Restored Faith

At 7.20pm, three times a week, Abu Mansur turns up outside the dojo gates, his small 7-year old son, dressed in an equally miniature judogi, running excitedly around him at waist height. He wears a blank expression, his round face weary from the day's labours, as he looks absently down the dark road which runs past the club and into infinity. When the gates are opened and the others swarm across the tarmac towards the dojo door, he follows slowly, pensively, behind them, with short, measured strides. As the session begins, he takes up his usual spot on the wooden bench along the back wall of the dojo and as the figures, bathed in yellow lamp-light, flash and flicker upon the red mats, exuding warmth and energy, his eyes begin to close and he drifts asleep, as though in a chair in front of a log fire.

But today Abu Mansur's eyes remain fixedly open.

For some unknown reason 7.30 comes and goes, and Ya Ustaaz does not arrive. Ya Cap-i-tan, waiting in the darkness outside with the rest of us, takes out his keys and begins cycling through, looking for one to let us through the padlocked gates. "Al ustaaz mariid al yawm?", 'is he ill?', I ask my friend Muhammed standing next to me. "Wa-allah ma ba'arif", 'I've got no idea', he replies, shrugging his shoulders.

I follow Ya Cap-i-tan inside, as normal, but am only followed by little Mansur i adition to a black belt friend of Ya Cap-i-tan, a new black belt called Hassan (who more than makes up for his size and age by being incredibly aggressive) and my sparring partner of late, Jarawiish. The general cries from outside suggest that we may well be the only ones training tonight, as a football flies past the window and is intercepted in the free-for-all match which had erupted on the floodlit tarmac.

(Above: picture of the dojo from across the tarmac on my phone as I left.)

We spent ten minutes running around as a nominal warm-up and then began 40 minutes of randori, free fighting, with Jarawiish and I coached by the three black belts present and for perhaps the first time since starting judo in Syria, I felt I was learning something, as they made us do uchi komi, repeating again and again various moves in a combat situation.

After what seemed like no time at all, my eyes glanced at the clock on the wall and I realised that it was time for me to go. As I left I was overcome by a wave of regret that I had had to leave what could perhaps be the best session I ever have with these people, and frustration, as seems to characterise many of my accounts, at the thought that I will probably forget everything that I have just learned over the course of my Easter holiday in England.

But at least, like Abu Mansur as he sits there, invigorated by by the energy of his son's progress, my faith in the value of these sessions has been restored. For now, anyway.