y brother gave me a BMX bike when I was little. I called it Fido Dido.

Fido Dido was a tough little bastard, a cartoon guy with spiky hair. I thought he was the coolest. But the bike got stolen quickly outside the Rosengård bathhouse and my dad went there, with open shirt and sleeves rolled up. He's the kind of guy who says: No one touches my kids! No one steals their stuff! But not even a tough guy like him could do anything about it. Fido Dido was gone, and I was devastated.

After that I started stealing bikes. I'd smash the locks. I became great at it. Bang, bang, bang, and the bike was mine. I was the bicycle thief. It was my first "thing". It was pretty innocent. But sometimes it got out of control. Once I dressed up in all black, went out into the night like fucking Rambo and got a military bike using a huge bolt cutter. And sure, that bike was cool. I loved it. But honestly, it was more the kick I got out of it than the bike. It triggered me sneaking around in the dark, and I'd throw eggs at windows and that kind of stuff and I was only caught sometimes.

One embarrassing thing happened at the Wessels department store out at Jägersro, for example. But honestly, I deserved it. Me and a friend were wearing huge winter down jackets in the middle of summer, quite fucked up, and under those jackets we had four table tennis rackets and some other crap we picked up. "You guys, aren't you paying for those" said the guard who caught us. I pulled out a few pennies from my pocket: "With these?" But the guy didn't have a sense of humor, so I decided to be more professional from then on. And I guess I became quite a skilled maniac in the end.

I was a small kid. I had a big nose and I lisped and went to a speech coach. A woman came to my school and taught me how to say S and I thought it was demeaning. I guess I wanted to assert myself somehow. And it was like I was boiling inside. I couldn't sitt still for more than a second and I was running around all the time. It was like nothing bad could happen to me if I ran fast enough. We lived in Rosengård outside

of Malmö and it was full of Somalis, Turks, Yugoslavs, Poles, all kinds of immigrants, and Swedes. We were all acting cocky. The smallest thing got us fired up, and it wasn't easy at home, to say the least.

We lived on the fourth floor up on Cronmans Road, and we didn't run around hugging each other. No one asked "How was your day today little Zlatan", nothing like that. No grown-ups would assist with homework or ask if you had any problems. You were on your own, and you couldn't whine about someone being mean to you. You just had to bite the bullet, and there was chaos and fights and some punches. But sure, sometimes you'd wish for some sympathy. One day I fell off the roof at the kindergarten. I got a black eye and ran home crying expecting a pat on the head or at least some kind words. I got a slap in the face.

"What were you doing on the roof?"

It wasn't like "Poor Zlatan." It was "You fucking idiot, climbing up a roof. Here's a slap for you", and I was shocked and ran away. Mom didn't have time for comforting, not at that time. She was cleaning and struggling to make money, she was really a fighter. But she couldn't take much else. She had it tough, and all of us had a terrible temper. It wasn't like the normal Swedish chat at home, like "Honey, can you please pass me the butter", more like: "Get the milk you jerk!" There were doors slamming and mom crying. She cried a lot. She has my love. She's had a tough life. She was cleaning like fourteen hours a day, and sometimes we'd tag along, emptying trashcans and stuff like that and got some pocket money. But sometimes mom lost it.

She'd hit us with wooden spoons, and sometimes they broke, so I had to go buy a new one, like if it was my fault she'd hit me that hard. I remember one day in particular. I had thrown a brick at kindergarten that somehow bounced and broke a window. Mom freaked out when she heard about it. Everything that cost money freaked her out, and she hit me with spoon. Bang, boom! It hurt and maybe the spoon broke again. I don't know. Sometimes there were no spoons at home, and then she'd come after me with a rolling pin. But then I got away, and I talked with Sanela about it.

Sanela is my only full sibling. She's two years older. She's a tough girl, and she thought we should play some games with mom. Fuck, hitting us in the head! Insane! So we went to the store and bought a bunch of those spoons, really cheap ones, and gave them to mom as a Christmas present.

I don't think she got the irony. She didn't have room for that. There had to be food on the table. All her energy was consumed by that. We were quite a bunch at home, also my half -sisters who later disappeared and broke all contact with us, and my younger brother Aleksandar, we'd call him Keki, and the money wasn't enough. Nothing was enough and the older ones to care of the younger, otherwise we wouldn't have made it. There was a lot of instant macaroni and ketchup, and eating at friends’ homes or at my aunt Hanife's who lived in the same building. She was the one of us who came to Sweden first.

I wasn't even two years old when my mom and dad got divorced, and I don't remember anything about it. That's probably good. It wasn't a good marriage, I've heard. There were a lot of fighting, and they had gotten married for my dad to get a residence permit. I guess it was natural for all of us to end up living with mom. But I missed my dad. He had more going for him and there was always something fun going on with him. Me and Sanela would meet dad every other weekend and he used to come in his old blue Opel Kadett and we'd go to Pildammsparken or out on the island in Limhamn to get hamburgers and soft ice cream. One day he made a splurge and got us each a pair of Nike Air Max, the cool sneakers that where like over a thousand kronor, really expensive. Mine were green, Sanela's pink. No one in Rosengård had shoes like that, and we felt so cool. We had it nice with dad and we'd get some money for pizza and Coca-Cola. He had a decent job and only one other son, Sapko. He was our fun weekend-dad.

But things would change. Sanela was awesome at running. She was the fastest at running 60 meters in her age in all of Skåne [ed note: region of southern Sweden] and dad was proud as a peacock and used to drive her to practice. "Great, Sanela. But you can do better", he said. That was his thing, "Better, better, don't settle", and this time I was in the car. Dad remembers it like that anyway, and he noticed it immediately. Something was wrong. Sanela was quiet. She struggled not to cry. "What's wrong?" he said.

"Nothing", she answered and then he asked again and she told.

We don't have to go into details, that's Sanela's story. But my dad, he's like a lion. If something happens to his kids he goes wild, especially when it comes to Sanela, his only daughter. And it became a huge circus, with interrogations, social welfare investigations, custody battles and shit.

I didn't understand too much of it. I was turning nine.

It was the fall of 1990 and they kept that stuff away from me. But I had my hunches of course. It was turbulent at home. Still, not the first time. One of my half-sisters did drugs, some heavy shit, and kept stashes at home. There was always chaos around her, and creepy people calling and a lot of fear that something bad would happen. Another time my mom was arrested for stashing stolen goods. Some friends had told her: "Take these necklaces!" and she did it. She didn't understand. But the stuff was stolen and the police came bombarding in and took her. I remember it vaguely like a weird feeling: Where's mom? Why is she gone?

But after that latest thing with Sanela she was crying again, and I just ran away from it. I was messing around outside or playing football. Not like I was the most balanced guy, or the greatest promise. I was just one of the kids kicking ball, or actually worse. I had some terrible outbursts. I'd headbutt people and lash out against my teammates. But I had the football. It was my thing, and I was playing all the time, in our yard, on the field, during school breaks. We went to the Värner Rydén school at that time. Sanela in fifth grade, and me in third, and no one doubted which one of us was well-behaved! Sanela had to grow up at young age and become an extra-mom for Keki and take care of the family when the sisters left. She took a huge responsibility. She behaved. She wasn't the girl who got called to the principal's office, and that's why I became worried immediately when I got the call. We were both asked in for talks, and like, if only me had been called, it'd been normal, just routine. But now it was me and Sanela. Had someone died? What was going on?

I got stomach pains, and we walked through the corridor. It must have been late fall or winter. I felt paralyzed. But when we came into the office my dad was sitting there with the principal, and I felt happy. Dad used to mean fun stuff. But wasn't fun. Everything was stiff and formal and I felt very uncomfortable, and honestly, I didn't get much of what was said, only that it was about dad and mom, and it wasn't any pleasant stuff. But now I know. Now, much later, when working on this book, the pieces of the puzzle have come in place.

In November 1990 the social services had done their investigation, and dad had gotten custody of me and Sanela. The environment at mom's place was decided bad for us, not so much because of her, I have to say that. There were other things, but it was a huge thing anyway, a major disapproval, and mom was devastated. Would she lose us as well? It was a disaster. She cried and cried and sure, she had been hitting us with spoons, given us beatings and not listened to us, and she'd had bad luck with her men and there was no money and all that. But she loved her kids. She was just raised under tough conditions, and I think my dad understood that. He went to her the same afternoon:

"I don't want you to lose them, Jurka."

But he demanded some improvement, and dad isn't to play games with in situations like that. I'm sure there were harsh words. "If things don't improve, you'll never see the kids again", stuff like that, but I don't know exactly what happened. But Sanela iived with dad for a few weeks, and I stayed with mom, despite everything. It wasn't a good solution. Sanela didn't like it at dads. She and I found him sleeping on the floor around that time, and the table was full of beer cans and bottles. "Dad, wake up, wake up!" But he kept sleeping. It was a strange thing for me. Like, why does he do this? We didn't know what to do. But we wanted to help. Maybe he was freezing? We covered him with towels and blankets to get him warm. But I didn't understand anything. Sanela probably understood more. She had noticed how his mood could swing and how he could explode and scream like a bear and I think that frightened her. And she missed her little brother. She wanted to go back to mom and I wanted the opposite. I missed my dad, and one of those nights I called him, probably sounding desperate. I felt lonely without Sanela. "I don't wanna live here. I wanna be at your place."

"Come here", he said. "I'll call a cab."

There were new investigations by the social services, and in March 1991 mom got custody of Sanela and dad of me. We separated, me and sis, but we have always stayed close, or let's say, it's been up and

down. But we are very close. Sanela is a hairdresser now and sometimes people come to her salon and say: "My god, you look like Zlatan!" and she always answers: "Bullshit, he looks like me." She's tough. But none of us have had an easy ride. My dad, Sefik, moved from Hårds road in Rosengård to Värnhems squre in Malmö in 1991, and you have understood this - he's got a big heart, he's prepared to die for us. But things didn't turn out the way I had expected. I knew him as weekend-dad who got us hamburgers and ice cream.

Now we were to share every day and I noticed immediately: it was empty at his place. Something was missing, maybe a woman. There was a TV set, a sofa, a book shelf, and two beds. But nothing extra, no comfort, no well-being, and there were beer cans on the tables and trash on the floor, and sometimes when he got going and started wallpapering, he'd only do one wall. "I'll do the rest tomorrow!" But it never happened, and we also moved a lot, and never really got settled anywhere. But it was also empty in another way.

Dad was a caretaker with the worst working hours and when he came home with work pants with all those pockets with screwdrivers and things he'd sit down by the phone or the TV, and didn't want to be bothered. He was in his own world, and often with headphones listening to Yugoslavian folk music. He's crazy about Yugo music. He's recorded some tapes himself. He's a showman when he's in the right mood. But most of the time he was in his own world and if my friends called he'd hiss at them: "Don't call here!"

I couldn't take my friends there and if they had asked for me I never found out. The phone wasn't important to me, and I had no one to speak with at home really, or, well, when there was something serious, dad was there for me. Then he could do anything for me, run downtown with his cocky style trying to settle stuff.

He had a way of walking which made people go, like "Who the fuck is that?" But he didn't care about all the normal stuff, what happened in school, in football and with friends, so I had to talk to myself or get outside. Sapko, my half-brother, lived with us during the first time, and sure I must have talked with him sometimes, he must have been seventeen then. But I don't remember much of it, and soon my dad would throw him out. They had some horrible fights. That's also a sad thing of course and it was only me and dad left. We were alone on our own sides, so to say, because the strange thing was that he didn't have any friends coming visit either. He was sitting by himself drinking. There was no company. But most of all, there was no food.

I was outdoors most of the time playing football and riding stolen bikes, and I would often come home hungry as a wolf and open the fridge thinking: Please, please, let there be something! But no, nothing, just the usual stuff: milk, butter, some bread, and if I was lucky some juice, Multivitamin, the 4 liter pack, bought at the Arabian store because they were the cheapest, and beer of course, Pripps Blå and Carlsberg, six-packs with that plastic wrap around them. Sometimes there was only beer, and my stomach was screaming for food. There was a pain in that which I'll never forget. Ask Helena! I always say that the fridge has to be jam-packed. That will never change. The other day my kid, Vincent, cried, because he didn't get his pasta, but it was already cooking on the stove. The guy was yelling because he didn't get his food quick enough so I wanted to scream: If you only knew how well your life is!

I could search every drawer, every corner, for one single macaroni or a meatball. I could fill my stomach with toast. I could eat a whole loaf of bread, or I'd run over to mom's place. I wasn't always welcomed with open arms. It was more like "Fuck, is Zlatan coming too? Doesn't Sefik feed him? And sometimes she'd yell at me: Are we made of money? Are you gonna eat us out on the street? But still, we helped each other, and at dad's place I started a little war against the beer. I poured out some of them in the sink, not all of them, that would have been too obvious, but a few.

He rarely noticed anything. There was beer everywhere, on the tables, in the shelves, and often I'd collect the empty cans in big black plastic trash bags and went to recycle them. I'd get 50 öre per can. Still I'd sometimes collect 50 or 100 kronor [ed note: that's 100 or 200 cans]. That was a lot of cans and I was happy for the cash. But of course, it was a sad thing, and like all kids in a situation like that, I'd learn to read his mood. I knew exactly when I could talk to him. The day after he'd been drinking it was quite cool. Second day was worse. In some situations he could strike like lightning. Other times he was incredibly generous. Gave me five hundred kronor just like that. At that time I was collecting football pictures. You'd

get a chewing gum and three pics in a little package. Oh, oh, which guys would I get? I wondered. Maradona? I was often disappointed, especially when I only got Swedish players I didn't know anything about. But one day he came home with a whole box. It was a blast and and I tore them all open and got all kinds of cool Brazilians. Sometimes we'd watch TV together, talking. Then it was all great.

But other days he was drunk. I have some horror images in my head, and when I got older, I started facing him. I wouldn't back off, like my brother. I told him: "You're drinking to much, dad", and we'd have some insane fights, sometimes meaningless, to tell you the truth. But I wanted to prove that I could speak for myself, and then we'd have a freaking chaos at home.

But he never touched me physically, never. Well, once he lifted me two meters up in the air and dropped me in my bed, but that was because I had been mean to Sanela, his jewel. Inside he was the kindest man in the world, and I understand now that he didn't have the easiest life. "He drinks to bury his sorrow", my brother said and maybe that wasn't the whole truth. The war really affected him a lot.

The war was a strange thing. I never found out anything about it. I was being protected. Everyone really made an effort. I didn't even understand why mom and my sisters dressed in black. It was weird, like some new fashion thing. But it was our grandmother who had died in a bomb attack in Croatia and everyone mourned, everyone except me, who never found out about anything and never would care if people were Serbs or Bosnians, or whatever. But it was worst for my dad.

He came from Bijeljina in Bosnia. He used to be a mason down there, and all his family and old friends lived in the city and now suddenly hell had come there. Bijeljina was more or less raped, and it wasn't strange that he called himself a muslim again, not at all. The Serbs invaded the town and executed hundreds of muslims. I think he knew many of them, and all his family had to escape. The whole population in Bijeljina was replaced, and Serbs moved into all the empty houses, also in my dad's old house. Someone else just entered the house and took over, and I can really understand he didn't have much time for me, especially not at nights when he sat waiting for the news on TV or some phone call from down there. The war ate him, and he became obsessed with following the news. He sat alone, drinking and mourning, listening to his Yugo-music, and I tried to stay outdoors or went over to mom's place. It was a different world.

At my dad's it was only him and me. At mom's it was a circus. People coming and leaving, loud voices and doors slamming. My mom had moved five floors up on the same street, Cronmans road 5A, the floor above my aunt Hanife, or Hanna as I called her. Me, Keki and Sanela were really close. We made a pact. But there was some shit going on at mom's place too. My half-sister sank deeper and deeper into the drugs and mom would twitch every time the phone rang or someone was at the door: No, no, kind of. Haven't we had enough accidents? What now? She grew old too soon, and is rabid against all kinds of drugs. Not a long time ago, and I'm talking recently as we speak, she called me, totally freaked out:

"There are drugs in the fridge!" "My god, drugs!" I got going too. Not again, you know, so I called Keki, kind of aggressively: "What the fuck, are there drugs in mom's fridge!?" He didn't understand a thing. But then it hit us. She talked about snus [ed note: swedish chewing tobacco]. "Chill, mom, it's just snus."

"The same shit", she said.

Those years really marked her, and we should have behaved better. But we didn't know how to. We only knew the rough style. The half -sis and her drugs moved out quite soon and went to a rehab place, but always came back into the shit and eventually mom cut her off, or the other way around. I don't know the details there. Anyway, it was quite tough, but we have that tendancy in our family. We hold our grudges, we're dramatic and say: "I never wanna see you again!" stuff like that.

Anyway, I remember one time when I was visiting her and her drugs in her own little apartment. It could have been on my birthday. I think so. I had bought her some gifts, and she was acting very kind. But when I was going to the bathroom, she panicked and stopped me. "No, no", she yelled and ran in there and started moving stuff around. I knew something was wrong. There was like a secret. Lots of stuff like that happened. But like I said, they kept it away from me, and I had my own stuff, my bikes and my football, and my dreams about Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali. I wanted to be like them.

Dad had an older brother named Sabahudin in the old Yugoslavia. They called him Sapko, my older brother was named after him. Sabahudin was a boxer, a real talent. He was fighting for BK Radnicki in the city Kragujevac and became Yugoslavic Champion with his club, and a national team boxer. But in 1967, when the guy was just had gotten married, and only twenty three years old, he swam out into the Neretva river. There were some currents and stuff and I think he had a problem with his heart or his lungs. He was drawn down by the currents and drowns. You can imagine, it was quite a blow for the family, and after that my dad became sort of a fanatic. He had all the great games recorded on video and it wasn't just Sabahudin, but also Ali, Foreman and Tyson, and all the Bruce Lee- and Jackie Chan-flicks on those old tapes.

Those were the things we'd watch when we hung out in front of the telly. Swedish TV was crap. It wasn't on the map. We lived in a totally different world. I was twenty years old when I watched my first Swedish film, and I had no clue about Swedish heroes or sport guys, like Ingemar Stenmark and guys like that. But I knew Ali! What a legend! He did his own thing no matter what people said. He never apologized and that's something I'll never forget. That dude was cool. He did his thing. That was the way to be, so I copied some stuff, I'm the greatest, kind of. You needed a tough attitude in Rosengård, and if you heard some shit, the worst was being called a cunt, and then you couldn't back down.

But usually we didn't mess around. You don't take a shit in your own bed, we used to say. It was more Rosengård against everyone else. I was there watching and screaming against the racist fuckers who demonstrate on November 30th, and once, at the Malmö Festival, I saw a huge gang from Rosengård, like two hundred of them, chasing a lone guy. It didn't really look fair, honestly. But since they were guys from my neighborhood I ran along, and I don't think that guy felt too good afterwards. We were all cocky and wild. But sometimes that's not so easy.

When me and dad lived by the Stenkula School I often stayed until late at mom's, and then I had to walk home through a dark tunnel which crosses Amiral street and is across the Annelunds bridge. Once, years before, my dad had robbed and badly beaten there and gone to the hospital with a punctured lung. Although I didn't want to, I often thought about that. The more I tried to repress it, the more often it popped up in my head, and in this neighborhood there were some railroad tracks and a street. There's also a disgusting alley and some bushes and two lamp posts, one before the tunnel and one after. A part from that it was dark, and creepy vibes. That's why those lamp posts became my beacons. Between them I'd run like crazy with a pounding heart, and all the time I was thinking: I'm sure there are some creepy dudes in there, like the ones who attacked my dad, and I thought: If I run fast enogh things will be alright, and I came home breathless, and surely was no Muhammad Ali.

Another time dad took me and Sanela to go swimming in Arlöv and afterwards I was at a friend's place. When I was going home it started to rain. It was pouring down and I biked like crazy and stumbled home all wet. We lived at Zenith Street then, a bit away from Rosengård, and I was very tired. I was shaking and had stomach ache. I was in so much pain. I could barely move and lay in bed all rolled up. I threw up. I had cramps. I freaked out.

Dad came in and sure, he is like he is, his fridge was empty and he drank too much. But when the shit hits the fan, there's no one like him. He called a cab and lifted me up in the only position I could be in, like a little schrimp, and carried me down to the car. I was light as a feather back then. Dad was big and powerful and totally crazy, he was like a lion again a screamed at the female cab driver:

"He's my boy, he's my everything, screw all the traffic rules, I'll pay the fines, I'll take care of the cops", and the woman, she did what he asked. She ran two red lights and came to the childrens section of Malmö Hospital. The whole situation had become en emergancy, I've been told. I was getting a shot in my back, and dad had heard some shit about people getting paralyzed by things like that, and he said some aggressive stuff, I'm guessing. He would tear the city upside down if something went wrong.

But he calmed down and I was lying belly down sobbing and got that shot in my spine. We found out I had meningitis, and the nurse pulled down all the blinds and turned off all lights. It should be all dark around me and I got some meds and dad was watching by my side. Five in the morning the next day I opened my eyes and the crisis was over, and still I don't know, what caused that? Maybe I wasn't taking care of myself well enough.

I didn't exactly eat well. Physically I was small and weak at that time. Still, I must have been strong in other ways. I forgot about it and moved on and instead of sitting at home dwelling on things I went looking for kicks. I was running around all the time. There was like a fire inside me, and just like my dad, I got going for nothing: Like, who the hell are you? Those were tough years, I've realized that now. My dad was on a roller coaster, often totally absent or furiously mad: "You have to be home by this or that time." "You can't fucking do that."

If you were a guy in dad's world and got in trouble, you should stand up for yourself and be a man. Not exactly some softy shit, not "I have stomach pain today. I'm a bit sad." Nothing like that!

I learned how to bite the bullet and move on, and also, don't forget that, I learned some stuff about sacrificing yourself. When we bought a new bed for me at Ikea, dad couldn't afford the transport. It was like five hundred extra or something. So what could we do? It was simple. Dad carried the bed on his back all the way from Ikea, totally insane, mile after mile, and I walked after him with the bed headboards. Those were light, like nothing, Still I couldn't keep up with him:

"Take it easy, dad, stop."

But he just walked on. He had that macho style, and sometimes he'd turn up in school at parents meetings with his cowboy thing going on. Everyone wondered: Who is that? People noticed him. He got respect, and the teachers probably didn't dare complaining about me as much as they had planned. Kinda like, we have to be careful with that guy!

People have asked me: What would I be doing if I hadn't become a football player? I have no idea. But maybe I would have become a criminal. There were a lot of crimes at that time. Not like we were going out just to steal or rob. But some shit still happened, not just bikes. It was in and out of department stores also, and I often got a kick out of that. The thefts triggered me, and I should be so happy my dad never found out. He was drinking, sure, but there were still rules. You should do the right thing. And definitely not steal things, not a chance. Then he'd be pulling down the sky, sort of.

But the time we were caught at Wessels department store wearing our winter jackets I was lucky. We had taken stuff worth one thousand four hundred kronor. It wasn't the ordinary stealing candy thing. But my friend's dad had to come pick us up, and when the letter arrived at home, Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been arrested for theft, bla bla bla, I could tear it up before dad got to see it. I was lucky and I continued stealing, so okay, it could have ended badly.

But I can say one thing for sure, it wouldn't have had anything to do with drugs. I was obviously totally against them. I didn't just pour out dad's beer. I threw away mom's cigarettes. I hated all drugs and poisons and I was seventeen or eighteen when I got drunk the first time and threw up in some stairs like any other teenager, and after that I haven't gotten drunk many times, only one collapse in a bathtub after the first scudetto with Juventus. It was Trézéguet, the snake, who pushed me into drinking shots.

Me and Sanela also pushed Keki hard in Rosengård. He wasn't allowed to smoke or drink because then we'd be coming after him. It was a special thing, with my younger brother.

We took care of him. With sensitive stuff he'd go to Sanela. With tougher things he'd turn to me. I stood up for him. I took responsibility. But a part from that I wasn't exactly being a saint, and I haven't always been too kind to friends and teammates. I did some aggressive things, the kind of shit that would make me go insane today if someone did it to Maxi and Vincent. But there's a fact we can't forget. I was double already back then.

I was disciplined and wild, and I was figuring out philosophies about that. My thing was that I would both talk and perform. So, not just talking: I'm the best, who the fuck are you? Of course not, there's nothing more childish, but not either performing or saying chicken shit like the Swedish stars. I wanted to become the best while being cocky. Not that I thought I'd become a superstar or anything like that. Jesus, I came from Rosengård! But maybe those things made me a bit different.

I was trouble. I was crazy. But I had character. I wasn't always in time to school. I had problems getting up in the mornings, I still do, but I did my homework, at least sometimes. Math was the easiest. Bam, bam, bam and I saw the solution. It was a bit like on the football field. Images and solutions just came to me like lightning. But I sucked at writing down the solutions so the teacher thought I cheated. I wasn't exactly the guy you'd expect doing well in school. I was more like the guy you kick out of school. Still, I really studied. I read everything before the tests, and forgot everything the day after. I wasn't really a bad boy. I just had trouble sitting still, and I threw some rubbers and stuff like that. I had ants in my pants.

Those were turbulent years. We moved all the time, I don't really know why. But we rarely lived in one place for more than a year, and the teachers used that. You have to switch to a school near your home, they said, not because rules mattered much to them, but because they saw a chance of getting rid of me. I went to different schools all the time and had problems getting friends, and dad had was on call on his caretaker job and had his war and his drinking, and the worst thing was the tinnitus in his ears. It would be ringing in his head, and I was taking care of myself more and more, trying not to care about the chaos in my family. There was always some shit.

You know, we from the Balkan are tough. My sister and her drugs had cut off contact with mom and us, and maybe that was to expect after all the fights with the drugs and rehab centers. But also my other half-sister was struck out from our family. Mom just erased her, and then I barely knew why. It was some crap about a boyfriend, a guy from Yugoslavia. Him and my sister had a fight and mom took his side for some reason, and then my sister freaked out and she and mom yelled some terrible shit at each other, and of course that wasn't good. But still, it shouldn't have been like the end of the world.

It wasn't like it was the first time we were fighting in my family. But mom was proud, and I guess she and my sister got some kind of lock up. I recognize that. I don't forget things either. I remember a bad tackle for years. I remember shit that has been done to me, and I can hold grudges for a long time. But this time things went too far.

We had been five siblings at mom's place, and suddenly we were only three; me, Sanela and Aleksandar, and things couldn't be repaired. They were like written in stone. The half-sis no longer belonged to us, and years went by. She was gone. But fifteen years later her son called our mom. My half-sister had a son, a grandson to mom in other words.

"Hi granny", he said, but mom didn't want to have anything to do with him.

"I'm sorry", she said and hung up.

I couldn't believe it when I heard. I felt very bad. I can't describe the feeling. I wanted to disappear. You don't act like that! Never, ever! But there is a lot of pride in my family that fucks things up for us, and I'm happy I had the football.