“Come back?” (Kris Kotarski, East Jerusalem, June 2007)

“Kick with us,” said a young boy on a dusty football pitch, after I threw a wayward ball back onto the field from the street below. “Are you English? What is your favourite team?”

I lasted about 30 minutes on the pitch before we collapsed, exhausted, and shared our water before the kids got up to play again.

“Come back?” said the same young boy, the only one in the group who could put a sentence together in English.

“Maybe,” I smiled. “I hope I can.”

***

A couple of days later, I came back with a Canadian friend who had lived in Jerusalem for a few months without ever venturing outside the Jewish neighbourhoods. I suggested a walk in the afternoon, hoping to stop for dinner somewhere where we could enjoy the evening breeze.

As we weaved through the city in search of a suitable place to sit down, we argued about politics and peace and war, only pausing long enough to lift our heads in unison to sip from our water bottles as we squinted at the sun.

“…it will be a couple of generations before anything can happen,” said my friend in between gulps. “In any case, it’s getting late. Let’s get something to eat…”

When we walked past the same dusty football pitch, the boy was gone.