Egyptian Chronicles: Celebrating the Pseudo victory

Winning the African Cup is not considered a real victory so we can celebrate it all of us in this way , seriously I notice that this time we are celebrating it more than in 2006 ,when we hosted in Cairo. Personally I was surprised to find my grand mother who despises football and footballer supporting the national team in the finale , I was not the only person who was surprised in fact all those who were watching the game last week , I do not recall when the last time I jumped when someone from our national team scored a goal , I do not recall seeing myself or my family happy in that way ,I swear some of my family members seemed that they were going to cry. That night I swear Egypt did not sleep up till 6 AM , I swear I was sleeping in my bed when I woke up about 4 AM to hear the voices chanting "Egypt ,Egypt " away from the Zamalak and 6 October bridges , I swear. It is not only Egypt or the Egyptians this time who were celebrate the victory , the Arab people shared our pseudo victory our pseudo happiness too.

I am not an expert in sociology ,but I think there are reasons behind this happiness and they are not about how the regime is using football to drug the people this time.

I will start with the Arab people's happiness , you do not need too much brain to know that this happiness and pride came as a result from the two seconds Abu Tarika took off his shirt to reveal his support and sympathize to Gaza despite the fact he knew in advance that he would be warned ,yet he intended to send this message as a citizen to the whole world, this move added to Abu Tarika's millions of Arab supporters , it came in the same time of Gaza crisis and it came in the same time the Egyptian regime was complaining from the Gazans , The move from Abu Tarika and how people received in Egypt came like a direct message from the Egyptian people that we are with you .

The Palestinians returned Abu Tarika's salute in the best way possible too , with support celebrations ,despite the fact that the Palestinians felt that the official Cairo does not welcome them still they announced to the whole world their respect to Abu Tarika and Egypt .

It is a political reason that made not only the Palestinians but all the Arabs support and be happy for the Egyptian team this team , the move of Abu Tarika reminded them that Egypt and the Egyptians are still their men .

This move made Israel mad at first but they are clever and sooner the attack on Abu Tarika became a praise and he suddenly became the Maestro and the Israeli National team should learn from its southern neighbour !! by the way Israel now does not consider Abu Tarika as Anti Semitic and it is clear that he only said that he was sympathized with Gaza , he did not insult Israel, he did not deny the holocaust ,so why Facebook is cancelling all his fan pages and groups for being anti Semitic !!??

Now to the Egyptian reaction, to be honest very few people did not care about the victory but the vast majority seemed to be overwhelmed with the victory , I remember the BBC World reporter in Cairo describing the scene after the victory in the city as followed :

Cairo is a very big city with 10 Million people living it , tonight it seems that as if the 10 million are all in the streets , Young Men ,Old men ,women and children,from all classes went to the street "except my family we stayed at home actually"

The Columnists in the Newspapers I swear in the last week from Friday morning till last Thursday had nothing to speak about except the victory and the people's reaction.

I believe the people reaction comes from the fact that every year we the Egyptian people suffer from 365 days from disappointments thanks to our regime , life became so expensive for most people especially for the working class and the middle class . Egypt is in the eyes of many Egyptians losing more and more from its glory , you always hear the Egyptians especially nowadays speaking about our great days in the past when Egypt was the leader in all fields , now we are not the leaders in the middle east in anything except football , when we won the cup we felt that we regain this leadership in something again ,even if it was a fake temporarily leadership .

The Egyptian people are looking for moments of happiness and joy , for moments of pride ,of hope.

I felt so sad because I feel there was a huge responsibly on those footballers ,that they must return back with the cup because of the people , people so much hope in them in a very strange , as if they would return back with the cup of the world .

You know all of us need this victory , it is a great one even if it is pseudo ,even if it is a drug , sometimes you need a drug and you take willingly to make relief for awhile ,it is a mercy of God that gave us this victory now . The Egyptian people needed a symbol to gather around ,something to remind them with Egypt ,being Egyptian , make them proud to be Egyptian even for a while .

Just two days more and people will return to bitter reality

The Question now is when we will celebrate a real victory !!??