The Ibdaa bus, spitting and fuming black smoke out its tailpipe, crawled to a stop at the three-foot high concrete barrier that denotes the beginning of the checkpoint. We had been stuck behind the bus for the last 10 minutes sucking in the choking smells and trying to find an opening to pass her on the narrow dusty winding road through the valley.

I could see the nerves written on Ziad's face as the bus opened its front door and the Israeli soldier motioned for them to pull over to a side area and de-board. The bus was full of the Ibdaa youth soccer team, coaches and fans, all male. It took us about 2 minutes to get through the soldiers questioning and be waved through. Ziad slowed the car to a crawl and ducked his head down to peer out at the guys on the bus who were all standing outside at this point. Another soldier almost stopped us because we were moving so slow.

We passed another flying checkpoint and pulled over to the side of the road to wait. The first place we stopped did not seem safe, a possible Israeli police informer watching us carefully and beginning to dial on his cell phone so we moved to another spot, farther down the road in front of a grocery store to wait to see if the bus made it through.

Ziad's phone rang every 2 minutes with an update. They had taken all the bags off the bus and searched them; now three had been selected and taken into the makeshift command post for further questioning; then only two were still with the soldiers, one of whom was a soccer player; they had arrested one person, the cousin of one of the players and taken him off to the jail; thus bus was on its way.

The mood in our car was visibly changed as we drove down into the valley of Jericho, the lights of Jordan blinking on the horizon, the Dead Sea a huge dark invisible mass on our right. I can only imagine what the mood was like on the bus, how the players were affected. Ziad put into words the feelings that at least I was also experiencing as we flew down the road. It was supposed to be a fun evening, out to Jericho to watch a soccer game and in the blink of an eye, one families lives were going to be changed, one individuals world might now be confined to a small jail cell and torture. How were the players supposed to feel, especially his family member on that bus? Is this fair? We didn't make it to the game until after 9pm.

The players weren't the same on the field. They managed to score a goal in the first 15 minutes but then watched that lead slide into a 3-1 deficit. Their movements on the field were weighed down and sluggish, their minds somewhere else. Inspirationally at the one-minute mark of injury time they put in another goal. I had been working on a player who turned his ankle on the far side of the field when this happened. We were in the process of removing his cleat, shin guard and sock but when he saw this goal he immediately said, "Halas (No more)", threw his cleat back over his smarting foot and hobbled back onto the field so that Ibdaa was playing at full strength. Two minutes later Ibdaa scored the tying goal and the cheers erupted from all sides of the stadium as the clock ran out.

They lost the game on penalty kicks. It would have been nice to have a win after the emotions and frustration that began the evening.

We arrived back at Ibdaa around 1:30am after passing through that same checkpoint and half-heartedly looking into the command post to see if they guy was still there. We had learned that the Israeli military had been waiting for the Ibdaa bus, they knew that we were coming...and one man was know if the jail, who knows where, who knows for what reason...