Regimes come and go...but football endures

There are two big teams in Cairo. You are either Ahly or Zamalek. Even people who have no interest in soccer, seem under a compliment to express allegiance to one or the other. It is fundamental to the identity of Cairenes.

The rivalry is fierce. Not as fierce as the most epic derby in Christendom ( Bohs v Rovers of course), but pretty darn fierce nonetheless.

I know a Belgian guy here, who has extended family in Egypt. When he met them last week, he discussed his own secular beliefs. His family of devout Coptic Christians were very shocked.

He is a big football fan, and I asked him about going to a Zamalek game next week.

“No I don’t think so”

“Why?” I asked.

“Well my family here are Ahly. They are already shocked at my beliefs about religion. But if I went to a Zamalek game and they found out. Well, that would be much worse. I don’t think they would ever see me again!”

I am researching an article for Blizzard magazine http://www.theblizzard.co.uk  focused on how the Egyptian revolution has affected the local soccer scene, how the fans have engaged with the Arab Spring, and the evolving political and social identities of the major teams following the fall of the former regime.

As part of the research (and also to get my live game fix) I went to an Ahly home match in the Cairo International Stadium last week-an impressive ground. The stadium was well less than a third full, but the Ahly ultra’s generated a superb atmosphere through-out. Violence is an issue at Egyptian league games, but not at the one I attended.

The “ultra” phenomenon leaves me a little cold (the insistent singing sometimes feels weirdly disconnected to the actually action on the pitch for one thing) but it is hard not to be impressed by the consistency and ingenuity of the fans. I particularly liked the languid beat to this...

He adored Cairo city

Blog post one.

He adored Cairo city.

He idolized it all out of proportion.

No... eh...make that- He romanticized it all out of proportion.

Better.

To him, no matter what the season was, this was a town that still existed in black and white and still pulsated to the great tunes of Umm Kulthum.

No... no.

Let’s start again.

Blog post one.

He was too romantic about Cairo as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle bustle, the crowds and the traffic.

Ah...too corny...too corny for my taste.

I will try to be more profound.

Ok ...ok I will stop labouring the point.

For it’s a point Woody Allen made perfectly well in the wondrous intro to his greatest movie ‘Manhattan’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o6QKpNK9Cc

Allen gently mocks the writer’s futile attempts to personify a city in a few simple lines. To render the complexity of a megalopolis (like New York in Allen’s case) into a concise flowing narrative is...corny.

Thus, less than a month in Cairo- with its 20 million inhabitants, its millennia of history and its current state as a locus of revolutionary upheaval- I am wary of making any easy judgements, or at least making them publicly.

The political situation is complex and fluid. I have tried to grapple with it in a new article in Village magazine (http://www.villagemagazine.ie/) and a forthcoming article in Liberty newspaper (and an article in the October Liberty).

But one thing I can say for certain- the revolution continues, in a deeply uncertain sort of way.

And it is this revolution that has brought me here to the banks of the Nile. If the inspirational events we all saw on our television screens in January/February had occurred in Beirut or Damascus- I would probably be there. It’s this, the most mind blowing revolutionary event of recent years, that has attracted me to Cairo- for journalistic, academic (to continue Arabic) and personal reasons.  

As you mingle with demonstrators in Tahrir Square on Friday, or wander down the buzzing commercial centre of Talaat Harb on a Thursday night; it is also easy to forget something else. This is a city where blood ran along the streets a fortnight ago- in an event that some locally are already comparing to Bloody Sunday in Derry 1972. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2011/1068/cu3.htm

I have never blogged before. But in this city, where bloggers have actually played a vital role in political change and in some cases faced jail for their troubles, I think it is about time I truly respected the medium.

Hope you find some of my musings interesting.