Cairo, Egypt (Part 1)

Fresh off of a 12 day programming run in Colombia and a multi-week rest that followed, it was time to get back to footy and the kids. This next trip promised to be exciting because I was hoping to add two new countries to our growing list of places visited – Egypt and then, Lebanon. It’s not often we hit two continents in one single trip, and in fact, I don’t believe we ever have.

With country 53 on the horizon, I packed up nearly 70 soccer balls, a couple dozen bags, and a dozen more tee-shirts and began my long morning commute to New York City, for my flight to Cairo. It was a 3 a.m. wake up call, and my flight was at noon out of JFK. I won’t lie, I was anxious before this for a couple different reasons. Of course, there’s the routine anxiety that comes with a new country. Secondly, an even greater anxiety that comes with that country having an extreme language barrier, given my very minimal knowledge of Arabic. I could blend in pretty well, as some friends and strangers assumed I was from Morocco or Tunisia, but when it came to speaking Arabic, I was extremely limited and my accent exposed me almost immediately. Lastly, and the main root cause of my anxiety for my ensuing 10 hour flight to Cairo was the familiar practice of passing through customs.

“There are some strict rules when it comes to receiving (monetary) donations from outside of Egypt, and I’d assume it’d be the same with material donations like your soccer equipment. My best advice would be to buy them in-country,” a contact of mine had warned.

“Well… my bags are already packed and all our donations are US-based, so I guess I’ll just push my luck,” I responded – choosing to instead sit in a pool of anxiety for the next 10 hours and change.

We landed and that anxiety only continued to grow. The two hour delay of luggage making its way onto the claim certainly didn’t help, either. Finally, two large bags in tow – I made my way to face my fate. I noticed there were two lines, one to the left and another to the right. I made note of my surroundings. The left line had been “randomly” pulling aside a lot of passengers, asking them to put their luggage through the x-ray scanner. I decided the right side would be my best bet, and queued up behind a couple other tourists.

The customs officer took one look at me and waved me on through, and that was that. All that stress for nothing. I hailed an airport taxi to my home base, a nice little spot in Maadi – one of the best neighborhoods in Cairo. My host Mahmoud greeted me warmly, allowing me to check in nearly 8 hours early since my flight got in during the early morning. He asked for no extra money in return, instead offering me a traditional Egyptian meal and just as good a conversation to drink it down with. It included falafel, beans, eggplant, peppers, and pita bread and we ate it with our hands. “I hope it’s okay,” Mahmoud said, being more than modest about the spread, though to me, a hungry, weary traveler – this meal carried its weight in gold.

During our chat, he shared his passions – his new business, his family, and his coin-collecting hobby. I spoke to him about football and buzzed as I talked about our upcoming collaborations with a large orphanage in the Maadi area. More than ready to rest my head, he whisked me upstairs where I almost immediately crashed for a multi-hour nap. I blocked off two days of rest-time, three if you included the half day of my arrival on Monday. Sessions weren’t starting until Thursday, so I figured that’d be enough time to adjust to my surroundings, prep my equipment, and get the upper-hand on jetlag. The latter of the three proved to be the most challenging, with a 7 hour time difference between Cairo and Connecticut. I was waking up at 2 in the morning, sleeping during the day, it was a mess.

Jetlagged and delirious, I called an Uber and decided to do some touristy things – heading towards Giza and the pyramids. Baking in the hot Egyptian sun, I spent a couple hours marveling at this wonder of the world before heading back home to Maadi. After all, footballs were waiting to be inflated and programs were waiting to be carried out. In the nights leading up to Thursday’s session, I was hammering out final details with my contact, Rania, from Awlady Orphanage. This institution houses and cares for over 300 orphans within the city. They do incredibly important work and have been doing so for well over 50 years. What an inspiration and what an amazing organization to be linked up with, right? I couldn’t wait.

Rania passed along our final checklist including Thursday’s location and my main point of contact for that session. Then, a head contact for Saturday’s double-session as well as its address and time. Rania and I had planned to run a session with the boy’s orphanage. Over there, they had an actual team that practiced and competed often. These boys were skilled and knew their football. “But, if you’re okay with it, I’d also like for you to bring some football sessions to the younger kids who don’t play so often or too seriously,” Rania asked. “Of course!” I responded. Thus, we set up Saturday’s program with the younger kids at Awlady – ages 11 and below, compared to Thursday’s 12-17 age range.

Knowing that these boys could really ball out, I made sure to arrive bearing gifts. With me, I had some really nice footballs – most notably a pink Brine phantom ball, one that we used to play with back in high school. With it, a couple Pele balls, a Nike EPL jawn, and an Umbro ball as well. These would be left for the team to use, for nice soccer balls were always in demand in Egypt I had been told. Of course, I wanted the boys to leave with something too, so I had a handful of British Soccer Camp t-shirts and a couple of drawstring bags as well.

I was told I’d be meeting an English-speaking contact here, Muhammad al Yusr. I did meet him. But he really did not speak English. I was told later that Muhammad is like a teacher for the boys, and he had been working with Awlady for somewhere around 13 years. I was overwhelmed, an unfamiliar face in the crowd. Strangers were coming up to me, curious, wondering who this guy was with his football clothes on and a bag full of equipment.

“I’m here for football, I’m looking for the boys and Muhammad,” I said.

Finally, a bright face emerged from the crowd. He had been controlling the room, everyone had been noticeably gravitating towards him.

“Hey bro,” he said, in perfect English. “My name is Mido.”

Besides Arabic and English, Mido also spoke Russian and a little bit of Czech. He was currently learning German because why not learn another language, right? Mido told me to sit tight and he’d figure out what was going on.

“Let me get the boys for you,” he said, as he often would work with them too – teaching them football, English and more.

In an orderly line, the boys made their way down a ramp and onto the field. They all showed up wearing their team kits, excited, eager, curious, and above all – intrigued. Though expectedly reserved, right off the bat they were all super helpful. One boy even stayed by my side the whole time – carefully repacking all our unused soccer balls, even laying my shoes out in perfect order right next to my zippered luggage bag. I mean even if I just looked in his direction, he would run to me and ask if there was anything I needed. What an amazing young lad, truly.

Even those not participating were helpful. Egyptians are incredibly hospitable, and this was surely on display today, yesterday, and before that. On another bench, a couple of the older guys vowed to watch over my backpack – making sure that nothing was messed with or taken. A charismatic man in a black hoodie, named Adel was left responsible for photographing the session and did so with the biggest smile on his face – sometimes even wider than those of the kids. He would drop by from time to time either to show me one of his newly taken photos with pride or to drop off a little care package – first a cold bottle of water, next a packet of cookies, and last but not least, a bundle of tissues so that I could wipe some sweat off of my forehead and out of my eyes. It was amazing.

After Mido had led the boys through a five minute warm up and some stretching, I partnered them up into groups of two for our listening exercise. This would end up being more a seeing exercise than a listening exercise as I had to make a quick change due to my lack of Arabic. The kids would be watching me, touching their head if I placed my hands on my head. Touching their shoulders if I did that. Then, when I blew my whistle, they’d have to bend down and grab the ball, before their partner. They were very attentive and behaved, so it actually was a pretty easy ask and they killed it for a couple rounds.

“Let me try it in Arabic now,” I said, turning to Mido and pulling out a list of body parts and their pronunciations that I had been studying for days.

“Bro I don’t know what language you are speaking but it’s not Arabic,” Mido said with a laugh, apparently my internet research had let me down tremendously. Luckily, Mido picked up the slack and ran a couple rounds while I set up our next two drills.

First, a dribbling in tandem drill, with our same groups of two. Then, technical grids, run by myself, Mido, and one of the older boys. Lastly, our 1v1 towards goal drill. The kids enjoyed this one though their touches at times were about as good as a camel’s. “Keep it close, boys! One controlled touch and then drill it at net,” I said.

“Stephen?” a boy said quietly. “Yes?” I answered.

“Are we going to play a match?”

I turned quickly to Mido, “How much time do we have?” I asked, unsure of the day’s true schedule. The corners of his face turned upwards, “How much time do you want? We can go 3 hours, 4 hours,” he responded.

“Circle them up bro, let’s play,” I said.

We split the boys into four groups, Mido and I would be on the field at all times, just to facilitate team play and keep things organized. I won’t lie, this scrimmage was fun. I hadn’t played for a long period of time ever since our last day of programming in Colombia, and completely forgot that running for too long on unstretched limbs often left me useless for the next couple days with the tightest hamstrings possible, but in that moment it was the furthest thing from my mind. We were running around, we were scoring goals, I was sending the kids in on net putting them in great opportunities to score themselves. The competition was high, but even then, the joy was higher.

Only one thing could cause us to stop, only for just a moment, as one of the daily prayers was blasted over a loudspeaker – the boys all pausing for reverence before we quickly got the ball rolling yet again. Apparently, my performance had caught the eyes of some in the audience. Despite the game still ongoing, Mido ran towards me and called my name. “The big guys, the adults, they play tomorrow and they all want you to come back and play with us,” he said. “I’ll try bro,” I said, but I knew my body and I knew my hamstrings would be fried as early as that same night.

As we continued playing, I took note of the boys and their individual skills. One in particular, an older one, Hossam Morgan, had caught my eye. He was a very sweet boy, wearing a customized Barcelona shirt with his name on the back of it. Oftentimes deployed onto my team, he was always in constant communication with me. “Stephen – very good?” He kept asking me whenever he did something on the ball, “very nice” he’d say whenever I did the same. During a water break he had turned towards me, asking “Stephen you are from the USA? Do you like Inter Miami?” “Because for me, I love Messi. He’s so much better than Ronaldo,” he said, with the biggest smile on his face.

Hossam is much older than the other boys at 24 years old but honestly he has the heart of a child and as he scurried around in the other team’s attacking third – evidently, the energy of one too. As our scrimmage continued and things grew a bit more aggressive, I realized much of the fouling had stemmed from a general confusion of our own team members.

“Wait, I have a solution!” I yelled out, calling for Mido to round up the boys. I gave the boys the t-shirts I had planned to give out at the end of the session so that distinguishing teammates would be a little bit easier. I figured between the white Challenger Sports tees and the red team jerseys the boys arrived in, we should be able to make things work quite nicely from there. Luckily, I was right.

As the games proceeded, I shared another observation with Mido. “Bro these kids just play at one pace hahah. It’s all just go go go.. no slowing the game down, and oh so physical!”

“They’re fearless,” he said, “Nothing scares them.”

After seeing two kids jump headfirst into a 50/50 ball, I knew he wasn’t lying. Meanwhile, my team was slowly beginning to unravel. We literally had no defense and we played just one style – the breakaway. “Boys, it’s just me left back here!” I yelled out, as even my goalkeeper had ditched his goal frame to join our already-falling-apart attack. I abandoned the goal and joined the attack anyway. The ball came rolling my way, drifting towards my weaker left foot. I opted for the spectacular – a rabona cross. Just as I cocked my foot back to hit it, I saw a camera flash out of the corner of my eye. As a result, I missed the ball completely and dang near fell on my behind. I turned around and saw Adel cheesing. “Bro! Come on!” I said, letting out a laugh so he knew it was all for fun. 

Another hour passed and our scrimmage showed no sign of stopping. Despite our new, pink, hi-vis ball in play, the sun had long set and it was getting tougher to track the game.

“Last goal!” We kept saying, yet an additional 30 minutes had passed and there we were… still playing.

We just couldn’t stop. Between Mido, Hossam, the boys and I, we all loved the game. I got there and anticipated running a session for just an hour of time. It was now well past 7 o’clock. We had been going for two and a half hours, soon reaching the three hour mark. As we finally drew things to a close and Mido collected the footballs for safekeeping, he turned to me and said, “Bro let me tell you something. This ball is the best gift you could’ve ever given us.” The boys were quick to echo the same sentiment.

“Shukran!”

“Thank you so much.”

“We love you!” the boys kept saying.

“Don’t worry boys, I’ll be back this Sunday, same time,” I reassured, triggering a smile as they realized the goodbye was only a temporary one. I had a chance to sit down with Mido afterwards for dinner, to hear a little bit more about his story. He even insisted on paying for dinner though I promised I’d get the next one and hoped he would allow me to make good on that promise. Mido, besides teaching the boys English from time to time, would also take them under his wing when it came to footy. Mido had been living at Awlady since he was just 10 months old.

“I was just a baby,” he said. “I’ve never known my parents, but that’s life bro. It made me who I am today.”

We talked about goals, dreams, and plans. It was a surprisingly deep conversation over a simple dish of pasta and chicken. He wants to move to Austria and play professional soccer there, us both throwing around some names like Rapid Vienna and RB Salzburg. As we headed to the street and he helped me call an uber back home, he expressed an interest in helping out on Saturday for our double session at the other Awlady orphanage with the younger kids. ”I can help translate!” he said. “Plus, you know how much I love teaching football bro, right?”

“I’ll check with them, I promise,” I said optimistically, grateful that I’d likely be set on a translator for a new group of unfamiliar kids.

The day ended with one last text from Mido, “I’m so happy to know you bro and thank you so much for this day.”

As promised, Sunday rolled around and though my Ubers sent me on a wild goose chase, I finally hailed a taxi towards Awlady, for yet another afternoon of footy with the boys. “I’ll just be here waiting,” Mido had written to me.

I thought the day would be quite informal, hence my near 30 minutes of tardiness. But when I arrived and saw 20 of the boys sitting in two rows patiently, I knew I was far off. Luckily, they were understanding of my Uber debacle and we jumped quickly into mixed teams to start scrimmaging. Looking out at the crowd in front of me, I couldn’t help but smile. Why, you might ask? Because, only days after, nearly 70% of the boys were still wearing their white Challenger shirts with pride. They knew I was coming back and they were ever-excited to show them off. I gave Mido a handshake and a hug, though I quickly noticed he was not wearing his football boots.

“Bro, you playing?” I asked.

“I hurt my groin,” he responded.

I believed him, but only half-so as I knew it would take an injury far worse than that to sideline him. Only moments later, he was kicking around in his crocs. I knew it. As we began playing, I clocked one of the boys on the opposite team.

Turning to Mido, I pointed at him – “That boy… he is very good.. he’s a very good attacker,” I said.

“I mean trust me he is so annoying to play against but that must mean he’s a good player,” I added, with a laugh.

“But wait… you said he wasn’t here Thursday? Why?”

“Because he was sleeping,” responded Mido.

“But why does he have a British Soccer Camps shirt on today?”

“Because the boys gave it to him. They are his brothers. They share everything. They all do,” answered Mido. My heart softened.

Just like Thursday, the competition was fully on display. Like it though, so was the support.

“Good habibi!”

“Pass habibi!”

“Bravo habibi!”

“Yella habibi!” A whole chorus of habibis haha.

Mido and I were putting on a show today. As always, I was trying to set the boys up for goals. And for the most part they were finishing those chances off. But I knew I had more in the tank, and I knew how to take over when I had to. Needing redemption from my failed attempt on Thursday, I received the ball from Mido on a breakaway and squared up, 1v1 versus a medium-sized boy in goal. I dragged the ball back with my right foot, then pushed it ever so gently forward again. The goalkeeper not quite biting on it, I dragged the ball back, but this time, in front of my planted left foot. I crossed my right foot behind my left and launched a driven rabona through the keeper’s open legs and into the bottom corner of the goal. The kids couldn’t believe what they had seen. No lie, neither could I.

As the kids approached me with congratulatory high fives, I turned to Mido, suggesting I should retire after that since I could never possibly top it. I’m not sure if it was the rabona finish, but as I retreated to the sideline for a breather, the boys came up to me holding their red jerseys and their BSC tees. “Stephen? Signature?” They asked.

I whipped a sharpie out of my bag and obliged, signing every shirt. My break already longer than needed, I ran back to the field, immediately finding myself in a 1v1 against my nemesis – the other team’s keeper. After the rabona, he had vengeance on his mind this time, sliding through the 50/50 ball and taking my legs off with it. I thudded to the ground and grabbed my arm. As I labored getting back to my feet, he winked at me, knowing he had won this edition of the battle. Mido called out to me, “yo let’s wrap it up soon! The kids have school tomorrow.”

“Perfect! First to three?” I asked.

“Can we do five?” Miso bargained, before realizing it was a scrimmage of first to three goals, and not penalty kicks.

“Let’s do three!” he said.

This one was serious. Our team had two adults and some boys, as did the other side. I slotted the first goal of the match to the right of my nemesis, and winked back at him. Normally I wouldn’t score in a friendly scrimmage – but this one was personal with the goalkeeper. Soon enough, it was 2-2 and my stomach was already rumbling. Mido collected the ball on a breakaway and blasted in the game winner so we could finally get some food, this time Hossam joining us at the same pasta joint, and as promised – Mido letting me take the bill as a thank you for his amazing hospitality and teamwork, both on the field and off of it.