The Kelamis Family, An Egyptian & A Love Affair

Sometimes, there are those moments where after you have read something, you sit back, probably pour yourself a nice scotch and smile. This was one of those moments.

The following is one of Posts By Panos' Special Reports. This edition is from Mo Mansour, who has been featured previously on PBP (Dubai State of Mind), and it covers his experience from attending his very first AEK Athens soccer match. Enjoy!

5:05pm on a Thursday afternoon in Athens. It has been a long day at the office. Text message from Anthony: "Bro we are playing Dinamo Tbilisi! For europa leagueee!! My dad is talkin to some reporters for tix. He is coming at 7 to get us." This message wakes me right up.

In the eighteen years of knowing the Kelamis family, it has been a dream to join them in watching an AEK Athens match. Family pictures with AEK players hang proudly in their living room. In 6th grade, when Anthony, myself, and our boy Loza had run out of costume ideas for a Halloween party, we dressed as AEK Hooligans (that is, we wore an AEK jersey). I remember thinking often about why Anthony was not given a middle name that starts with an E so that his initials would be AEK. (Note: I don't think any male Greek names start with an E.) Now I was being offered a chance to watch AEK live with the Kelamis' for my first Greek football match.

 

5:12pm, another text message from Anthony. "Bro, what country is Tbilisi in". A google search confirms my guess of Georgia (special mention to Mr Johnson, fifth grade geography teacher). I ask the only other AEK fan in the office if she's going to the match. She laughs at me. "I haven't gone to a live match for four years. It's too much." I flashback to the images of the Greek Cup finals I had watched on TV in April. The hooligans had cut the net off of the goal before the game was even over. The local news (along with PBP) had called the fan behaviour a shame to the whole country (which, at the time, was constantly on the front page of world news for hooliganism of another sort - economic).

Fast-forward two hours. Dr K is wearing the team colors with a classic yellow ensemble that only he could pull off. We drive to the Olympic stadium. I am told that AEK was meant to be building its own stadium, but for financial reasons, this was no longer in the pipeline. At least part of the national debt taken to build the Olympic stadium is still being put to some use. We are in the marmaro (Greek for 'marble') section. All around us are former AEK players/coaches/owners/WAGs. Dr K seems to know every one of them personally and catches up with a few of them. I recognize a few of the former players who were in the Kelamis family pictures I mentioned earlier. We take our seats, each of us with a frappe in hand. At the far left side of the stadium is the hooligan section in a sea of black and yellow that is worthy of its own Wiz Khalifa track. The coordinated chants, flares, and shirt-removing had started before the opening whistle. On the opposite side of the stadium, in the nose bleed section, were a group of about 100 fans wearing blue and waving something that resembled the English flag. We later found out these were the Dinamo Tbilisi fans (and the flag was that of Georgia). I had to admire the dedication and courage it takes to support the opposing team in an away game in Greece.

The game itself proved to be very uneventful, with only one shot on goal in the first half. The fans around me kept it entertaining though. My Greek cursing vocabulary tripled from an already powerful arsenal. Some of the curse phrases used made absolutely no sense when translated to me, which is how I knew they were good. Dr K's cigars came out at around the 35th minute. In Canada/US, this would have been cause for a class-action lawsuit against public health. Here, no one blinked. Half time. Dr K starts getting live updates from the man with the blackberry seated behind us on the results of other matches that some wagers had been placed on. Dr K turns back to us, "These idiots are messing it all up." That is, all of the other games were going as planned, but AEK had to win this game for the wager to pay off. The pressure was on. "All AEK fans have heart problems." The classic one-liners were endless.

70th minute and still 0-0. AEK has not had a proper pass in 15 minutes at this point. Dr K: "The Dhahran Oilers played better than this." (Reference to the minor league youth football team he coached 20 years ago in Saudi). The fans are getting restless and the cursing is getting more and more personal. The beauty is that AEK fans curse at all 22 players on the pitch, completely unprejudiced to what team the player is on. I look to my left at the hooligan section to judge their reaction. Keep in mind that they literally have not stopped their chants for a single minute since the start of the game. Not a single shirt is being worn anymore and the sea of black and yellow has transformed into a sea of overweight shirtless men. Suddenly one of them stands up on the railing in front of their section. I point him out to Anthony. Dr K says "Yes, this is the composer." Surely enough, the guy proceeds to organize one of the most well-coordinated cheers I've seen since the movie Bring it On. Hooligans on the left side toss their shirts in the air repeatedly. Hooligans on the right side wave their shirts around in a circle. Then they switch. As they do this, they are taking turns standing and sitting. The composer was putting Beethoven to shame. 

87th minute. The Georgians keep playing dead to waste time and take the draw back home. AEK has had several chances by now but wasted them all. The match should have been an easy win, but it was still hopelessly tied at 0. One final attack by AEK. One of the strikers crosses it in nicely to the Spaniard Jose Carlos and GOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!! We do a three-man hug while jumping. Fans are going insane. A cloud of unidentified orange smoke appears over the hooligans and ends up covering half the stadium. "There go our lungs", says Anthony. I guess this explains why the cigars weren't an issue. The big screens don't have the 'replay' function but no one is bothered. What an end. Or should I say, what a start: to what promises to be a heart-troubling career as an AEK fan.