Amr Shalakany struggles to keep up with the lingo Over the years, I have accumulated a list of scary things to be avoided whenever possible. Cairo football fans and severe natural disasters come at the top of that list. Of the two, moreover, I think I'd rather see a ten-metre Mediterranean tsunami devour the north coast than stumble on a heated discussion of the latest scores. Nor is this a bodily fear, particularly: Football fans do not intimidate me physically. What scares me, rather, is the prospect of interminable chatter. It's a pretty elementary problem: When football fans are speaking, I simply don't understand what they say. The passion only intensifies my sense of impending doom. To my mind they make up a different breed of human beings, inhabiting an alternative linguistic universe. They have their own -- alien -- hopes and concerns, invariably expressed in a language that makes about as much sense as that of entomologists discussing the fine points of termite mating. Good old Umberto had it right: I am not scared of football fans, I am only scared of their conversation. Which brings me to last week's match between Ahly and Zamalek, the biggest two teams in Egypt and, by extension, the Arab world -- and yet another sleepless night. Ahly defeated its erstwhile archenemy by three goals to zero. I know this much because, the evening of the match, an army of Ahly fans descended on the streets of Cairo, endlessly honking their horns and waving Ahly's red banners out of car windows with such hysteria they kept me awake all night. But the true ordeal took place at the office the next morning: Verbal engagement with the cause of my misery loomed threateningly on the horizon. "Do you believe what the French did in that match?" one colleague asked. The French? I wondered, trying to engage nonetheless. Could this have to do with some new French law on headscarves? I'm feigning interest, staring blankly at my colleague, when he emits a wail so shrill it could pierce the wall. "How could they continue the game after Tamer Abdel- Hamid was injured?" "Huh?" It doesn't occur to my colleague that there exists in Cairo a person who has yet to find out who Tamer Abdel-Hamid is. He goes on: "I mean, Zamalek played a great game, really, the 3-5-2 plan worked beautifully against Ahly's 3-4-3. You think that was a good idea?" I'm already scared by now. What with the numbers? Who on earth is Tamer? And why is my colleague still staring at me, expecting a response? As a rule of thumb, nothing will stop a football fan from speaking. The only trick I know to shut them up is to flat-out admit that I'm not into football; such confessions must be accompanied by a confused and forlorn look, though. Yet even that doesn't work; and they persist, relentlessly, refusing to concede the possibility. There are many theories to explain the verbally privileged universe in which Cairo football fans reside. Here is the one I find most convincing: the popularity of football is yet another sign of the death of politics in Egypt. You see, man is an animal with political urges. Typically, he expresses them through political loyalties -- belonging to a party, believing in a platform, hoping your candidate of choice will win the next elections, cheering on the streets when your party wins, demonstrating when it loses, and so on. And since such avenues remain unavailable, football acts as the substitute, a space in which to sublimate and vent political urges. And so, instead of subscribing to some ideological position, Cairenes choose one of two teams; it's that simple. Instead of a different political party winning the elections, power is circulated through the Egypt Cup tournament. Forcing the coach to resign if your club loses the tournament is the alternative to getting rid of a cabinet that has failed to deliver. The transparent rules of the game by which a club wins when it plays better replace the more complex procedures whereby a party rises to power by popular vote. And foreign observers who determine whether elections are fair and orderly are likewise replaced by referees (a French one in last week's match, as I was later to find out) to ensure an impartial attitude towards both big teams. But let us go back to the evening of the match for a moment. The stadium is full to maximum capacity an hour and a half before the game starts. 15-20,000 Ahly fans are there, versus around 10,000 Zamalek fans. Compare this to the measly hundreds who participate in Cairo's sporadic political demonstrations. After the match, football fans take to the streets as if they own them. Compare to palpably insecure demonstrators ambling around Tahrir Square as if they were stepping on Mars. Football wins over politics in Cairo. And it's not because the people of Cairo find politics boring. Football wins because football is the only meaningful space we have left for expressing political urges. Young men (and often women) wave red banners out of car windows with huge smiles on their faces -- because the collective group identity they support has won in a transparent and neutral competition. I may not understand them when they discuss the match, but I know this is politics -- politics by another name. * The writer is assistant professor of law at the American University in Cairo.
