From Midnight Soccer to Morning Markets: A Portrait of Rama

I first met Rama on my local soccer field and was immediately impressed with his skill. He’s fast, creative, and endlessly good-humored — the kind of player you can’t help but like. What I didn’t know at first was the story behind how he learned to play.

Rama grew up in Kurdistan, where soccer wasn’t always encouraged. His father believed work came first — there was farming to do, and no time for games. So Rama and his friends played at night, under the moon, fashioning balls from whatever they could find: bundled rags, plastic bags tied with string, even animal bladders inflated and wrapped tight (the latter is something I personally encountered and played with while on assignment in a rural village in Ghana). Those nights taught him persistence and joy — a theme that has carried through his life ever since.

Today, Rama lives in my Colorado community, where he runs a small baking business. He makes baklava — a layered pastry with roots across Kurdish and Turkish traditions — which he sells at local farmers markets around the region. His version is delicate, fragrant, and impossibly good.

When he mentioned wanting portraits for his website and social media, I offered to create some. Not because it was a project, but because he’s a friend — someone who’s worked incredibly hard to build a new life here and share a piece of his culture with the community.

For me, this portrait is more than a photo. It’s about the long journey from those dusty night fields in Kurdistan to the bright, bustling markets of Colorado. It’s a story about craft, perseverance, and kindness — and the quiet ways those things show up in the people around us.