Longshot (24 page)

“You play for Galatasaray? That's my team!” Hassan erupted, opening his jacket to display his Galatasaray shirt.

His partner supported the Fenerbahçe team, a rival club. “At Fenerbahçe, we at least pay our players on time,” he remarked, which, ironically, led me to explain my monetary situation.

“I have no cash right now. I'm sorry,” I told them.

“That's OK.”

“I will come back when I have cash.”

“No worries,” Hassan said. “Take it now, come back and pay later. Trust no one.”

An image of my hand being held in a blender to pay off a debt while Court was plunged into ice water with a potato sack over his head flashed across my eyes. “Um…. Thanks, that's really nice of you. But I prefer to pay as I go. Really. I'd feel too bad. But I promise when I get the money, I will come back to you. I love these rugs,” I said, panning over the rugs one last time. I really did love those rugs. I never broke my promise, because I never did receive my money.

It all became abundantly clear that my time with Galatasaray had come to an end the morning I showed up with the team to travel to the season opening tournament. When I showed up at 1100 hours for the bus, as the manager had told me, I was the only one there. The bus had departed two hours earlier.

The timing couldn't have been more impeccable: as I was standing there at the chain-locked doors of the clubhouse, Coach Oner sent me a text: “I'm sorry, Lance. You're my friend. I'm your friend. I'm sorry.”

 

“Lance, I just talked to Yaman. He has received the $20,000 that Coach Oner has been holding for you, and he will get it to you tonight. And it has to be tonight, as you and your brother are on a plane to France tomorrow.”

“OK, John. I got it. What is the name of the team in France?”

“Rouen. It's a two-month contract, to fill in for an injury. They need help, and you'll be playing. It's a good league, and you'll have the playing time to get the visibility you need. But right now, just worry about getting the money. Meet Yaman wherever he tells you to meet him.”

I hung up with John and then called Yaman, the Turkish counterpart to John. “Lance, I cannot be there tonight,” he told me, “but my assistant will meet you at the Atrium, where he will give you your money.”

The Atrium is always busy, people coming and going in the capitalistic-driven culture that is Istanbul. Honking cars and taxis drive up on
the curbs and sidewalks to cheat their way past traffic that is often held up by a special someone who thinks they are important enough to park in the middle of the street and walk into the coffee shop to buy themselves a latte. In their defense, they turn on their hazard lights. Hazard lights make everything all better. They absolve idiots of any accountability. They really do.

It was the heart of Ramadan, the monthlong equivalent of Christmas in the Muslim world. People were racing home for their supper before evening fell and the Taraweeh, the evening prayer service, was read. Court and I walked up to the Atrium, only a few blocks from our apartment. We stood on the steps of the shopping mall waiting for whoever Yaman's assistant was to find me, as I had no idea what he looked like.

Like the sounds of an orchestra setting the scene in a movie, the Taraweeh began to blast from the speakers of the towering mosque beside the Atrium, a gleaming crescent moon atop its towering spire. In the Taraweeh, one-thirtieth of the Koran is read each night of the month of Ramadan: Allahumma innaka afuwwun kareemun tuhib-bul af-wa fa-afo anni….

Those lacking in faith continue on with their shopping and day-today routine, but for the most part, everyone stops. Taxi drivers pull up on the curb, lay a towel out on the sidewalk, and humbly kneel to join in prayer with the rest of their world.

Modern men who don't believe in such superstitious ways—Allah be damned along with Santa—stand and smoke at the steps of the Atrium, their unnaturally blond wives happily skipping out with full shopping bags spilling with shiny things. Money talks, while Muhammad does not. Stagh-firullah hallazi la-ila-ha illa huwal Hayyul Qayyumo wa atu-bu ilaihe….

A man, cigarette in mouth, approaches me. “Lance?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“I work for Yaman. Here is your money.” Without caution or worry—even with total disregard—he pulls out an envelope and removes $20,000 in cash. Two men with long black ponytails, standing only a few feet from us, immediately see green and look over at me, eyeing all the Ben Franklins. One nudges the other and hints with a nod toward me. They begin to whisper. Court nudges me, hinting at them. The damage is done. Seeing no point in chiding Yaman's assistant for his folly, I quickly take the money. “
Tsekkur,
” I say as we part ways.

Hoping to become lost in the crowd, Court and I quickly walk into the busy Atrium—a pointless exercise, as I stick out like a sore thumb
with my blond hair. Being six-foot-eleven might have something to do with it, too. We walk toward the McDonald's, finding solace in our American friend Ronald—the only time I have ever appreciated the sight of a clown; I hate clowns. I look over my shoulder to see the greased ponytails walking into the Atrium, eyeing us.

“Here, Court, take the envelope,” I say, giving it to him but leaving the cash in my pocket. “Go downstairs and exit through the grocery store, and I will keep walking out and exit the north side. Run back to the apartment, but make sure they're not following you. I will meet you back there.”

We split and I continue down the busy corridor of the hexagon-shaped building. They stand and look at both me and Court as he rides down the escalator and I continue on. When I turn the corner, out of eyeshot, I take off in a dead sprint past the salon and candy shop and plow through the revolving door like a lineman.

“Inna anzalnahu fee lailatul Qadr, Wa maa adraka maa lailatul Qadr.” Words of the Koran bellow through the dusk of Istanbul as though they had been waiting for me, the infidel, to come back outside. My heart is beating. I turn a corner, and an elderly lady screams in fright as I—a giant of a man—dart past her. I awkwardly apologize in poor Turkish, “
Uzgunum,
” and continue on down the sidewalk toward another corner, where I dart behind a high wall of shrubs.

I'm now in a back alleyway, the walls on either side obscuring me from vision. I pause for a minute to peer around the corner from where I had just come. No one. I rocket down toward my apartment. Homeless dogs and cats prowling through trash cower out of my way. Pigeons disband and take flight, scattering in my wake. “Inna anzalnahu fee lailatul Qadr, Wa maa adraka maa lailatul Qadr!”

At this moment I think of Montana. I miss her. How did I, once merely a deaf polygamist kid and nothing more, find myself here at this very moment: on the other side of the world in a culture unlike any I have ever known, being followed by thugs, with $20,000 in my pocket and no place to put it?

“
Salaamun heya hatta matla-il fajr….
”

It's a shame my first 20K run wasn't a marathon.

 

Court and I arrived at the airport to fly to Paris the following day. As I sat there waiting for our flight, confident thoughts of rising above adversity
mixed and matched with thoughts of self-doubt: Am I really not that good? Am I overrated? Was I really just a big fish in a little pond in the Big Sky Conference? Yes, yes, these may be true, but I'm more than that. I'm more than that. I wish I could say that this pep talk I had with myself at Istanbul's Atatürk International Airport was the only one I needed to give myself, but that would be lying. There was worse to come.

Court and I landed in Paris that night, October 16, 2005. We let our animals out of their cages to relieve themselves and then loaded them and our bags into the taxi van that promptly took us to Rouen, a forty-five-minute drive north of Paris, where we were met by Coach Michel and Pascal, the team manager. I knew enough about Rouen to know that at one point it had been the old capital of British Normandy and that both Henry II and his son were buried at Rouen Cathedral, and that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in the very same city as well. I was actually very excited to visit Rouen and was looking forward to getting to know the city and its culture.

Monday practice came. Coach Michel walked me through the set plays a few times and asked if I had it. “Yes,” I answered, remembering most of the plays, as they were your basic elementary sets of wheel actions and all-American box plays.

Things were going along splendidly in practice until I mixed up one play. Michel, in a Jekyll and Hyde manner, blew his whistle and went red as he got in my face: “You said you knew the plays!”

Kenny Whitehead, a veteran American, gave Coach a stunned look and then turned to me and shrugged: “I have never seen Coach do that before. What did you do?”

“I forgot a play…on my first day.”

“Must be because you're a rookie and he thinks he can mess with you,” Kenny observed, walking back to his spot on the floor.

It was then that I knew this was trouble.

 

Life in France was unlike anything we had experienced.

“Lance, dude! I just got back from breakfast,” Court says as he enters the room of our residential hotel, unloading the armful of
pains
and croissants he has absconded with. “I walked down there this morning and there was porn on the TV as everyone was just sitting around eating their breakfast as though it was some normal thing.”

“Porn?”

“Yeah!”

“Like cable porn or hardcore?”

“Hardcore!”

“People are just having porn for breakfast?”

“Yeah. I walked in and just stared at the TV, and the manager lady noticed the shock on my face and she smiled and shrugged. ‘France,' she said, as though it explained everything.”

Skeptical of such a story, I take a bite from a croissant as I get up from the counter and head out the door—you know, not because I like porn; I'd never think of it. I just wanted to see if people were really dipping their croissants in their coffee with some DP action going on behind them on the television.

I enter the breakfast commons, and much to my disappointment there's only a homely-looking weather man mumbling something in French on the TV screen. Either it had just been a hardcore intermission or the channel had changed. Oh well. I take another
pain
from the basket and leave for Paris, as I have a busy day ahead.

The assistant coach misplaced my passport a few days ago, and I have to go to the American embassy in Paris to replace it. I walk up to the car and wince again at the sight of the top of it, which was badly scraped by Court last week when he decided to race the garage door rather than just wait for it to close and then push the remote again. No. It would've taken an extra twenty seconds—too long to just sit there and wait. There goes my five-hundred-dollar car deposit.

I leave Rouen and enjoy the green scenery and the fog that creeps through the woods of Normandy. I really love this place. Too bad my coach is unbearable. And too bad there are toll booths every ten kilometers on the French expressways. Nothing discourages me more from driving than toll booths. I reach the outskirts of Paris, where traffic is being held up thirty kilometers outside of the city center. I sit there in the car and creep for two hours at a snail's pace. Graffiti lines every available surface that can be plagued: expressways, billboards, lampposts, buildings, and windows. Nothing is sacred, not even cathedrals. As I drive into Paris, I feel as though I'm back in Istanbul. I realize that all big cities are the same, no matter where you are on the globe. When you have seen one, you have seen them all. To Paris's credit, the wide boulevards that were constructed in the Second Empire, during the reign of Napoleon III, as a riot deterrent are a unique characteristic. By widening the boulevards, the city planners made the rioting mobs who were either
marching or trying to block off a portion of the city more vulnerable to open cannon fire and much easier to disperse. Silly French: baseball is America's pastime, while revolting is France's.
Vive la révolution!

I stop at several different shops and markets trying to find directions to the U.S. embassy. A few times the directions were just lost in translation, I'm sure. But I know for a fact that a couple of times the Parisians I talked to felt humorous messing with an American and sent me clear out to the other side of the city. Had I had boobs, no matter what my nationality the Frenchman in the cigar shop would've been more than eager to help me and would've taken my hand and kissed and then stroked my hair: “
Ooh la la, ma chérie!
” But because he felt threatened by the handsome, towering, boobless John Wayne in his shop, he sent me to the hinterlands.

I finally arrive at the embassy and wait in line for two more hours before I'm able to get my photo taken. By this time, it's two forty-five and practice starts at four. I race out to my car and zoom out of Paris, taking a quick look at the Eiffel Tower across the courtyard and the Louvre, and consider my first and final trip to Paris to have been a sufficient one.

Pulling into the parking lot at the gym, I have ten minutes before practice starts and I'm starving. I can't very well practice on an empty stomach. I race to the delicatessen and order myself a sandwich. I race into the team office, where everyone is seated and waiting for me as I am just in time, with only a minute to spare. But Coach Michel, feeling that a rookie should not be the last one in, does not like that I wasn't there ten minutes earlier. His disapproving stare turns into outright offense as I begin to snarl at my sandwich, eating it as though it would be my last. Michel stands there in silence, folding his arms in front of the projector like an idiot, acting as though he doesn't mind that the projector is blinding him because he is so tough. Then he speaks: “This is very unprofessional, Lance. Do you think you could maybe wait to eat your sandwich after film?” Without a word I drop my sandy and sit back all professional-like, letting him know I'm ready to be a better basketball player today.