Ekon's Idols (Part 8)

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Ashraf Samir El-Amar
"Ashraf" – Born in Cairo, Egypt
My closest friend

I met Ashraf two years ago on a Cairo City team building day.  Our coaches put together a squash tournament to have some fun and teach us about one of the city’s most popular sports.  Ashraf was the “pro” at the squash gym assigned to helping us figure out the game.  He wasn’t an exceptional player, but he definitely understood the rhythms of squash, and that went a long way in helping orient a bunch of footballers to a foreign racquet sport.  I kept in touch with him after the event, and over the years he has grown into my closest friend beyond the sphere of football.

Ashraf studied political science in school and now works on the local news covering changes in regional legislation.  He is a lifelong Cairo native that loves Cairo more than anywhere else, and he feels that reporting the impacts of policy change is a fulfilling way to give back to the city and its people in some way.  As a reporter, Ashraf hates seeing sensational editorials that try to stir drama among the community, and I admire that he prioritizes being factual and authentic to himself in his work.  I have seen how difficult that can be in an industry that is obsessed with assigning labels and stereotypes, but Ashraf’s sense of belonging in Cairo doesn’t require associating himself with any particular identity.  His strong self-confidence and resistance to conformity actually helped me a lot when I started to feel the pressure of fame and public visibility in my first season of professional football.  Ashraf helped me stay true to my values, and he supported my denial of brand deals with Toyota, Canon, and Spotify when they didn’t relate at all to what I found important to represent.  He has also been a major contributor to my nonprofit especially in forced immigration relief where he has a lot of passion, with many displaced people seeking safety in Egypt.

Outside of our work, my friendship with Ashraf helped me turn Cairo into my home.  He knows the city extremely intimately and has strong opinions about its neighborhoods, restaurants, and events.  He can start to verge on contrarian simply for the sake of being unique, sometimes rejecting popular opinions about Cairo just on principle, although I must admit that he does actually have amazing insider knowledge about the city’s hidden gems.  (I’ll allow him to be judgmental since it usually comes at my benefit…)  Just because he loves Cairo, Ashraf does acknowledge that the city has its problems.  He can’t ignore them; he has to report on many of them everyday.  However, while he will criticize parts of Cairo himself, he gets annoyed when someone who barely knows the city says something critical, which I think is fair.  He may not be competitive in sports, but he definitely knows when it is the right time to stand up and fight for what he cares about.  That’s another lesson that Ashraf helps me practice.

The best part of our relationship is that neither of us cares too much about the other’s professional or public identity.  Of course we support each other’s work, but there is more than our careers that glue our friendship together, and that is pretty rare for me these days.  Actually, it can be hard to get Ashraf to attend one of my matches, but he will come out in the right circumstances.  The weather must be perfect, and he insists on box seats in the Cairo City clubhouse, saying “Ekon, if you want me to spend two hours watching you slide tackle some dude’s legs out, I at least need a comfortable chair and free food.”  My favorite part of the whole deal is that he is clueless that he’s usually sitting alongside some high profile celebrities in the box, which can lead to some humble encounters.  I hope Ashraf never changes!