Mahmoud Amnah is busy helping his unfancied team make a Leicester-like tilt for the title but his mind can never get away from the carnage back home in Syria
Mahmoud Amnah would have stood out in Mizoram anyway. Like his many other non-Mizo teammates of Aizawl FC; be it Kingsley Obumneme from Nigeria, Albino Gomes of Goa, Kamo Stephane Bayi from Ivory Coast or Jayesh Rane of Mumbai.
What will always make Amnah more distinctive than the rest is that he is the most feted of the Aizawl FC outstation hires. A midfielder with 81 international caps, Amnah, 34, was once the most expensive signing in his country's football history - for the most famous club in his hometown and the biggest in his country. In 2003, Amnah was signed for US$50,000 by Al Ittihad of Aleppo in the early years of a professional Syrian league.
Between then and now, football has taken Amnah to clubs in four countries other than his own. Meanwhile, Aleppo, his elegant, historical, beautiful home town is a rubble, synonymous with the horrors of war. Amnah hasn't returned home since 2011, is now based in Egypt, where his wife comes from, and is at peace being a football itinerant.
And yet.
It is, as Amnah's words remind us, always hard to leave home because home eventually rests in many places. His ties with Syria these days are based on phone calls to his brother and sister in Aleppo, ("sometimes electricity off, sometimes water off, not safe 100 percent"), and the memory of what has been wrought.
Before the Syrian Civil war began, Amnah lived in Iran, where he played four seasons for Iranian club Rah Ahan (2009-2012), spent time in Egypt with his wife's family and vacationed in Aleppo between seasons. The news of the war began to come through after his international retirement in 2011, word from friends and family becoming more dismal.
It is the silence that follows every struggle over words that conveys a lingering sorrow. He is trying to tell you how much, how deep. "Like many children, I grew up playing in the street and then you see on the news... You see where you play. You say. 'I know this place, I know that place', and then you see what the bombs have done... "
He says suddenly, "People, also people... I have had many friends die in this war. Very difficult, very..." He is searching for an accurate translation from Arabic, but trails off.
Amnah is speaking to ESPN in Bengaluru the morning after US missiles rained down on what was supposed to be a military target reported to have killed civilians. He has just returned from Friday prayers, two days before his team plays Bengaluru FC on Sunday afternoon, in what has turned out to be a dream run in the I-League. Aizawl are one of the least wealthy clubs in the League, in only their second season in the top bracket, and with signings like Amnah, have shouldered their way to the top of the ladder with four matches to go.
He is asked more often about his country than his football career, as one of Syria's most capped players. "Not No.1, but up there," he says, with a smile, having played in World Cup qualifiers in 2006 and 2010, and part of a strong Syrian team in west Asian tournaments just behind powerhouses Iran.
He knows it will be a slow trek back for a country devastated by the tragedy of war. The Syrians, he says, have done okay in recent World Cup qualifiers and in Asian championships. The national team, he points out, is offered virtually zero friendlies before big matches. "Two or three days before a match, the players come together. How do they manage? I don't know."