Flash fiction: My Father's Team, Author - Salek Uddin

My Father's Team
Salek Uddin
(Based on a true story)

Whenever the World Cup arrived, the village changed.
Some houses were painted green and yellow, others sky blue and white. Newborn children were named after foreign football stars. Giant flags fluttered from bamboo poles.
It looked as if the village had abandoned its own country and adopted distant ones instead.
Only the oldest man in the village would sometimes ask,
“Among all these flags, which one is your own?”
No one bothered to answer.
That day, Brazil was playing.
When Brazil fell behind, Argentina supporters burst into celebration. Firecrackers exploded. Slogans echoed through the streets.
But Brazil came back and won.
The celebration changed sides.
Celebration became argument.
Argument became insult.
Insult became hatred.
The next day, a village arbitration was held.
A verdict was given.
One side went home satisfied.
The other left angry.
That evening, a supporter from the winning side sat at a roadside tea stall.
A group of men surrounded him.
His teacup slipped from his hand and shattered on the ground.
A short while later, his headless body lay beside the road.
The next morning, the village learned that a Brazil supporter had been killed.
But his little son learned that his father had been killed.
For a few days, the newspapers carried the story.
Then everyone moved on.
Brazil won another match.
Argentina won another match.
New rallies filled the streets.
New flags rose into the sky.
Only the dead man's wife began working in other people's homes to survive.
Only his son left school and started carrying loads in the market.
One day, the old man asked the boy,
“Tell me, are you Brazil or Argentina?”
The boy remained silent for a moment.
“I don't know,” he said.
“Then whose side are you on?”
The boy looked at the flags waving above the village.
Then he answered quietly,
“I was on my father's team.”
The old man's eyes filled with tears.
For he suddenly understood:
A man's death had shattered a family.
A child had lost his future.
A widow had lost her companion.
Yet no one in Brazil knew.
No one in Argentina knew.
Only a little boy still remembered that after a football match, his father never came home.


Author biography:
Salek Uddin, Date of birthday 26May 1960 is a Bangladeshi writer, playwright, poet, and columnist. His literary works explore human emotion, solitude, social reality, and moral consciousness. Alongside fiction and poetry, he writes on contemporary politics, governance, and ethical statecraft for national newspapers in Bangladesh.
He is a Life Member of the Bangla Academy and the author of several widely appreciated books in Bengali literature and socio-political thought.