voice turned screechy. “Why nobody say me this?” He hurried back, breathless. “What time maatch?”

“Three. From Tel-Aviv.”

Khan’s brow knitted up, his shoulders hunched. “Acha, all up up quick quick. Then three three time...down down. Go home.”

“By the time they get home, the match will be over. I’ll put the tv here. Everybody can watch from outside.”

Khan’s eyes blinked like he saw two balls in a penalty shoot-out goal-mouth.

“Acha, Sahib. All you you, hear what master say. OK up up now.”

At a quarter to three, the sun peeked through the bare linden trees. Khan yelled at his workers. “Take stairs down.” A brood of pigeons fluttered up. François and Alain had by then stacked the van full with old discarded windows.

“Frenchees! Frenchees!” yelled Mustapha. “Come. Come. Fut. Maatch. Frence- Isrel!”

The workers stood outside the kitchen, chaffing and blowing through their cupped fingers. The smell of percolating ground coffee incited them; the jingle-jangle of advertisements incensed them. They passed the hot plastic cups from hand to hand. A thick cloud of paint smells mixed with the odour of white spirit enveloped them as they huddled under cover of the low first floor cabbage-leaf terrace.

After the kick-off, an initial ten-minute long sacred silence settled on the workers. They appeared to strain under the commentators’ enthusiasm as under a snake-

charmer’s pibroch. Then an onrush of comments and grunts, cheers and yells, shouts of desperation and triumph rose from the restless bunch. Whenever the Israeli forwards approached the French goal, only one voice rose in support.

“Pass. Pass. There. There. Shoot, I tell you. Damn! Ooooiyih!” Alain’s entire body contorted, his hands and legs rose and fell in empathic response. When Trezeguet, the French forward, was sent out, there was an uproar, but Alain kept mum. He seemed to mutter under his breath. The others watched Alain in brooding silence. Finally, exasperated, they brought their heads close together and whispered among themselves.

“What you not Français, Alain?” queried Meydi.

“And you?” retorted Alain. “You Français? Or Algérian?”

“Me? Me Algérian,” riposted Meydi, a bit startled though. “But here, I Français.”

“Me, too. Here Français Français.” Alain pointed to his heart, “but here,” he pointed to his feet, “Jew.”

“Oooh, like that, ah? Me too, Français Français here and here.” Mamadou pointed to his heart and head. “But here and here,” he pointed to his legs and feet, “African.”

Everyone laughed. Faces relaxed. From then on, they cheered the French team making thrusts into the Israeli half, while they taunted Alain in good cheer when he yelled for the Israelis. When it looked like neither side was likely to win, Alain faced the Pakistanis.

“Why you...you and you... Pakistanis cheer French team. You are not Français.” They looked stumped. They said something in Urdu that others could not

understand.

“Translate. Translate,” urged Mamadou, nudging Zulfikhar.

“They say, yes, they not French, but soon, soon, they get nationalité. Because they got girl-friend with French passpot.” Then, he hesitated for a moment. “Yes, yes. They say they already shoot they ball into they own gol. Now, wait. Only question, time.”

“Girlfren...nomber two... nomber three... or nomber foor... wife?” Mamadou shouted and nearly choked himself.

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