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When Florian was five years old he was eccentric to say the least. While he was quite good at playing football, he unfortunately was quite good at scaring his peers away, too. He didn’t know what it was that kept the other five-year-olds away from him, he just knew for a fact that there was something about him that nobody seemed to like.
When Florian was five years old he also met Jamal for the very first time. They were opposites. Flo always spent the breaks during practises five feet apart from everyone else. Meanwhile, Jamal was the centre of attention. All the other kids adored him. He was good at kicking and also had a football pro as his dad. No matter what the boy did, he always drew everyone’s attention.
However, Jamal’s attention was only drawn by one. Unlike the others, he noticed that maybe being unique doesn’t necessarily have to be something bad. The slightly older boy recognized that Flo and him were at a similar level of skill. He noticed how everyone tried to avoid him, as well. Jamal got curious. At least that’s what he told Florian later on.
When Florian was six years old he was still not popular amongst the team. But now he did have a friend and that was quite enough for him. After Jamal first approached him during training and asked whether Flo wanted one of the two cookies his mama had packed him for the break, the two became inseparable. Whatever the others disliked about Flo, Jamal didn’t. Maybe he didn’t even notice. Florian liked about Jamal, whom he often called Jamu, what everyone else liked about him, too. Of course, he did. After all, there was a reason why Jamal was as popular.
Though, he also liked his kindness. Jamu never hesitated to share anything with him. Whenever Florian got hurt during football training, Jamal was the first (and sometimes the only one) to ask whether he was okay. When he noticed that sometimes the younger boy had to walk home after practises, his mama started to give him a ride. Flo could always call and ask Jamal to play outside when he couldn’t bear the noise of his siblings in his own home.
When Florian was seven years old he only got closer to Jamu. Playing with each other more and more involved a ball and with that Florian quickly grew to be the most excited about football whenever his friend was near. Don’t get me wrong, he was always excited about football. I mean, who isn't? With Jamal it was just so much more fun. Especially since the topic often involved some pressure when brought up with his family. Having siblings also playing football, Flo sometimes felt inferior about his skills and questioned whether it was even worth the trouble. Jamu put those doubts to rest in the blink of an eye when he congratulated him on a goal he had scored.
When Florian was seven years old Jamal’s mama also got the opportunity to study abroad and the family moved to England. It was meant to be temporary at first, but half a year later they decided to stay in the UK since Jamal got an offer from the Chelsea FC. With that, Flo was alone during practises again. His teammates weren’t as hostile anymore but the boy didn’t feel comfortable around them, so he stayed distant.
When Florian was eight years old he did not see his best friend even once. He also did not see Jamal when he was nine, ten or eleven years old. However, them not seeing each other did not mean that they weren’t friends anymore. During his first week in his new home Jamu wrote Flo a post card. It showed the Big Ben and the word ‘LONDON’ in big red, white and blue letters. The handwriting was a bit untidy, even for an eight-year-old like it was written in a rush. Florian liked to imagine that between the stress of unpacking his things and football training, Jamal still took a few minutes to reach out to him. To show how much he appreciated it, he sent back a card from that one football calendar his grandparents once gifted him. They showed some of the most famous players and up until that point Flo thought them too precious to actually use them.
As a matter of fact, over the course of the next few weeks, Florian sent all twelve of these cards to Jamal. In exchange he got London’s most famous landmarks. When he was out of football players, Flo got another calendar for his birthday. He asked for weekly cards with cats because they were Jamal’s favourite animals. The boys continued to write to each other for a few years before their contact started to flow down. Life had got a hold of them and it became more and more difficult to think of things that were worthy of being written on the little cards. If you only have about ten lines per week nothing seems important enough to be part of that. They got to a point where neither of them wanted to waste his precious space for trivialities like Florian’s loneliness or Jamal’s fear of failure. Instead their conversations became superficial and dull.