‘Messi of Arabia’: A Bisht for the Best | Tellwell Newspaper
Tellwell Newspaper, Abuja – Nigeria:
By Ashraf Aboul-Yazid
Football doesn’t only give its lessons from playing on the yard, because the sport sociology reveals other lessons, not less important, in playing outside the green rectangle.
For the most important sporting event, in parallel with the Olympic Games, by which I mean the World Cup, it seems more media sensational. It is an event that receives billions of viewers, and its expenditures are also in billions of dollars – before and during the four weeks that witness the holding of 64 matches – starting with the group stage and ending with the final game.
In the hours following the closing ceremony of the world tournament in Qatar, there was no talk of wonderful goals, missed opportunities, referees’ mistakes, players’ collapses, coaches’ failures, professionals’ mothers, losers and the expelled’s retirements, all these became Much Ado About Nonsense. They fizzled out but one scene of the host of the FIFA Qatar 2022 World Cup – His Highness Emir Tamim – giving Lionel Messi, the winner of this cup, a royal Bisht subsists.
The Bisht is known in some spoken Arabic dialects as Mishlah, or in classical Arabic as Abaya, a flowing outer gown worn over the garment. The Bisht is usually worn for prestige on special occasions such as weddings, festivals such as Eids, or for Friday prayers (and even funeral prayers).
I still remember that when I visited a family in the city of Al-Qusayr, near Homs in beloved Syria, before the years of destruction, the host did not find anything more valuable than his black Bisht with its golden frame to gift me, as if he had given me a crown. Years before that, when I was a high school student, I received a photo card from my uncle wearing a Bisht while he was working in Bahrain, symbolizing a great position he wanted to document. As for my father, when he returned from Hajj, he never forgot to wear his Bisht – that he had bought from Mecca – whenever he went to pray in the mosque, especially on Fridays. Thus, for me, wearing a Bisht was associated with honor. Imagine if such honor came from the Emir!
This flowing traditional Abaya distinguishes the wearer. People say that no fabric can distinguish a handmade Bisht; that is why the art of stitching a Bisht is a skill that is passed down from generation to generation.
Al-Ahsa region in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia has been home to the best Bisht tailors for more than 200 years and top producers in the Gulf countries since 1930. So it was no surprise when I discovered that fine lenses of photographers spotted the brand of the Bisht presented by Sheikh Tamim for Messi, a sign of one of the most respected Bisht dealers in Qatar, Bisht Salem, a family originally from Al-Ahsa that started their handcrafted Bisht business in Doha in the 1930s.
Commentators were divided on the most famous picture; a Bisht for the best Messi for those who see the scene as spontaneous and instinctive, following the Arabization of the icons of the 2022 World Cup or its logo Laeeb. Spectators are indicisive as to which among the various stadia, including the famous Al Bayt Stadium fashioned in the mould of a house, is most spectacular. The singing in Arabic, and the ending with poetry, as if we were in front of Poetic Souq Waqif, a successor to the traditions of Souq Akaz in the Arabian Peninsula, mesmerized the sea of soccer fans.
But other sceptics brought a whole new twist to the Messi Bisht spectacle, claiming it was a prepared script, and that Messi – as an Arab lady writer published – did not agree until they gave him 50 million dollars to wear the Bisht! She specifically said Qatar initially offered him 27 million dollars but Messi rejected the offer and insisted on 50 million dollars! How preposterous a claim, because the price of the Bisht worn by the legendary star was just 4,500 Qatari Riyals.
Lawrence of Arabia was the most famous person outside the Arab region in the twentieth century to wear the Arabian cloak, but today Messi of Arabia has broken than enviable record, with his image wearing his Bisht on Instagram garnering more than 58 million likes in a span of hours.
The photo achieved its goal and the Argentine fans, wearing the Deshdasha and Bisht, traveled back to Buenos Aires to celebrate with hundreds of thousands around an obelisk inspired by the Ancient Egyptian civilization, which lived for decades waiting for this moment, and so nothing remains of history but names, and only cultures can cross borders.
Argentinean newspapers welcomed the mantle, as an Arab tribute, similar to the gift of the key to the city in Latin culture.
Aboul Yazid is an Egyptian writer and poet, and wrote this piece from Cairo.
