For years, I have been visiting Egypt in the early fall and the late winter when the weather there is mild and pleasant, just like the country’s inhabitants. Thus, I had prepared myself to visit Cairo earlier this month, after having been delayed in New York (where I attended the session for the United Nations General Assembly). However, I found that my visit will coincide with the National Party’s conference, and that the latter would probably disrupt any appointments I might want to make. Thus, I postponed my visit again until the middle of the month, and that was when I was surprised by the fierce war spurred by the football match between Egypt and Algeria, and all the known details beginning with Egypt’s victory in Cairo and its defeat in Khartoum, and subsequently, Algeria’s qualification to the World Cup.

I think that if I had indeed visited Egypt during the National Party’s conference, the timing would have been better than visiting Egypt during the football game. While I do not deny that the match was important, it is not tantamount to, say, the crossing of the canal, and perhaps psychologists and sociologists should study the phenomenon of this obsession [with the game] in both countries, and which involved violence, and thus must have unfathomable secrets behind it, which only experts can unveil.

When I sat down yesterday morning to drink a cup of tea while reading the morning newspapers in my hotel, I was surprised by Al-Akhbar’s page-wide red headline which read: 80 million Egyptians are knocking on the door of the World Cup; I was also bewildered by Al-Ahram’s front page headline which was also about the World Cup. I looked at my tea cup, and became afraid that someone might have slipped me something in my drink, then I thought that maybe I watched another game and not the one between Egypt and Algeria, since the game I had indeed watched ended with Algeria winning with one rare goal.

I found out afterwards that these headlines and the similar headlines in other Cairo-based newspapers expressed the wishes of the editors and the team’s supporters, and that these headlines were the newspapers’ first editions’. The latest edition of Al-Ahram then said yesterday: A graceful exit for our national team, while Al-Akhbar said: the national team loses by one goal; Algeria qualifies to the World Cup. As for “The Republic”, it found a metaphysical explanation for the match’s result and said: “God has willed it so and what He wills He does. Algeria qualified and the dream was lost”.

This is in national newspapers. The reader may be able to appreciate the type of coverage provided in other newspapers, especially since the Egyptian fans were attacked by the Algerian fans following the game, although the latter should have left the game feeling relieved; however, violence seems to be an Algerian habit, much like being in the opposition in Kuwait is, and similarly, the allegiance to a different country in Lebanon.

I thus found myself leaving all appointments and politics to other experts, and followed the football games starting with last Saturday in Cairo, until Wednesday in Khartoum. Furthermore, I read a title which I found strange at first glance, which said: “Al-Faqi: If the Sudanese authorities cannot protect the Egyptians, we will send someone who will.” What was strange about this is that I thought it was my friend Mustafa Al-Faqi who gave this statement, and whom I did not ever come to believe to be so bold. However, after I read the whole news story, I found out that it was brother Anas Al-Faqi, the Information Minister.

Perhaps I should have expected such a reaction following the game in Cairo and its ramifications, because the next day, and with the exception of the respected and prudent newspaper Al-Ahram, all Egyptian newspapers chose their front page headlines to be about Egypt’s victory with 2 goals to null, including Al-Akhbar’s broad red headline. I would not have found this obsession to have been strange had the country been in the Al-Adha holiday, for instance, a time where no political events take place. However, the game coincided with President Mubarak’s participation in an international summit in Italy, and which was focused on food and providing it to the poor in the world.

Only Al-Ahram found food and poverty in the world to be more important than a football match; as for the other newspapers, they placed the summit in Rome further down on their list of priorities, perhaps because they know that football sells more than politics. While I am a football fan (both when I was young and now), and still attend whatever football games I can, I insist that what is important, if we can assume that a football game is important at all, should not preoccupy us from what is most important. This is because there are many Egyptian problems, and there are other Arab problems in which Egypt has a major role; what should be done thus, is to focus on solving these problems so we can rest and enjoy a football match.

In fact, I had wanted, as I was among the Egyptians, the Egyptian team to win; however, I did not cry as the Algerian team won, because what is important for me is that an Arab team has qualified to the World Cup. I therefore congratulate us all, while condemning the bloody violence. When violence takes place in Europe, at least it is caused by inebriation; however, when it happens in our countries, it is probably malice aforethought.

Finally, with the violence that the Egyptians have suffered [in Algeria] and outside of the stadium in Khartoum, I thought of an idea: Any Egyptian company that wants to dismiss an employee without paying his severance should send him to Algeria on a task, where he will disappear and never come back.

(Correction: In yesterday’s column, there was a typographical error: There is an animosity between me and the “French” should have been “between me and everything related to “business”).

khazen@alhayat.com