El-Mugamma at Tahrir Square
El-Mugamma, Day 1
I approached the daunting dust-colored building where a female security guard asked me to open my backpack. “Do you have a camera?” she asked, and asked to see it. Being told to give it to the other security guard, I reluctantly handed it over, trading it for a number on a laminated piece of paper. What would happen if I took pictures with the camera on my phone, I wondered as I proceeded into the photo ‘studio’ on the first floor (located on the right of the corridor from the entrance). I was immediately greeted over-enthusiastically by a young employee. After being told to look at a mirror, I was told to sit on a stool at the back where a young lady took out a small camera, told me to smile – and, click. After a few minutes, my awkward smile popped up on the computer screen. While I was waiting for the photos to be printed, the young boy danced around me like an over-excited bee. “Aayiz 3arusa,” he kept repeating, to my dumbfounded stares and the giggles of the women in the room. He offered me his arm, and kept motioning for me to follow him somewhere but an older woman next to me clasped my arm and shook her head. “He crazy,” she said, holding onto me for me to stay put. I later learned that this word (3arusa) means ‘bride.’ After paying 20 Egyptian pounds for 6 brutally honest photos, I headed upstairs where I wandered in search of the correct booth, the separate windows for refugees and Palestinian nationals catching my eye on the way. I found #5 where the lady handed me an application form and redirected me to another window to buy stamps. I stood in the non-existent line and returned with 11 Egyptian pounds worth of stamps, a completed application, my photo, and photocopies of my passport and visa. I was a bit alarmed when the lady stapled my eyes onto the application form. ‘Can they recognize me without my eyes,’ I wondered feeling like the whole purpose of the photo was defeated as now the only visible part of my face in the photo was my nose and my awkward smile. “Come back on Sunday, 10 a.m. Go to number 38,” she said.
That wasn’t so bad, I thought. Until Sunday-
El-Mugamma, Day 2
I returned on Sunday and headed straight to window #38, passport in hand. Unfortunately, I had company. Everyone was so squished together, I could see and smell the beads of sweat on the neck of the men squished in front of me, and the voices of the ladies in the black burqas behind me were ringing in my ear. It was as bad as thee line 2 Korean subway at 8 a.m. in the morning. It appeared as if I were making progress toward the narrow #38 window where a middle-aged woman was calmly choosing from the passports that were being stretched out to her, when a plump man cut in front of me in the now vaguely pseudo line. I think several did.
This aroused a very lively chatter in Arabic amongst the ladies in burqas behind me. Then one of them tapped me on the shoulder, “Excuse me, you were here before the men,” she said in her parrot-like sing-songy voice. “You go front,” she said in our non-existent-line-turned-vaguely-pseduo-line. If only..! Then our eyes met, and she began petting my shoulder with an additional note of C-minor pity, “Oh, she’s just a little girl.” “You have to push,” she told me, and they showed me how. I was receiving so much support and encouragement from behind that thanks to their help and shoves, I began somewhat to go closer to window #38. “YES, THAT’S IT, PUSH,” the sing-songy voice exclaimed when I finally reached the front. Once I was close enough, I stretched out my passport in the slot of the window for the lady to take. When she finally took it, she found my visa application papers with my staple slotted eye photo, and “Come back after 2 hours,” she said. Only so happy to finally escape the 360 degree surround pressure of body weight, I squeezed out of the vaguely-pseudo-line-turning-into-mosh-pit, stepping on someone’s foot and hearing some yelps. But wait a minute, I had just handed in my passport and they hadn’t given me any waiting number – how will they recognize me when I come back, I wondered. Or how was I to prove that I was the girl in the eyeless photo? I was to find out.
After resuscitating at a nearby ‘Beano’s Cafe’ for 2 hours, I returned to the Mugamma dungeon. “Again?” the security guard asked me with a look of pity, as I opened up my bag for her to check for the second time. Back upstairs at window #38, I recognized some of the same people who had been shoving and were being shoved in the non-existent line 2 hours ago – the dark plump man in the tan galibaya, the blonde Westerner a head taller than everyone else, the short Japanese lady (I can tell because I’m Asian). We were now standing in the #38 mosh pit together. Because I was in the outskirts of the mosh pit, I had to tiptoe to get an idea of what was going on – something was not right, there was less pushing to go to the front. The same middle-aged lady in the pink hijab and stoical face was holding up one passport after another. Like birds stretching out their necks full-length to take a bite of the worm their mother bird has brought them, we were all on our toes and stretching our necks to be able to see if the ‘worm’ was ours. “HERE,” someone would cry and the application papers would be handed to them. One had to sign on the lower left-hand corner. A pen was being shared. Then the signed papers would be passed up front. This exercise was making my face look like a running faucet in the heat of the adjacent bodies, and the man beside me handed me a tissue. A sort of camaraderie was being formed amongst those of us trapped inside, us (Prisoners-of-Visa-Applications) against the inefficient Mugamma. In Egypt, everyone looks out for one another.
I was on my tiptoes in various positions in the #38 mosh pit for an hour, until my passport was finally held up. “ANA. ME.” The tall African guy in front passed back my papers and his friend beside me lent me his pen. After the papers were passed up and my passport found its way to me at last, I hurriedly flipped through it. An extended 6-month visa.
Al-hamdu-lilaah!
Ma3a-s-salaama, Mugamma.
Note: The Mugamma is the Egyptian government’s centralized administrative building in Tahrir Square, Cairo. This means that ALL the related paper work of the governmental agencies is done here in the 14th floor building.
my visa, al-hamdul-illah
my blush unseen 