Grant Wahl, the pioneering journalist who got it right on Qatar

I was sitting in the press stand — three journalists to a desk, everyone’s eyes glued to the Netherlands-Argentina quarter-final — when, 40 metres to my left, colleagues stood up and began shouting for help. There was fright on their faces. Word spread that somebody had had a heart attack. Paramedics appeared and began working on the prostrate figure.

Then another journalist told me: the man down was our much-liked American colleague Grant Wahl. I’d been on his podcast last year. Here in Doha, while most journalists focused on the football, he’d continued campaigning against Qatar’s wrongdoings. He’d been briefly detained for showing up to a game in a rainbow T-shirt to support LGBT+ rights.

So, there to my left was someone I knew and admired, possibly dying. But in front of me was my team, the Netherlands (I grew up there), playing a thriller. I’m ashamed to say this, but I spent half an hour swivelling my head between Grant and the game. So did many journalists around me. When the Dutch missed two penalties and lost, I fled home. Waking up the next morning, I saw on my phone that Grant had died. He had just turned 48. 

The scene was another reminder to me of the quandary of Qatar’s World Cup, one that Grant himself wrote about: should we have kept our eyes on the field or on the horrors happening off it? 

The writer Benjamin Moser told me we shouldn’t be watching football. We discussed it via WhatsApp:

Ben: How horrible that people go to this thing, pretend like it’s about sports, etc, but who cares about a hated and persecuted minority, it’s all good fun anyway.

Me: I don’t believe whataboutism is a proper argument, but what would you say to the response: well, you grew up in Texas where gay sex was illegal until 2003? I’ve been repeatedly told that homosexuality here in Qatar is de facto tolerated as long as it’s private, just like hetero hookups on Tinder. Is what I’m saying absurd? If so, please tell me.

Ben: Your point re Texas is well taken. But if it was any other group this wouldn’t be a question. It sends a clear message that gay people are dispensable.

Me: Fifa chose Qatar as host. That forced billions of people to choose between watching games played in Q. or missing the joy of a World Cup.

Ben: I just am not sure what there is to enjoy in those circumstances. If you went to a shop and tried on a shirt and the saleswoman was like “this was made by a seven-year-old in Bangladesh who is kept in a cage,” would you say “yeah but this colour looks good on me”?

Me: When Holland score in the last minute I feel joy — I can’t help it.

Ben: It’s similar to the line vegetarians get: “You’re right of course but I just LOVE CHEESEBURGERS!” Because people think that the right to consume overrides everyone else’s rights.

Grant shared Ben’s outrage. His last post, about Qatar’s response to deaths of migrant workers, began, “They just don’t care.” Grant did care about people’s suffering, and put in countless hours documenting it. Before the World Cup he went around hotels trying to interview staff about their working conditions, while evading the Qatari authorities. 

There is another type of journalist who is drawn to the people in power. For them, a career highlight is being summoned to the front of the plane for 20 minutes with the secretary of state, who uses your first name (briefed to him by his aides), pretends to ask your opinion, then plants a bogus story on you. The football equivalent is the journalist who lives for 30 post-match seconds with the superstar: one sycophantic question, then a selfie. But Grant looked down rather than up. He shared that view with his widow, Céline Gounder, a doctor and journalist who has worked on diseases such as Zika and Ebola that few in rich countries think about. 

But Grant also loved soccer. His last tweet, after the last-minute Dutch equaliser, read: “Just an incredible designed set-piece goal.”

I reckon Grant made the correct call. He managed to watch both what was happening on the field and off. I understand Ben’s objection to enjoying football while others suffer. But if people aren’t entitled to simple pleasures such as football while others are suffering, then nobody in history would ever have been entitled to simple pleasures. I leave Qatar with the belief that I landed here with intact: the World Cup spreads joy, much of it to people who have pretty bleak lives. We should spotlight Qatar’s wrongdoings, without letting them deprive us of that joy. 

But, of course, it suits me to believe that. Maybe Ben is right.

Follow Simon on Twitter @KuperSimon and email him at [email protected]

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