In Qatar, remain accredited knife at all costs – Liberation

For the 2022 World Cup, our special correspondents tell the sidelines of this controversial competition. Second episode, where our journalist borders on the diplomatic incident for having wanted to cut peppers in his apartment.

The summary equipment of the apartment rented by Freed being what it is, we started looking for a knife that cuts in Doha: if not, you might as well cut peppers with a piece of scrabble. And the life of the sports reporter being what it is, we took advantage of the countless times of beats which make the charm of the profession, between a press conference of the defender of the Blues Lucas Hernandez and a media raout of the Welsh selection , to hunt for sufficiently sharp cover. A blind street, with rubbish rotting in stagnant water and gigantic barrels of used cooking oil: a stall where Pakistanis and Sri Lankans sell everything and the opposite of everything, «I want a sharp knife», a guy lifts bath mats in a dark corner and here I am armed.

The gate officer guarding the entrance to the Welsh selection’s training ground pulls out the (standard) knife without saying a word. He calls a first person in charge, with pockmarked skin. Which calls for a second, more urban and no longer belonging to a security company, but to the police. Which puts the market in my hand: you swing the knife and you go home. Throw it away: no. Hide it: why not.

«Black note»

I put it under a plot, 30 meters from the entrance. And enters the tent where the Welsh subscribe to their media obligations. Twenty minutes pass: a security guy comes to get me. “Take your things.” Bad. I find the policeman outside the tent, but still inside. He leads the way to the exit, a security guard has slipped behind me and is also moving forward. An escort. They put me in an overheated storage room: «Five minutes.»

More like fifteen. More a bit dry. The policeman arrives. Security cameras saw me stashing the knife in the plot. It went up I don’t know where, and it came down in twenty minutes. “Would you take the knife to get on a plane? Well, it’s the same here.” I agree: basic safety rules, maybe even the standards enacted by Fifa for this kind of event. Afterwards, the knife did not return. And it was the cop who asked me to hide him. «I know, but…» Goal what? He takes my accreditation “for information”. Something tells me that you have to play it quiet: it’s starting to get hot.

Twenty more minutes in the sauna and a stout man in a black Adidas T-shirt with translucent plastic gloves shows up: he works for Fifa and takes over from the policeman who doesn’t speak English very well. I explain that if, in fact. The policeman, who came back with him, smiles. At this point, it doesn’t help anymore: “I have to put a ‘black note’ on your accreditation”, a “black note”. What’s this ? “We put you on the plane if you come back with a knife or something.” No question: it’s the door open to god knows what, a provocation for example. «Hum… ok, no black notes.» He can tell me what he wants: I won’t be able to check anything. “Take your knife with you after your work.” I don’t want to touch it anymore, me, the knife. “It is mandatory. And you throw it away.”

A throw in the trash can like in the theater

I go to listen to the Welsh, I come back: the guy in the Adidas T-shirt takes my hand, the knife and puts it exactly in my palm. “Throw it away.” I’m leaving anyway, by metro. He opens his eyes like a saucer: no knife in the metro. If I had a car, I could put it in my car, but impossible to take the subway with a knife. “And you will be watched”, he explains, pointing to a surveillance camera perched on a pylon outside. I will come across seven of them (but I could have missed some) before finding a trash can in which I threw the instrument like in the theater, arm outstretched, so that they (?) didn’t miss anything. Here I am in the subway. A match later, a guy in a pink shirt sits across from me and stares me in the eye for three stations.

He stays like that, without moving. Reason says paranoia, but I don’t know where I am either. I leave before him. And lay eyes on a Bentley dealership on the bus that takes me back to Freed, where three peppers, two onions and forty-five minutes of cuts await me. A blow to let me be tempted by a small sports model on lease: that way, I could go buy a knife in Doha.