Tamer Asfahani reflects on the impact of games in his late childhood where he moved from an idyllic English school to an international American school in Saudi during the first Gulf War.

Tamer Asfahani

IT’S hard enough moving schools as it is, but I was lucky, as a child, to go to schools with the same group of friends. Moving from nursery to elementary to junior meant that I have friends, even today, who are almost as old as I am. Your circle of friends is safe, the games you play – modified or not – are universally understood between you and your friends. Growing up, there were two games we’d play in the playground; football (soccer for our American friends) and variations of tag. Other sport was, of course, played during PE. We’d do track and field events, we’d play rounders or rugby and sometimes even cricket. But these were all games that were engrained into our culture. There was a base knowledge of these games, and even if I’d not played them, I knew enough about them to be able to play them.

At home, however, I was playing exotic games that I could only play on my Mega Drive. NBA Jam taught me the rules of basketball, Madden allowed me access to the strategic world of American Football, Tommy Lasorda Baseball opened the world of baseball to me, while NHL Hockey engaged me, especially with all the sparring and beating up on the ice that it depicted! I also started getting into golf on my GameGear, a sport that I really started to love.