Scherzer joined up, adding a final touch to an already competitive team. He brought a passion for the game, speed, and a rifle-accurate shooting foot that earned him a nickname from Anderson: the Austrian Assassin. With Scherzer on board, Anderson’s team was fulfilling its promise this season. The Valiants were undefeated and leading their division, and Anderson couldn’t help but see the team’s success as a reflection of the progress he’d made in his own life. The team opened up Joni Scherzer’s world as well. His English improved. He made friends. And he experienced the self-esteem boost that can come from receiving the admiration of one’s peers. In the process, coach and player bonded; for both, the Valiants had become a kind of transformational experience.
ON THE MORNING of October 21, the Under 13 Fugees piled onto the white YMCA bus in the parking lot of the Clarkston Public Library and set out for Athens to take on Anderson, Joni Scherzer, and the Valiants. It was a one-and-a-half-hour drive, so the boys settled in, some gazing out the windows at the unfamiliar scenery, others napping with bundles of clothes tucked between their ears and shoulders for pillows. The short wheel base of the YMCA bus made for bumpy rides, so sleep was fitful. Tracy drove the bus while Luma led the way in her yellow Volkswagen. The drive took them out of the bustle of Atlanta and through a collection of small towns in the Georgia countryside. The air was cool, and some of the treetops in the rolling forests along the way were hued with orange and red—the first hints of a late-arriving autumn. Luma cued up her iPod, which was plugged into her car stereo, and turned up the music. The drive offered a brief window of personal time and a welcome respite from the last hectic weeks, and Luma was enjoying it, much as she had those long drives around Atlanta when she had just moved to town. For the first time in a long while, Luma was able to daydream.
Near Monroe, Georgia, about an hour east of Atlanta, Luma was cruising in the right-hand lane when she felt a strange presence over her left shoulder. She looked out the driver’s-side window to a Georgia state police car riding alongside her. The car didn’t pass, but neither did it slow down. Luma looked at her speedometer. She wasn’t speeding. A moment later, the trooper eased his cruiser behind Luma’s Volkswagen and turned on his flashing lights.
The brake light, Luma thought.
The light had been on a long list of personal errands Luma had put off to deal with her team and her players’ families. She should’ve known better, she thought, if only because of the ticket-happy police in Clarkston. She eased onto the shoulder and began to slow, with the trooper behind her. The bus carrying the team continued on. Luma looked at her watch; if this didn’t take too long, she could still get to Athens in time for a full warm-up.
The officer approached and asked for Luma’s license, then disappeared for a moment into his car. By now, the kids on the bus were getting agitated. Some of the boys had seen Luma get pulled over through the rear window of the bus. They asked Tracy what was happening. She wasn’t certain, but reassured them that Luma would be on her way shortly. Meanwhile, the officer approached Luma’s car again. Her license had been suspended, he informed her, and ordered her out of the car.
Luma was puzzled. There was no reason her license should have been suspended. She’d been ticketed only once in recent memory: for an expired registration, one morning while driving Jeremiah to school, and for which she had paid the fine on time. The trooper had no way of looking into that on a weekend. He only knew what the computer told him. Under Georgia law, he said, he had to arrest her. The trooper ordered Luma to turn around and to put her hands behind her back. She did, and a moment later felt the cold steel of the officer’s handcuffs on her wrists.
By now, Tracy had turned the bus around and was pulling onto the shoulder behind the cop’s cruiser. Standing against the squad car, Luma explained the presence of the busload of kids. She didn’t get into the details—that they were on their way to the biggest game so far of their soccer season against an undefeated team from Athens. She suggested the trooper just let her leave her car on the highway and get on the bus with her players. The officer said he couldn’t do that; he had to take her in. He suggested Luma tell the kids that her car had broken down.
“I’m not going to lie to them,” she said. “They’re not stupid.”
Luma asked that she be allowed to give the team’s player cards to the bus driver so the team could go ahead to the game without her, and pleaded with the officer to remove the handcuffs while they were in front of the kids.
“If you promise not to hit me,” he said—a joke.
Luma didn’t laugh.
The officer obliged. Luma took the player cards to Tracy in the bus—the referee would need them to verify the identities and ages of the players. Then she stood to address her players. She told them she wouldn’t be able to make their game. She told them they knew what to do. She expected them to win without her. Luma had hoped to reassure the Fugees, but her voice was shaking.
The Fugees sat uneasily on the bus. They saw the strange events unfolding through the windshield in a menacing light. Several had seen or heard of family members getting carted off by authorities—or worse—for the pettiest of offenses. Santino Jerke’s uncle had been shot and killed before him by uniformed Sudanese government soldiers for the mighty offense of stealing a chicken. Shahir Anwar’s family had been hounded by Taliban soldiers because his mother ran a school for girls. The boys were also for the most part unaware of the particulars of the American judicial system, or that posting bail could get someone out of jail rather quickly for minor offenses. They simply knew that their coach and guide through the unfamiliar world where their families had settled was getting hauled off by the police. Some of the boys began to cry. As the YMCA bus pulled back onto the highway, Josiah Saydee, the Liberian forward and team leader, was sitting in the back row. He turned around and looked through a rear window of the bus to see the trooper order Luma into the backseat of his cruiser. In hushed tones, Josiah told his teammates at the back of the bus what he had seen: Coach Luma was in a police car. She was going to jail.
THE FUGEES UNLOADED from the team bus in the parking lot of the Athens United Soccer Club a little more than half an hour later. But as they disembarked and began walking toward the field, Anderson saw their faces and got excited. The Valiants had been beating their competition so badly that Anderson was switching his offensive players to defense and vice versa midway through games out of sympathy for the competition. As satisfying as the victories were, Anderson preferred a challenge. Anderson knew next to nothing about the Fugees when they showed up, but at a glance, he assumed they were a notch above the typical local team.
“You see certain nationalities,” said Anderson, “and you say, ‘These kids can play.’”
Joni Scherzer noticed there was something unusual about the Fugees as soon as they’d pulled up in the parking lot as well. Most rival teams showed up piecemeal, in their parents’ cars. These guys had come in a bus. He didn’t know what to make of that detail. He was warming up when the Fugees made their way to the field. It was the first time he’d seen a team with so many black players. He watched the Fugees warm up with interest, and quickly concluded they played a higher level of soccer than the Valiants had faced so far this season.
“They played different from American soccer,” Scherzer said he realized. “It was more European—not kickball.”
Anderson prided himself on his ability to scout rival teams during their pregame warm-ups. He looked them over for any kids who seemed particularly physical or fast, and he made a mental note of the jersey numbers of anyone he saw who could shoot or pass with both feet, information he’d relay to his players before game time. But as he was watching the Fugees, he noticed a conspicuous absence.
Where’s their coach? he wondered.
THE WALTON COUNTY jail was a dull modern structure that stood out from the surrounding neighborhood because of the tangle of razor wire that ran along a chain-link fence and glistened menacingly in the sunlight. Inside, the trooper who had
arrested Luma was handing her over to the custody of the Walton County Sheriff’s Department. A clerk asked her to state her name.
“Luma,” she said.
“How do you spell that?” the clerk asked.
“Don’t bother,” the trooper said, sliding her driver’s license to the clerk.
The clerk noticed Luma’s middle initial—H—and asked what it stood for.
“Hassan,” Luma said.
The clerk cast a knowing glance at the arresting officer.
“Hassan?” she said. “Where’s that from?”
“Jordan,” said Luma.
“It’s Arab?” the clerk asked. “What are you doing here?”
Luma started to explain that she was on the way to a soccer game when she had been pulled over, but she was cut off.
“What are you doing here—in the United States?” she was asked.
Luma didn’t respond. It was time to get fingerprinted. When she had registered with the Immigration and Naturalization Service upon filing her green card application, Luma had been fingerprinted; her fingers were placed on an ink pad and carefully rolled over the card beneath. The woman at the Walton County jail had a different approach; she grabbed Luma’s hand, inked her fingertips, and then slammed her hand down on the counter. For the first time, Luma began to feel afraid. Her wallet and sweatshirt were taken from her—the bailiff told Luma she couldn’t wear the garment in the jail because it might be contaminated with lice. Bail was set at $759.50, and Luma was escorted into a windowless holding cell with a group of women who looked no happier to be there than she was.
BY NOW, DAVE Anderson had learned that the Fugees’ coach had been waylaid en route to the game, and he was curious to see how the competition would fare without help from the sideline. Tracy Ediger did her best to encourage the boys, but she was their tutor and an all-purpose aide to refugee families, not a soccer coach. The boys would have to do this on their own. They divvied up their positions and took the field. No one had had a chance even to give a thought to the competition. Robin and Idwar Dikori, whose speed could be useful in trying to neutralize the blond dynamo playing forward for the Valiants, were unaware of the challenge that awaited them.
It took the Valiants less than three minutes to score their first goal. Two minutes later, they scored again. Anderson could tell something was amiss; he knew from what he’d seen in warm-ups that the Fugees could play, and yet on the field they looked lost. They were arguing with one another and giving Eldin, the goalie, a hard time. A few minutes later, the Valiants scored their third goal. The first half was not yet halfway over. Anderson scanned the Fugees’ half of the field. Their heads had begun to drop. It was a sign he’d come to know well from the Valiants’ opponents.
Aw, man, Anderson thought. They’re done.
The Valiants scored again. And again. At the half, they led 5–0.
When Joni and his teammates came to the bench, Anderson told them he would be switching them up in the second half. Joni and the other forwards would move to defense. The defenders would play offense. They understood his reasoning—the game was getting out of hand—but they were disappointed and puzzled, unable to understand how a group of kids who seemed so talented in warm-ups could play so badly.
The Fugees spent halftime bickering over who would play where. Tiny Qendrim volunteered to replace Eldin at keeper, a move his teammates roundly rejected, even as they agreed a change was needed in the net. Half the team wanted Bien on defense, where he could clear the ball with his powerful kick; a more vocal group wanted him at forward. Jeremiah would anchor the middle. Mafoday, usually the weaker of the two keepers, would take Eldin’s place in the net.
As the second half began, Anderson watched with curiosity to see how the Fugees would respond. A few minutes in, he noticed something: their chins were up. They were going after the ball. The Valiants managed to blast a shot low and to the left. Heavyset Mafoday, whose vertical jump was perhaps three inches, dove and made the stop. A moment later, Jeremiah chased down a free ball and, attempting to clear it, blasted it into Joni Scherzer’s midsection with unexpected force. Joni collapsed on the ground in pain and had to come out. The Fugees hadn’t caved. Midway through the second half, the score was still 5–0 when the Fugees were called for a foul in the box for slide tackling from behind. The Valiants would have a penalty shot.
Mafoday Jawneh took his place in goal. With his stubby legs and broad waistline supporting a big barrel chest, Mafoday appeared more like a fixture in goal than a potentially mobile obstacle. Against the empty vastness of the net, he looked vulnerable and almost lonely. Mafoday shook out his arms, put his hands on his knees, and looked into the narrowing eyes of the Valiants sharpshooter before him in shiny black and gold. The Valiants parents cheered the shooter on, while the Fugees players encouraged Mafoday with less confidence: there wasn’t much difference, after all, between a five- and a six-goal lead.
Anderson had walked toward the midfield line to get a better view. As a onetime goalie himself, he knew firsthand what Mafoday was going through: the “sheer terror,” as Anderson put it, of the penalty kick. Penalty kicks, especially in youth soccer, were almost always converted, so Anderson had taken to teaching his goalies to relax by reminding themselves that the onus was entirely on the player taking the kick: he was supposed to score, and no one—least of all the keeper’s teammates—expected a stop. On the sideline, Anderson felt a pang of camaraderie with the opposing goalie.
Come on, kid, Anderson said to himself.
The Valiants shooter surveyed the open net in front of him. He cocked his chin into his sternum, stepped toward the ball, flung his leg forward, and connected, firing a low, sharp shot to the goalie’s right. Mafoday Jawneh had made his decision. As the Valiants player made contact with the ball, Mafoday tipped to his right and began to fall like a felled tree. He extended his arms over his head and landed on the ground, stretched out and parallel with the crossbar. There was a thud, then a moment’s pause as Mafoday and his teammates realized the ball had stopped in his gray padded goalie gloves—and stayed there, just in front of the end line: a save. The Fugees erupted in cheers and surrounded Mafoday. On the Valiants sideline, Dave Anderson was cheering as loudly as anyone.
Huge, he thought to himself. Unbelievably huge.
A few minutes later, the referee blew the whistle three times: the final score was 5–0 Valiants. The Fugees hadn’t given up a goal in the second half. They weren’t playing against the Valiants’ toughest offensive setting, but they’d fought and held their own, and in the process had earned a new fan nearly two hours from home.
SITTING IN THE Walton County jail, Luma had lost all track of time. There were no clocks and no windows to help her orient herself within the passage of the day. She thought about her team, and even started counting bricks in the walls to occupy her mind. Eventually, her thoughts turned to Amman, her family, and especially her late grandmother, who had always told her as a child that things happened for a reason. What was the reason in this? Luma wondered. Was it a warning that she should change her middle name in America so she wasn’t harassed? That she should pay more attention to her own life by making sure she took care of things like burned-out brake lights? Luma couldn’t make sense of it. She thought about what she would tell her players. Luma had always told them they had to shake off bad calls. In all her years of coaching, she liked to say, she’d never seen a referee change his mind about a call because of the arguments of players or coaches. Bad calls were part of the game; you had to play on.
Luma heard her name called. She stepped into a room with an angled view of the clerk’s counter, where she saw Tracy’s hands signing papers and sliding them back to the clerk, then handing over cash for bail—$759.50 in exact change. A moment later, a door opened and Luma was free to go. She walked out of the building and directly onto the team bus, parked just in front of the Walton County jail.
Luma asked about the score and got the bad news: the Fugees had
lost 5–0.
“This was my fault, and I had no excuse for not being there,” she told her players. “I should have been there and I wasn’t, and the way it happened probably messed you guys up.”
“Mafoday stopped a penalty kick!” someone said.
“It was a really hard team, Coach,” said Idwar Dikori.
“Were they better than you?” Luma asked.
“No!” the Fugees shouted in response.
“Come on, guys—were they?”
“No, Coach,” said Robin, Idwar’s little brother. “If you were there, we were going to beat them.”
BACK IN CLARKSTON that night, Luma got a call from the nine-year-old little brother of Grace Balegamire, a midfielder for the Under 13s. The boy’s mother had gone to the hospital with his older brother and little sister, to visit a friend who had just had a baby. The boy was at home with his twin brother and Grace, but he was unhappy.
“I’m sad,” he told Luma.
“Why are you sad?” she asked.
“I’m scared to be alone,” he said.
“Oh, quit it,” Luma said.
Luma hung up the phone and decided she had an errand to run. She drove to the grocery store, picked up some sweet rolls, then headed over to the boy’s apartment. When she arrived, he was in his bedroom with the door closed. Luma knocked, but the boy wouldn’t answer. She coaxed him out eventually with the sweet rolls. The two sat and talked.
“I just had a bad day,” he said.
Luma smiled. “Do you want to hear about a bad day?” she said.
“Yeah.”
Luma told him everything. The cops, the jail, how she missed Grace’s soccer game. He didn’t buy any of it.
“Coach, don’t lie,” he said. “You would never go to jail.”
“No, I went—ask Grace.”
“If you were in jail, you wouldn’t be here,” he said.
“No—Tracy paid to get me out,” Luma said.
“How much?”
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