Aizawl FC midfielder, Mahmoud Amnah, talks about his hometown in Syria and Aizawl's journey to the top of the I-League as they aspire to clinch the title at the end of the season (3:39)

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.

Now in his third year in India, Mahmoud Amnah (middle) currently plays for Aizawl FC, who, in just their second season in the top division, are leading the I-League table. AIFF Media

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."

Mahmoud Amnah picks up a Man-of-the-Match award following an I-League match. AIFF Media

During the six-year long war, Amnah has heard about fellow footballers being killed, the community keeping as tight as they can on Facebook and lamenting over what has been lost and what could be. "Many young players have gone outside and played professionally in Iraq or Kuwait, young players with little experience. We see that in news and on Facebook... Syria, okay, maybe in the future it would be better. I want to think that for my country, for my people, you know."

The Syrian League he tells me never stopped even during the war, except it was restricted to one or two safe havens, eight teams in the same place. Last September, he says, it had returned to some trace of its peacetime version. Clubs have asked him to return, including Al Ittihad Aleppo, and Al Jaish. "But I'm outside now," he says, with a mixture of regret and helplessness.

He is in his third year in India, after spending two seasons in Goa. But this is Aizawl. Remote, stretched across several hillsides, on the other side of Bangladesh, majority Christian, mainly pork-eating with a football-frenzy that comes from what he considers lives that are "not easy." All the non-Mizos of Aizawl FC are put up at a guest house on one of the higher reaches of Aizawl, a woman cooks special meals for Amnah and coach Khalid Jamil, both Muslims, and there's a mosque in the heart of town.

Aizawl FC have turned into the sleeper hit of the season, atop the league ladder ahead of fancied big-star productions, with four matches left, three away. They are three points ahead of East Bengal, four ahead of Mohun Bagan and play Bengaluru FC on Sunday. Jamil has called Amnah's performance "superb" through the season, Amnah's mid-field partnership with Liberia's Alfred Kehman Jaryan's the foundation of Aizawl's success, tight containment and nth hour goals.

Amnah came into the team as the mandatory Asian signing among overseas players and chose to use another example from far away to direct young Mizo ambitions. He asked them to remember Leicester City 2016, "I say to them, why not us? We are good players, we can. Believe yourself. If you believe in yourself, you can do this, this is football."

Mahmoud Amnah (Third from left, front row) poses with his Aizawl teammates before a home game. Aizawl is a club in the northeastern state of Mizoram, which is remote, stretched across several hillsides, and majority Christian. AIFF Media

At the start of the season he said, Aizawl FC had thought about taking a good result out of every game. "We enjoyed playing, we fight for the team, now we are in a good situation and we're thinking, why not?"

The last four games he knows will be very tough, but Amnah reads the situation, "We have a dream, okay? We can fight, no?"

It is something his country could lean on - the dream and the fight back from the most harrowing chapter in their history. Amnah says, "We were a beautiful and good country; and our people were good people." Then he cannot stop himself, "This war? Why children? If some people want to fight, okay fight... but children? What is that? What was this war?"

Football, for all that it has given him, can offer no lame truism to answer Mahmoud Amnah's question.