Muwazzaf- public office clerk, low-salaried functionary, hapless paper pusher- is a word you learned in Egypt circa 1978, when it was still a socialist country and you needed a full day to renew your residence permit in person. They came to work in the Mugamma’ Building, the fourteen story Soviet Brutalist-style Nasserist monstruosity on Midan Tahrir, from all the old quarters of Cairo like al-Gamaliyya as perhaps did this man, where he would have walked past medieval junk and plastic trash before reaching the modern city. But still, he kept his mustache clipped and his shirt pressed so colleagues would never guess where he lived or what he saw on his way to the office.
©David Melody