Fragile Monsters
The 17th Arab Body Building Championship was held in a modest hangar in Amman’s Sports City in 2009. Dubbed “The Gaza Martyrs Tournament,” it featured men from seventeen Arab countries, squeezed into tiny speedos and flexing their hearts out in front of the audience.
Pre-stage preparations are simple: after the men have squeezed themselves into minuscule colourful trunks, each with a circular number, a teammate or a trainer starts painting their skin with a layer of glittering tanning cream. The process takes between 15 and 25 minutes and, after tapping repeatedly with their open palms to even out the cream over their bodies, the palest Syrian to the darkest Saudi have blended into the same shade of dirty bronze.
Each team prepares in a corner of the tented backstage area behind the main hall. Here, conversations are kept to a minimum; smiles are even scarcer. Once painted, some of the competitors go for a round of push-ups; others grab rusty dumbbells lying around to do bicep curls or overhead pulls before entering the stage.
Iraqi competitor Ahmad Abu Hawa faints backstage. Coaches and players gather around, asking people to give him air or salty chips. His teammates attribute the fall to a sudden drop in blood pressure and to the refusal to drink water that keeps the muscles at maximum definition.
Egypt’s Mahmoud Fadali, a silver medalist at the 2007 IFBB World Championship, takes third. He runs off stage, drops flat on his stomach, and cries.