Bump, Tumble, Go Faster!

Mummies,CleopatrasandCaiRollers roller derby is taking off among EGYPTIAN women, who find a sense of empowerment through the rowdy contact sport

- Declan Walsh

Wherever it is played, roller derby, the skating contact sport that is enjoying a global revival powered by women, prides itself on a quirky subculture and jokey jargon – strange outfits, bawdy nicknames and players who wear make-up.

In Egypt, it has an archaeological twist. Novices are called ‘Mummies’; players of intermediate skill are known as ‘Cleopatras’; and those with six months’ training under their belt – who have paid their dues in bruises – graduate to ‘CaiRoller’, a full member of Egypt’s only roller-derby club.

They practise twice a week under the floodlights of an outdoor handball court at Cairo International Stadium, honing their skills in the essential aspects of the sport: moving fast and with dexterity, and barging opponents out of the way. A lot like daily life, in other words.

‘If you fall, you get up quickly,’ says Reem el Desouky, a 29-year-old copywriter who goes by the moniker Lady Macdeath. ‘If you get hit, you absorb it and move it. These are things you carry into your everyday life. It toughens you up a bit.’

One problem of daily life for women here is endemic sexual harassment. A survey by the Thomson Reuters Foundation rated Cairo as the most dangerous megacity for women in the world. London was ranked as the most friendly toward women, followed by Tokyo and Paris. As a wave of #MeToo claims washed across the globe in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, an Egyptian court sentenced a female television presenter to three years in jail for speaking on air about pregnancy outside marriage.