Ryszard Kapuściński - The Soccer War

"There is nothing worse than finding yourself alone in somebody else's country during somebody else's war."

Ryszard Kapuściński, throughout his very long career as a reporter, managed to witness twenty-seven revolutions and coups. He was there during much of the turmoil in Africa during the tumultuous fifties and sixties, when Africans all across the continent began to demand national independence, and the newspapers and magazines of America, Europe, and the United Kingdom, began to worry that an unfriendly, mighty Africa might rise from their colonial dust. He was there for wars short and long in South America, and he witnessed the unrest between Arabs and Israelis. In short, he was there.

The Soccer War is a series of snippets from conflicts around the world, sometimes focused heavily upon the war itself, and other times bemusedly observing the activities of confused peasants, scared militia, bewildered fellow-reporters, and minor officials. It is also intensely personal, though curiously without revealing much of his life back home in Poland. One suspects the reason for this is that Kapuściński didn't have much of life back home - he reported, he traveled, he brushed up against death so many times that you'd think it would become routine, though it never did. Wherever Kapuściński was, he wrote and wrote about the conflict, burrowing as deeply into the front lines as possible, sticking his head in where it did not belong.

There are a few times when all seems to be, quite literally, lost. He discussed a moment in the Congo, when he was trapped by armed forces, and happened to overhear that he would be executed the next day. Kapuściński and his imprisoned colleagues were able to convince a guard to go for help, and he was miraculously able to find help in time. Kapuściński writes that, when a person has faced immediate, almost-certain death, "you leave behind...an empty territory that you cannot even describe: it has no points of reference or shape or signposts, and its existence - like the sound barrier - is something you feel only once you have approached it." And later, "No one, however, who has entered this emptiness can ever be the same person he was before." His experiences with death, which were many, seem to have left him a person restless, unable to properly locate himself in a single location.

The stories in The Soccer War are split, mostly and almost half and half, between Africa and South America. The African stories are at first hopeful, though they become increasingly less so. Kapuściński's story of Nkrumah shows the hope and positivity possible in Africa as he seeks to provide Ghana with its independence. Algeria's Ben Bella shows the cycle of coup, dictatorship, oppression, and coup again, that afflicts so many African nations. Algeria, under Ben Bella's rule, was able to stave off sliding into worse darkness and greater turmoil, but under Bella, "the country was stagnating; the unemployed filled the squares of every city; there was no investment; illiteracy ruled". Sadly, with the passing of fifty years, we are able to see the outcome of Nkrumah's then-positive rule - overthrown by a CIA-backed military coup, and left to rot as a permanent exile to the nation he helped create. Africa, as a land of extremes, from hardship to riches to beauty to poverty, is as harsh to its elite as it is to the very poorest.

South American fares less well. At least with Africa, Kapuściński sees hope and beauty. In South America, he sees a baroque culture obsessed with fantasy and unable to stop itself from wars and dictators. A 100-hour war between Honduras and El Salvador had its spark in a series of soccer matches, though of course its roots ran deeper than that. 6,000 people dead, 12,000 wounded, villages demolished and homes destroyed. For a soccer match, yes, but also due to the cultural rifts that exist between countries that share so much history and passion. In Africa Kapuściński sees a continent struggling to find itself, but in South America he sees a developed land fighting for reasons which should, in theory, remain purely on a diplomatic level.

For all that, Kapuściński isn't overtly political in his writings. He is a reporter, and in The Soccer War he is reporting on himself as much as the coups and revolutions. At one stage he extends a lengthy defense against his rejection of desks and offices, declaring himself free because he has never known the deadening touch of office furniture. It sounds, perhaps, farcical when summarised, but his eloquence accurately captures the mentality of all world-roving reporters, men and women who simply must be there, in the thickest, in the most dangerous situations, and first. Reporters risk much to bring us the news, and generally our only response is to forget it over breakfast, or mention it, perhaps, over the water-cooler or coffee. A war never goes by without reporters dying - to say nothing of the civilians, the young, the conscripted militia, and the hopeful military. Kapuściński's book is not a plea for peace, but not is it a glorification of war. It is, instead, one man's exploration of himself as he explores the world's most dangerous locations. Eminently readable, and relevant even though the battles and wars themselves are no longer so important.