In Defence of Football Fans

The average Egyptian does not have business projects to look up to. He does not know whether he will have enough money to provide for himself in case he gets very ill, or worse, if a son or daughter gets ill. The average Egyptian takes up two or three jobs, spends 4 hours daily squeezed in public transportation, does not have a proper social life. The average Egyptian is savagely caught up in the rat race, and the only relief he can look up to is football. Now imagine that this relief gives your country the chance to be internationally prominent, wouldn't you feel proud? We see the Egyptian government failing to defend the hungry, poor and defencless, starting from its own people and ending with Palestinians and Iraqis. As soon as the US invaded Iraq, all Mubarak could utter was "We hope the US operation will end soon". I am not premusing he could do anything else. There was nothing else Egypt could do given the circumstances. When hungry and cold Palestinians stormed through the Egyptian border a year and a half ago all Abul Gheit said was Egypt will break the bones of any Palestinian who would dare get hungry and look for food again. What's the use of a gate if you will keep it shut off most of the time, except if what you're really doing is imprisoning Gaza? Here goes a political failure.
No one knows if Egyptian products are sold abroad, no one knows if there is an international Egyptian market. EVERYONE knows where the revenues of tourism and the Suez Canal really go. The average Egyptian sees only shillings of the billions the government promises to provide as July bonus or social bonuses. Here goes an economic failure.
Doesn't it logically follow a social failure? You bet.
Now, when the only victory, or even facade of victory, looms in the distance, you still want do not want the Egyptians to breathe? So basically Egyptians are asked to be poor, hungry, hopeless and smileless? The overwhelming majority of Egyptians love their country, there is no doubt about this, and they wait for any chance to show their feelings. When they express patriotism through strikes, or protests, or forming virtual youth movements, they are hunt down, beaten, tortured and even killed. Workers who protest low pay do not only want to improve their condition, they want to give their country, they want to work and produce. The Tanta Flax and Oil Company workers' chants gave priority to falx over their own lives. I have never seen patriotism similar to this.
According to Alaa Al-Aswany (arabic), football is the only area where Egyptians are allowed to express their patriotism freely. They are not beaten up by the police. They are given a real chance to participate. This is why you see thousands of Egyptians in stadiums chanting and cheering for hours on end but a few tens or hundreds calling for political and economic reform in demonstrations. Isn't it only logical?
If so, why do we find voices rising before every grand football event like tomorrow's calling Egyptians stupid and naive, just because they prioritise football above almost any other area?
To begin with, this accusation is pure false. We have seen thousands of Egyptians chanting for Palestine and Iraq, risking being arrested and tortured, even school children participated in anti-Israeli protests. So...no. Egyptians defend Palestinians and Iraqis, Egyptians now stand up for their rights and voice their opinions. Egyptians collected money and food and managed to give them to Palestinians whenever the oppressive Egyptian regime allowed. Egyptian doctors have ventured inside the Gaza war zone and performed operations on what was left of Palestinian raid victims.
It is horrendously unfair to say Egyptians only ever care about football. If you have two chances to express patriotism, the first involves sexual and physical assault, passing out, losing your job, getting arrested and/or tortured, the second involves being among masses of people who share your opinion and your passion, you are allowed to express yourself without being called "qilla mundassa" or "wishful thinkers", which would you choose?
Why are you denying Egyptians their only vent, their only way to feel the rush of victory?

الحكم بالسجن على العقيد أكرم سليمان

هيييييييييييييييييييييه

أخيراً خبر يفرح

Where is my mind?

Generally speaking, Fight Club is a movie that will mess up your head big time. Although I love movies I am extremely slow. I have never seen Apocalypse Now nor The Godfather. I only take whatever MBC2 gives me, no matter how shitty.
But I digress. I started following the movie well into its middle, and I had to see it again and read the plot to come to grips with 'everything'. At the same time a FB friend posted the link of the soundtrack, no other than the Pixies' Where is my mind?
Immediately after, I really started to hate my job(s). Although my full-time job is far from tedious - teaching. Yes, teaching isn't boring. You do not stare at a dumb screen all day till your eyes burn, you are not directly monitored and scrutinised by your boss. The students change, they sometimes drop funny lines, they are sometimes so aggravating they push you to new and smart ways to contain your anger and/or come up with ideas to get through to them. In fact, teaching is one of the few jobs in which you can bring about real, and sometimes immediate change. This could also mean that they have been so horrible and psychopatic that you promise yourself upon your father's life that you will never, ever, turn out to be like them. You probably have the freedom to change your material every few months (course), change your attitude, change your method...etc.
However, it sometimes takes me the last 15 minutes before a lecture to 'prepare' it. Correcting assignments kills your soul. Trying to explain, for the hundredth time, that single nouns require an additional s to present simple verbs, is not always fun. It is not always rewarding to find bricks increasing slowly and forming a huge wall between you and your audience. You stare at blank faces and try to tell them, in as realistic terms as you can impossibly find, why education is beneficial for them. Above all, since I am in the academic field, I start to wonder why it is of any use, giving the present circumstances, to waste years writing a thesis, and spending 60% of your salary on this process, only to leave it in the university library to gather dust. I keep telling myself that God gave us the gift of mind to exercise it. If you don't use your mind, you will lose it. And writing theses is not such a bad way of doing so.
And now to my other job, a white-collar job, an office job, a private sector job. I spend all day trying to work out puzzles using technology that has completely got the better of me. You have to be there from 8 to 5, which of course I never do. Why 8? Why not just feel that we're in tandem with the world, and be there from 9 to 5? Because we're allowed a one-hour break for a snack and for praying. Of course the 9 hours are not just the 9 hours. If you take public transportation, they jump to 13. So, in the words of Tyler Durden, you spend more than half of your life working a job you hate to buy shit you don't need. You know, City Stars could have been one of the reasons why I decided to take another job, to be able to buy all of these trendy clothes that some worker in China has been squeezed into making for a meagre wage, for hours on end. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs to hate to buy shit we don't need.
We don't need.
Instead, the anonymous main character decided to create an underground movement. But he has his job, he has long bills to pay. He has social appearances to keep. He can't do that himself, so he created another person to do so, someone to do all of the dirty work, to face trouble and make possible subconscious desires. Someone to hurt him because he would feel guilty about hurting himself - and by this I mean physical damage. The movie goes far beyond the abstract, and reaches the physical. Crazy huh? We always dread 'inconcrete' pain and do our best to avoid it, and we never realise how physical pain is as strong, if not stronger.
In the final moment of awareness, the main character finds a means to bring about the fragments of his mind again. What a selfish act. He shoots himself without fatally wounding himself. He is selfish because he did not give me any other alternative.
Since I saw the movie, I have felt my mind disintegrating. I do not know how serious this is, or whether it is serious at all. This is the only way I can explain it, disintegrating. I briefly reviewed other careers, other lives I could live, but everything, any other alternative, requires taking fatal risks, and I am not exactly a risk taker. Of course the movie is not the main reasons, but it sure did set off these symptoms. My thoughts are racing in wildly different directions. I do not know if I am too good for these jobs, or good enough for these jobs. I am questioning my abilities. I am putting my life on halt in a time when I should be writing a life-or-death proposal for my MA. People talk and I cannot listen to them for more than half a minute. They said it would get better but it didn't.
I am loving one person for something, and eschweing another for the very same reason. I keep sending people wrong signals only to realise this too late. I try to leave my parents' wings and probe into the real world, but never really settling in either places.
Just as if it can get worse, someone who is very dear to me, whom I feel responsible for, started underage smoking. As a former smoker I know what kind of crap that gets you to grab some cigarettes and blow your life away when your parents don't know it. I know the loneliness, the pain, the sheer pressure involved. He promised me he would reduce them until he quits. But if he smokes them where I can't see him, how can I ever be sure?
Where is my mind?
I listened for the song during the past week for I don't know how many zillion times. I keep wondering whether the background voices are screaming.
"You wonder a lot, don't you?"
A family member hasn't died. I was not diagnosed with cancer. I have not ended a thirty-year long marriage. I am not a homeless child getting raped by every pedophile on the move. I am not an Afghan mother of three expecting to be blown up any minute now. Why is this happening to me?

My stalker :(

من يومين في واحد استلمني أول ما خرجت من البيت، كنت رايحة الشغل الساعة 12 الضهر ويادوب مشيت خطوتين حسيت إن في حد ماشي ورايا، مديت شوية ووصلت للشارع الرئيسي، كنت باتكلم في التليفون فوقفت واتدورت، كان راجل كبير في السن وشكله مش طبيعي، هدا شوية ناحيتي كإنه اتفاجئ إني وقفت بعد كده عدا الشارع وأنا عديت بعديه عشان هوا ده طريقي. كنا ماشيين وسط جنايين كده فيها طريقين، لقيته بعد شويه مشي شمال عشان يقرب مني، أنا اترعبت ولفيت الجنينة تاني عشان أبعد عنه، وطلعت السلف ديفينس (اللي هو عبارة عن علبة سبراي فاضية، بس بتديني إحساس مفترض من الأمن، على أساس إن اللي قدامي مش هيعرف هو اترش بإيه بالظبط وكده) فضلت لحد ما ركبت الأوتوبيس بتلفت حواليا وكنت نازلة نفق مشاة خفت لحسن يكون مستنيني تحت، لكن الحمد لله غار.

قبل كده كنت متضايقة جداً إني بخاف وأنا في الشارع والمواصلات، اللي يهمس جنبي باترعب منه وأي حاجة تحصل بفسرها إن اللي قدامي بيتحرش بي، أصل اللي جرى لي مش قليل، بعد كده قلت الحمد لله إن أنا مصحصحة، ماحدش عارف كان إيه اللي حصل لو كنت مش مدية خوانة.

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