It was the deflated football that did it. The patchy field behind the apartment complex in Atlanta, Georgia, was miles apart – in every sense – from the lively streets of Amman, Jordan, where I grew up, but seeing a group of kids kicking that raggedy ball around took me right back to the barefoot street matches I played as a girl.
To me, there was nothing strange about asking to play with them. In Amman, anyone who wanted to play football would just ask. I grabbed a (fully inflated) ball from my car. What started as an impromptu match soon became a regular occurrence.
