The big winners of the World Cup are the refugees.

As many of you who have followed my work as a writer for quite some time know, I am descended from a rather rare mix of French and Arab ancestry. Yes, I have a French surname (Sigaud) and was born into one of the most traditional families in Brazil, the great-niece of Dom Sigaud, the bishop and one of the founders of the TFP, Tradition, Family and Property (Jesus!). And, on my father's side, I am the granddaughter of Arabs (surname Issa). I decided to use only the surname and fight, since the time I lived in Rome and began traveling through the Middle East, for the rights of women and children refugees worldwide, for religious tolerance, and for diversity. 

My French side, which so often feels ashamed of a France that has committed immense crimes throughout its history, that has caused the death of more than a million Algerians, that has tortured and killed children from various Arab countries, that has committed crimes against humanity itself, that has decimated a part of Indochina, and that has repressed with gunfire, in 1961, a demonstration for the dignity of Algerians in Paris, my French side that has so often felt guilt for its aristocratic maternal origins, today was moved by the other France. With a battle without gunfire, without drones and without tanks, in which the true heroes were the warrior sons and grandsons of refugees.

I was moved by the epic battle fought by the children of those refugees, of women who once fled death, who once dreamed that their children could grow up far from the bullets and wars fueled by Europeans in Africa. I was moved by every gesture, every tear, and every word spoken by the French to Mbappé.

The great victor of this tournament is not the France of Marine Le Pen, racist, retrograde, rotten and xenophobic, but the France that I know well, and where I will be again this year, the France of my friends who welcome, who help and who, like me, give voice to refugee children and women.

The big winners of this 2018 World Cup are Russia, a wonderful host capable of dispelling in just a few weeks a million stereotypes that fuel hatred against it, and religious and racial diversity, and my hope for peace. 

The big losers of 2018 are the neo-Nazism that is reborn in Croatia, the fascism of some Italian leaders, and the neo-fascism of the Bolsonaros in Brazil.

The great victor of this tournament is not the France of Marine Le Pen, racist, retrograde, rotten and xenophobic, but the France that I know well, and where I will be again this year, the France of my friends who welcome, who help and who, like me, give voice to refugee children and women.

The real losers are the manufacturers of hatred, weapons, and world conflicts. 

As a woman, as a Brazilian who is the product of this unusual mix between French and Arabs, someone who carries in her DNA all the anxieties and paradoxes of the relationship between Europe and the Middle East, but who also carries within her the hope that peace will somehow prevail in the second half, I hear my heart whisper today: - We won!