The day I wanted to Kill Batir Wardam

I really wanted to kill this guy.

It's not like when you tell your friend "Oh why didn't you tell me about the party, I wanna kill you!".

No, I wanted to kill Mr. Wardam as in : I wanted him to disappear from the planet or at least be kidnapped and tortured and nobody would hear from him again.

To start with, I am a big fan of Diego Maradona. He wasn't only my favorite football star, but my childhood hero. At certain times in my childhood I adored him more than my parents (whom I love so much and I hope they haven't read this).

In 1990 Argentina, lead by Maradona, were playing in the World Cup. I was fanatic about reading al-Rai newspaper, it was the best source of World Cup news given the absence of satelitte dishes that time. I was 11 years old.

Some people didn't like Maradona, some of whom were the neighborhood kids I played football with and intentionally shot the ball really hard into their stomaches until they cried because of that.

But in Al-Rai I noticed this writer , Batir Wardam, who had a strange feeling of hatred towards Maradona. Almost all of his articles were directed against my hero.

I wondered who was that German (excuse my ignorance) who writes in Arabic to express his disgust with Maradona. I was hoping someday he'd stop writing or the newspaper would kick him out, but he kept writing.

Argentina lost to Germany in the final match of the 1990 World Cup. That was a catastrophe. I was extremely upset, but what made really angry is al-Rai's edition two days later (it was July 10th if I'm not wrong as the game was played very late on July 8th). It had a title that the game sucked, and the German performance made Maradona cry.

In the bottom of the page was a separate article trashing Maradona, written by... Batir Wardam. I was really mad, felt like someone wasn't glad enough that such disaster happened to Maradona he even wanted to humiliate him more and drive people against him.

At that point I was hoping to be a MAFIA member (although I was still 11) to go and assasinate Batir. Chop his head or shoot him in his stomach fifty times 7atta yakoon 3ebra leman la ya3taber. I still have that newspaper back home and whenever I used to see his name next to Maradona's picture I would feel like throwing up.

Many years passed by and I didn't read anything for him until recently when I found his blog. It turned out that he wasn't German and that he wasn't that "football terrorist" that I want to murder. I still cannot forget those articles from 1990 but I believe he is a nice guy that still deserve to live. Congratulations Batir ... I gave you a second chance!