We found a cab easily and headed off to the stadium. Our cab driver happened to be a Zamalek fan, but we had been told that 'nobody' supports Zamalek! I feel badly about this, since I actually live on Zamalek. Although in a strange twist of events, the Ahly team apparently usually plays & practices on Zamalek, where as the Zamalek team actually plays elsewhere? Very strange.
On the way to the game we could tell this was going to be a bigger deal than we had initially thought, b/c most cars had red Ahly flags flying out the windows and were honking what we soon became familiar with as the Ahly anthem sort of thing. We even saw a car full of Ahly supporters speed by with two guys sitting in the trunk!! of a normal sized, (small by US standards) 4 seater car!! on the freeway!! it was madness. I genuinely thought they might die.
We made it to the stadium and headed in the general direction of the flow of Ahly fans - Egyptian men of all ages dresses in red. As we were 2 unescorted white women, we caused quite a stir and got attentions of all kinds. My personal favorite was the guy who followed us almost all the way from the cab to the entrance ( a good 15-20min walk) shouting a pretty ridiculous progression of things. He began with the usual "WElcome to EGypt! You speak English?" etc, progressed to "You so beautiful! I love you!" and then, the icing on the cake " Fuck you! I want to fuck you!" as if, since we hadnt responded to his more polite requests for attention, this last vulgar comment would be enough to make us swoon & fall for such a charming gentleman on the spot. Completely ridiculous. I am slowly cooking up some good Arabic phrases to toss out - Would you say that if your mother were here? for example. By the time I leave Egypt I will be such a pro at deflecting unwanted attention I might not know what to do in the US when I finally get attention I do want!
We ended up being protected by a group of three 8-10year old boys. I think they befriended us because when they had started chanting 'Ole ole ole ole' etc, Erin & I had joined in. We had just been having a conversation wondering if this was in fact a universal soccer anthem, & it turns out it is. Anyway, in retunr for our quiet 'oles' we got a small ring of little boys protecting us from older gross men! It was pretty awesome. At this point we had been herded onto the sidewalk by the quite literally hundreds of riot police to await security screening to enter the stadium. We were trying to keep our distance from the crowd in front of us, & the boys stood a few feet behind us to keep the men from crowding in. And every time one of them said something to us, the boys would yell at them in Arabic. Totally adorable. I really really need to improve my colloquial, because i wanted nothing more than to tell them that their mothers would have been so proud of them for being such gentlemen. The verb 'to be proud' however, is currently out of my reach.
After standing in this line for a bit, we noticed that the Egyptian women, almost all of whom were wearing the veil, were bypassing the line with their husbands/fiances/brothers/other male escort. When we tried to get past the riot police we were told to stay where we were, but then our young allies talked to them & we were told to go on past.
This put us at the front of the line, but still in line surrounded by mostly men nonetheless. At this point an Egyptian woman wearing hijab caught my eye & saw how lost Erin & I were, and she grabbed our hands & pulled us through behind her fiance/boyfriend/maybe her brother through 'security' (all the guards were male so we were just waved through) to the stadium entrance. They spoke some English & with bits of that & our Arabic we were able to explain that we weren't really here by ourselves, we just couldnt find our friends, & thank them for saving us. When we still didnt hear anything from our friends, they invited us to come sit with them, because their friends were 'in the club' .... this meant that they sat at the end of the stadium behind the goal, all of them wore red (Ahly's colors), and they quite literally never sat down the entire game, & chanted & yelled through most of it. Pretty awesome, but also mildly overwhelming!!
Walking into the stadium we saw something that really reminded us that we are in a Muslim country: the entrance to the stadium had several straight lines of men praying. they had all walked in, taken off their shoes, laid down their red Ahly flags as prayer carpets, & started praying. it just so happened that the entrance we were using pretty much perfectly faces Mecca. It was awesome.
Eventually we met up with a bunch of other AUC international students from our Arabic class & hung out with them for the night. The game was crazy, Ahly won 1-0, but it was a fairly hotly contested game & quite frankly Zamalek is a much better team in terms of passing & playing together, but Ahly capitalized on one of the chances they had. Also, poor Zamalek had to deal with the Ahly goalie, who was truly stellar. If not for his many great saves (including blocking a penalty!) Zamalek would have won hands down.
We were quite the spectacle for the people around us as we tried to learn some of the cheers & join in - thankfully Ole ole ole ole etc is a universal soccer cheer, so we got really into that one! Surrounding guys also felt the need to take dozens of pictures with all the white girls with their cell phones, which got more than a little irritating - i just wanted to watch the game, & they really wouldnt take no for an answer. A woman behind us shared some sunflower seeds with us, and we were all secretly plotting to kidnap her toddler, who was possibly the most adorable little boy ever.
When the game ended we left pretty quickly & found a cab a lot quicker than expected. The drive turned out to be an Ahly fan, so when we told him they won he was quite happy & honked the horn the entire 15ish minute ride to Zamalek. he also encouraged us to wave our Ahly flags out the window, so we happily complied. Most people we drove past started honking in sync with us, or at least cheered too. We only got flipped off once or twice, which seemed pretty good all things considered!
This was definitely my favorite night in Cairo so far. It just embodied so many of the aspects of living here, both good and bad, into one night ... the irritating harassment, the kindness of the people, the huge police presence, egyptian's desire to be our friends, the praying .... pretty much everything. It was fantastic. Everyone should go to a soccer game, right now. go! have fun! :-)
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