Watching the brutality of Sierra Leone's civil war unfold in movie form in front of them, Michael Harrington turned to ask Kei Kamara if the frightful abductions and gruesome amputations were an accurate depiction of his childhood.
Yes.
The answer took Harrington aback, at least for a moment.
He knew his friend and Kansas City Wizards teammate grew up in Sierra Leone, had dodged bullets and bodies as war swirled around him. Even so, Kamara's easygoing nature and see-every-tooth smile buried the unimaginable life before this one deep below the surface, as if it belonged to someone else.
Seeing it played out in the movie ``Blood Diamond'' with Kamara just a few feet away, drove it home, gave Harrington a deeper sense of the divergent paths that brought them to the couch that day.
``It's pretty shocking to me,'' Harrington said. ``We've been pretty good friends since he came to Kansas City and it's crazy how we could both be sitting here at the time but grew up so differently. I obviously didn't have to grow up with anything like that. It's funny how the world shakes out sometimes.''
Kamara's journey started in 1990. That's when his mother left for the United States in hopes of creating a better life for her children. Within a few months, civil war broke out in Sierra Leone, leaving Fatima Kamara no way of getting to her children. The separation would last nearly a decade.
Kei (pronounced Kye) remembers the first jolt of war. He was 6, sitting with his classmates, just like any other day in the provinces. Then came an explosion. Smoke billowed. On the ground were two children, killed by the blast of a grenade.
Tears flowed and wouldn't stop, really, for another eight years.
Over that time, Kamara experienced what no child should have to go through. Bombs. Tanks. Gunfire. Destroyed buildings. Fear. Death.
Years of familiarity eventually numbed the fear, allowing little Kei and his friends to walk past dead bodies without thinking, identify weapons fired in the distance by the sounds they made.
``It got to a point where gunshots were like music, something you were used to,'' he said. ``We'd hear pop! pop! pop! and say what kind of gun it was, then the next minute there'd be maybe a big explosion and like, oh, that's maybe a war tank.''
Still, the fear was still there, even if experience cloaked it deep within his consciousness.
Eventually, Kamara's family became weary of war and decided to escape, leaving their hometown of Kenema for Freetown.
The death and destruction only got worse in the capital city.
To completely escape the bloodshed, Kamara and his family took a chance. Just 14 at the time, he boarded a fishing boat filled with 40 Africans and headed out to sea toward a coastal town with an airport. Keeping his head down and watching water seep through holes in the boat, Kamara floated toward what he hoped would be freedom.
``You never know what's a good time to leave, what's going to be on the way while you're going,'' he said. ``I don't remember how long the ride was, but I do remember it was a huge relief when we got to the other side.''
Kamara went from boat to plane, to Gambia, where he spent the next two years. Then came a trip to the U.S., a joyful reunion with his mother, and on to a new journey: to make a better life for himself through soccer.
As a kid, Kamara wasn't much of a player. He didn't have the skill of his brothers, a small kid who never got picked for the bigger leagues in Kenema. War made it hard for anyone to play much anyway, buzzing bullets often keeping them inside for days at a time.
But when he arrived in the U.S., Kamara sprouted, grew to a lean, muscular 6-foot-3. He worked hard at his game, too, eventually landing at Cal State-Dominguez Hills, where he was a third-team All-American as a senior.
Kamara play well enough to earn a spot on the Columbus Crew's reserve team in 2006 and played 17 games with the regulars the following season. He went on to play for San Jose and Houston, then was traded to Kansas City late last season.
This year, Kamara has blossomed, become an in-the-air scoring threat who's deceptive with the ball and tough to knock off it. Even with a YouTube-worthy whiff against the Los Angeles Galaxy - he missed from six inches and was called for a hand ball - Kamara has scored six goals in 12 games for the Wizards.
``He's somebody you can play into, but he's also got some skill on him as well, so it makes him a very dynamic player,'' Harrington said. ``He can post up on you and he can also drive it at you a little bit, and obviously he's been a pretty good goal scorer for us this year, finishing well. He brings a lot of good things to the table for us.''
And plenty of perspective.
Growing up amid unfathomable cruelty and violence could have embittered Kamara, made him never want to step foot in Sierra Leone again. But Sierra Leone is home and what happened there in 11 years of civil war - mutilations, tens of thousands dead - is a part of him.
So when given the chance to play for his country, Kamara jumped at it, joining the Sierra Leone 11 for World Cup a qualifier last year. Sierra Leone didn't qualify for the first World Cup played in Africa, but the experience filled Kamara with pride, his eyes with tears as his country's national anthem played.
``It took me back to the past, where I was years ago,'' Kamara said. ``It seemed like I was just in Sierra Leone yesterday. I felt so blessed.''
He still does.
