footy

Yesterday, Egypt became my country. On phonecalls from home, even for my Nigerian friend Harrison, whose home-team lost way before the finals, Egypt became baladi.

20 of us gathered to watch the finals of the African Cup of Nations between Egypt and Cameroon. I’m not one to get into the details of the game (partially because half the time I wasn’t really paying attention) but where there‘s a reason to party, everybody knows I’m game! And there certainly was. Egypt won 1-0 to secure the Cup twice in a row, and six times overall. Soon as the whistle blew ending the game, the entire street erupted in car horns, drum banging and celebratory chanting.

There were people EVERYWHERE. The Junction of Brazil St. and 26th of July was teeming with crowds, (mostly) men dancing in rings, blazes of fire from makeshift bug-spray torches and lots of bins turned upside down to make drums. A few of us girls timidly ducked for cover everytime someone released fireworks from right next to us or when some idiot threw down sparklers from the bridge above. But for the first time, the cars inching their way through the human traffic as they tried to get across had drivers with smiles on their faces. After an hour of revelry in Zamalek, my friends and I piled into cars and headed downtown where apparently the real action was.

We somehow made it across the packed bridge to Tahrir Square where we inched around the roundabout three times, hanging out of our cars and hooting like hooligans. It was brilliant. At one point, Harrison, the only guy in our car of seven girls, ran off to meet his friends and then things got a little scary. I think the crowds of 200 intensely-excited Egyptian men around our car suddenly realised that here was a car packed with seven foreign chicks, overflowing from the windows, and not a single big black African in sight to fight them off. We quickly jumped inside, turned up the windows and locked the doors. Boys started thumping our windows and (one or two) shouting lewd things. The policeman (notice the irony) near us told Nora, who was driving, to just knock down the ones blocking our way, while someone suggested with distinct pleasure that we should suddenly reverse the car and break some Egyptian male bone. If only.

Luckily, Harrison came back. The crowds backed off…until they started hounding him, shouting “Cameroon! Cameroon!”

I’m so glad Egyptians don’t drink alcohol. “Football Hooliganism” would enjoy whole new, frightening meaning.