It begins at eight in the morning. Children swarm into the streets of Arbil, a city of 1.3 million in northern Iraq, and meet up in all of the city's neighborhoods, in Saidawe and Nishtiman, Senko and Nevroz. They meet to play a game called Kurat al-Kadam in Arabic and Topani in Kurdish, a game that doesn't stop until the muezzin calls out from the mosque after sunset.
The game is football.
