Gaar Adams Extract from Guest Privileges
B
efore dusk could settle over the vacant lot, I climbed a pile of cinder blocks to watch two taxi drivers wrestle bare-chested in the sand. The shorter one, standing a full head beneath the furrowed brow of his challenger, punched his thighs in pre-match theatrics while plumes of dust sprouted from the makeshift ring like ill omens portending his swift defeat. But when the fighters locked arms to grapple, the scrawny man pulled loose, swinging a heel into the crook of his larger opponent’s knees, pitching him to the ground. As beads of sweat coursed down their torsos, the smaller wrestler grabbed the fallen man’s kaupina loincloth, using it for traction to climb atop his hulking frame, triumphant. In under a minute, the bout had finished. But this unexpected underdog victory felt like an aftershock to the initial surprise of the event itself: two South Asian cabbies, nearly naked, sparring in a barren sandlot along the edge of Dubai. In a place where simply donning shorts can run afoul of the city’s notoriously strict penal codes, I felt like I was witnessing not just a feat of athletics but a challenge to an entire sociopolitical order. It would take much longer to understand that the subversion I’d experienced that evening was also personal. I was not the only spectator that day. The victor bounded out of the ring and a stout, bearded man pulled him into a firm embrace, wiping away the sand that caked his brow. Clutching each other’s shoulders, the men grazed foreheads and grinned through a muted exchange before a throng of fans encircled them, hoisting the wrestler upon their shoulders. In the far corner of the ring, the next pair of wrestlers stripped out of their shalwar kameez, rubbing their biceps for warmth as they waited for the rabble to subside. Only a small
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