The red and the black, two.

I'm already in bed when the power goes out, so I only notice it happens from the sudden drop'off of air-conditioning. Outside my bedroom door are the groaning shouts of the Americans and Germans tourists in the common areas of the pousada, who miss it far more. Their conversations and Facebook uploads suddenly cut off. And even in darkness and separated by layers of solid wood and stone, and further layers less tangible, I register how their immediate panic hesitates only slightly before sprinting to annoyance. 

The pousada is in Olinda, an old colonial town outside of Recife, just about as far east as one can travel in South America. It's a locale that suggests isolation. We're far from the Lapa street parties that raked away my voice and my energy, one caiprinha and I BELIEVE chant at a time. Far from the watchzone parties on Copacabana that share this same coast, and impossibly farther from the mentality of the travelers down there in Rio de Janeiro. Here we're surrounded by Germans and Americans who came to be around other Germans and Americans. We're not immersed in the shouts of vibrant Chileans and Colombians, and sheepish Brits, and proud Iranians, the rich amalgam of cultures that a World Cup intertwines during its month of games. We're surrounded instead by those who came, not to see Brazil, but experience the borders of their own country extended to somewhere else. 

In fairness, by being here Derek and I had in a sense come to experience a small degree of that too. It was unthinkable for us to travel to a World Cup and not watch our country play. To see the best of our country (along with the worthless Brad Davis) fight on the world's grandest stage, and to be in the stands for those 90 minutes. To cheer purely, not for a club of capricious choice, but rather a country inherited by birthright. One game in Rio at the legendary Maracanã and one US game, in whatever corner of Brazil that may be. Our thought going in was to chase the biggest spectacle possible. And so, in analyzing the States' Group of Death draw, we thought it better to see Germany than Ghana or Portugal, and better the cultural and coastal Recife than Natal or the jungle outpost of Manaus. Which is why I'm in Olinda, near Recife, as the power goes out the night before the Yanks play Die Mannschaft.

I don't know if the other visiting Americans around us, those shouting impatient questions and dinner orders in slow, too'loud English, went to Rio as well. But their behavior suggests that scenario as doubtful. Because if they did they'd understand the context at play here. The everyday realities of Brazil that we're only hinting at experiencing. That this party, this tournament and the resources being diverted for it has a trade'off. Our first night in the country, Derek and I were a few dozen feet from a spontaneous protest that leaped quickly into haphazard demonstration, watching smoke from a canister weave with that born of cigarettes. As we ate a bit later, a chain of better'organized citizens streamed past our restaurant's open storefront for several minutes, shouting against the tournament's corrupt organizing body, FIFA. Two nights later, out in a pack of a few dozen travelers from our hostel, several of us were pepper sprayed indiscriminately by a Brazilian officer younger than us for stepping'back off a curb into the already'crowded street. We all paid quite a bit to be here for the games, but nowhere near enough to insulate ourselves from this still'developing nation's realities. Its growing pains. Our ignorance will not immunize us from the anger that many Brazilians feel over $14 billion being spent on a football tournament rather than on improving infrastructure, purifying water and paving more roads, funding schools for a wider'reaching public education, training and equipping inundated police forces in one of the world's most violent countries. We returned to our hostel late on our last day in Rio, one we'd spent out all day absorbing as much of the experience as our pores and synapses could handle, to a lack of running water and apologies in the form of endless free drinks from the staff. That utility failing under the sheer demand and pressure during the tournament, the Lapa and Santa Teresa districts swollen with life past the point of functioning. The drinks and a bit of perspective made our shrugging'OhWell easier. But I don't trust the 20'something man in the leather fanny pack sitting near me in the packed restaurant to understand these things, given that he's focused on complaining that his dinner being made in the 2'person kitchen is taking too long.

But we had been in Rio. And during our days there, Brazil played one game and so we took to bars near Copacabana to watch. Locals gathered in jerseys and shirts that screamed yellow and whispered green and blue, vibrant pigments reflecting a collective optimism for winning the tournament played on their home soil. My new friend Tommy and I drank Brahma tall boys by the ocean and watched their laughing conversations swirl by. With the game about to kickoff, we turned back toward the bar our other friends sat in, and saw the massive crowd flowing toward us, interspersed with an occasional phalanx of officers in riot gear.

They came down the main street on Copacabana, the last pavement before the sand yawns down to the water. With most everyone around them in those national team colors of yellow and green and blue, they marched in red and in black. The colors of Rio's working'class team, Flamengo. The colors of the rejected, the overlooked. The colors of regional interests. Local necessities trumping national aspirations. Then also the color of absence. Of nothingness. Or mourning for those killed too young. And with it the color of blood, from the drug murders in the favelas. From the rapes, and miscarriages, and vomiting from disease. Marching to call attention to the problems ignored by FIFA, valid complaints drowned under waves of PR and corporate sponsorship. They carried black banners, letters the size of the children some clutched in their arms, shouting COPA PARA QUIEN?... THE PARTY IN THE STADIUMS ISN'T WORTH THE TEARS SHED IN THE SLUMS.

They marched closer, bringing their rage and frustration, emotions if not contagious, then catalyzing. Their voices triggering my latent shame. Because I knew exactly where our money was going. The indulgent amount of dollars and reals spent on game tickets, stadium beers, official keepsakes for my five'year'old nephew, all branded with that FIFA crest that should stand only for disgrace. An organization whose highest tiers thrive chiefly off bribes. That was why we needed to come to Brazil in 2014. Because in 4 years the tournament will move on to a nation that, 4 days after the World Cup Final was completed, would be connected with shooting 298 civilians out of the sky to their fiery deaths. The stadiums in places like Saransk, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan to be built with steel, concrete, and other materials grossly overcharged, so as to further fund the cronies of an unapologetic dictator. And 4 years after that, the games move to a geographic flea of an island where an estimated four thousand immigrant workers will die building the stadiums, due to their slavish working conditions in unbearable Middle Eastern heat. According to some reports, those laborers include prisoners imported from North Korea. This is the organization we were inherently supporting, and for those paying any attention at all, the chants we heard during the march down Copacabana resonate as stubbornly as those inside the Maracanã. Our exhilaration from attending the World Cup travels back with a stowaway guilt that comes with sight and experience. The weight of perspective.

I said to some people once I returned that it felt less like we were visiting Brazil than just a giant soccer party, that happened to be held in Brazil. And that's the truth, when it comes to the positive aspects of my experience. We were at the World Cup. At the Maracanã. At those night'into'morning street parties in Lapa. But we were also in the FIFA marches, the FIFA blackouts, the FIFA protests and skirmishes, if not fully in the FIFA riots. And it was in those moments where I felt most that I'd earned the new Brazilian visa in my passport. The faint, too'used ink a shaded echo of their hand'sewn banners.

I remain in bed while the electricity is off, with this guilt dribbling in my head. It's how I keep out the muffled complaints of the tourists outside my room. The whines about how they paid for better than this. Totally uncomprehending that this brief annoyance for them is a way of life for the people of the country we've temporarily invaded. But I don't need to distract myself from them for long anyway. The drinking and the laughing resume before the power does. They have already moved on. They were never really here to begin with.