I knew we’d hit a watershed moment when my sons told me they needed “new football boots”. Five years ago, as we packed to move from New York to Abu Dhabi, they’d both given me strict instructions about making sure that their favourite soccer jerseys and their “soccer cleats” were in the gear we carried with us rather than in the boxes that came (very slowly) via cargo ship.
It’s the watershed of adaptation: they go to an English-style school, so they look for the “bin” not the “trash”, groceries go in the car’s “boot” and not its “trunk”. These Englishisms are interspersed with “yalla” and “habibti” and some occasional phrases whose meanings collapse them into giggles. Just between you and me, I think there’s some Arabic instruction happening out there between friends on the football pitch, well away from the Arabic-language classroom.
During those hazy first months in Abu Dhabi, in the fullness of the summer heat and the tumult of setting up house, starting a new school, and finding our way around a new city, the soccer field – sorry, the football pitch – became an unexpected anchor point.
We got lost pretty much every time we went to Zayed Sport City, but once we found the pitch (itself a major achievement) everything seemed familiar.
For all the grumbling that I’d done standing on the sidelines (frequently in the freezing cold or pouring rain) as a “soccer mom” in New York, I was grateful, in my new Abu Dhabi life, for the familiar ritual of “going to practice”.
Five years later, the boys still play football but now the ritual includes grumbling about driving to practice (although truth be told, that drive to Zayed Sports City has become “quality time” with my teenage son: instead of taxi fare, he pays for his ride in conversation). We no longer get lost inside ZSC, and I’ve come to enjoy my twilight vigils at the edge of a pitch, with the graceful silhouette of the Grand Mosque rising over the trees.
Last weekend, as I waited for my son’s game to start, I watched a girls’ match finish. One girl, her long ponytail streaked in team colours, passed the ball to her teammate, a girl wearing a headscarf and leggings under her shorts. They yelled encouragements at one another as they raced down the field, passing the ball back and forth around the opposing players. Ponytail Girl shot the ball, missing by centimetres, and a collective groan went up from the sidelines.
I suppose you could look at this scene and see only difference: the world of languages being spoken on the sidelines, the variety in what people were wearing, the ponytailed girl and the girl in the headscarf, the sweaty football being played against the backdrop of the Grand Mosque.
At the same time, there were all the familiar sights: the parent (who isn’t a coach) yelling “suggestions” at her child at the top of her lungs, the dad clearly working through some kind of unresolved childhood trauma by bellowing at the referee and the clutch of mothers offering up snacks and drinks from apparently bottomless coolers.
As I watched those girls try to score a goal, and then watched my son warm up for his match with his teammates – tossing the ball and several languages between them – the outcome of the match seemed utterly immaterial (although of course my son would disagree). What mattered is that we were there, gathered in all our humanity around a grassy field, watching our children play. A simple thing – and simply impossible for so many people whose lives have been upended by violence.
I’ve never thought that sport would save the world (much to my son’s chagrin), but for a brief moment that morning, I wondered if maybe it could.
And then, of course, someone mentioned that Arsenal just dropped out of the title race and my moment of optimism was lost.
Deborah Lindsay Williams is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi