It was a beautiful sunny day when we first walked in “the field” in Baghdad. It was a hot day, around 58 c’ degrees outside. The kids brought a soccer ball as the groups started cussing at each other before we played the “championship” match. The field was a huge soccer field project that took around 6 years to build due to financial problems. We, the kids of that neighborhood, used to make a soccer league and play in the street. My team made it to the finals, and since we won the champion ship, we got to play in “the field” whenever we wanted, and little by little it became a place we would hang out at every day.
As the war began, we weren’t allowed to leave our houses. I remember going up on the roof and jumping the walls that separate the roofs of others to get to a friend’s house, until one day a laser beam was pointed straight at my eye and two soldiers on top of a tank around a quarter mile away pointed at me to walk down. That was the last time I was on the roof.

Our next league never started. After almost a year of war, everyone was used to the shootings and bombings already, and we believed that if God gave you a life, he’d choose whether you get shot or survive. It never went by luck. It was faith. I remember the first time we got to see the field after many months of not even taking a look at it from outside. The fences were gone, the grass was no longer green, and the walls of the buildings around it were no longer the clean white buildings. Everything became brown or black. There were no older people playing backgammon on the side and eating seeds. There were no longer women hanging clothes on their balconies in the surrounding buildings. The field became empty, silent, and a smelly place. I didn’t even feel like walking on that field as it no longer was the field it used to be. Dead street dogs were lying around with bunch of flies flying over them. Empty bullet and rocket caps lay scattered on the ground. Later on the field became a small base for the American troops,