A Boxing Day Appeal
Help Iraq rebuild its Davis and Billie Jean Cup teams
The Peshmerga Park Tennis Team after practice in November.
For most people who pick up a ball and a racquet, international politics is the last thing on their minds. Until one bright May 2006 day in Baghdad, when idealism and extremism landed near the courts of the upmarket Alwiyah Club.
By all accounts, Davis Cup coach Hussein Rashid, 35, and promising players, Nasser Hatem, 28, and Wissam Adel Audal, 25, were dropping off their laundry after practicing at Alwiyah, one of the city’s main social hubs, where Sunni and Shia, Kurd and Arab, regularly gathered to play tennis. A car quickly cut them off, followed by a squad of Al-Qaeda hit men who jumped out and shot the three men to death. The fourth, Akram Mustafa Abdulkarim — a doubles specialist who still plays Davis Cup at age 41 — survived only because he opted to travel home in a second car.
A team of boys in Dohuk practices for a tournament in Baghdad late into the night.
More than 15 years later, junior players around Iraq gather anywhere they can find a court or a club (although those are rarer) to hit, form partnerships and try to fill the shoes of the men and women who came before them. It’s a tall order in a country still recovering from warfare of one kind or another since the former dictator Saddam Hussein seized power in a military coup in 1979. And even though women regularly play tennis in Iraq, the country has not been able to support a Billie Jean King cup team since before the U.S. occupation in 2003.
A member of the Peshmerga Park Tennis Team rallies with his teammate
The Peshmerga Park Tennis Club — founded by Adrian Brune, Faris Ayed and Mahmood Nasser, an American journalist and two local coaches who try to keep the sport going in Erbil — would support youth who want to advance in tennis and possibly field Davis and BJK Cup teams again one day. Beginning with a modest amount, the Club would supply players from age 7 to 18 with fresh tennis balls, modern tennis racquets, uniforms and tournament travel money to neighboring countries. At the same time as using funds from individuals, the Peshmerga Park Tennis Club is seeking grants and equipment from foundations, clubs and other Western associations until Iraq's own tennis association is able to support its players again.
The servants of wealthy aristocrat families spent their Christmas working for their employers. As part of the holiday bonus, the rich showered them with boxes filled with gifts, money, and food leftovers on the day after Christmas, which became the Boxing Day holiday. This year, if you can help the Peshmerga Park Tennis Team please do: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/pesh-park-tennis
A boy on Peshmeha Park practices with his coach at Dusk.