ARPORA (NORTH GOA): A few days before the World Cup began, Mohamed Allam took two flights to reach India's West coast. The first flight took him from Amman to Bahrain. After a very short layover, the next took him from Bahrain to Goa.
His journey, though, began a day before he reached Amman. "I travelled from Jenin City in the West Bank to Amman via the border," he says. "I spent a day in Amman before my flight to India."
That 150km trip between the West Bank and Amman is sandwiched by the border (King Hussein Bridge). It's this border Allam has to take whenever he wishes to participate in an international event. If he's lucky, the border will be open. If he's unlucky, the border may not be open. Last year, when he wanted to go to Hungary for the chess Olympiad, his departure was delayed. "We missed the first round," he says.
In isolation, it is a minor inconvenience for the Candidate Master with an ELO rating of 2112. But when you listen to the only Palestinian at this year's World Cup talk about his lived experiences on the West Bank, it hits you. For the 24-year-old, the game represents something fundamental. "It's an escape from life for me," he says. "A paradise you can live in for sometime (before you go back)."
Going back in this context refers to Jenin City on the West Bank. Before Jenin City, it was the refugee camp in Jenin where Allam was born. It's where he was given the gift of chess 'by my father'. "I started playing when I was nine," he says. "I saw my father play, I got interested, he saw I had some talent... that's how it began."
A month after he started fiddling with the chess board at home inside the camp, he featured in an age-group Palestine Championships. "I won that," he says. "It was a big surprise at home. But the chess scene wasn't all that prominent." Now? "The internet and tech has meant a lot more people play these days." He himself depends a lot on the internet for training. He doesn't have a proper coach so he looks to videos put out by a lot of GMs rated in the 2600 range to sharpen his skills.
He has faced unimaginable problems to get this far — an inability to train properly, access to tournaments as well as quality partners to train with, restrictions that come with living in the West Bank, getting displaced by the conflict last year, seeing your house being damaged — but "I'm an optimistic person," he says.
That kind of optimism shines through during the 15-minute conversation. Even when he's talking about Israel and the ongoing conflict, he has a smile on his face. "Life continues, you go through bad situations. You pass them. Why be sad?"
He's at his happiest — his safe space — when he plays chess or studies mathematics, his other passion. "The thing about chess is you are constantly trying to figure out what the best move is, that exercise gives me joy," the 24-year-old says. "It's like math. You try to figure out what's happening, you go deeper in the position, you play your best moves, that makes me happy."
He has featured in the Olympiad multiple times but this is his first World Cup.
"It's so peaceful like every sport. Like a way to get away from the world for one or two hours. A paradise you can live in for sometime. You play like the world is perfect.
"I have played in Olympiads before, three times. But the experience of a World Cup is different because you can learn about the dynamics better. You can sacrifice two knights for two rooks, for example. You learn, analyse and get better. It's an opportunity to grow."
His hunger for growth was on display on Monday when he went to the playing hall as a visitor to take in the first round's tiebreak games. He was eliminated by Sweden's Nils Grandelius, a GM who has authored courses (one of the courses Allam referred to before coming to the tournament was Grandelius).
"To me," he says, "chess is peace. You play like the world is perfect."
And that is what sport can do every now and then.
