the Mugamma: the end of egyptian civilization

the mugamma is the large building that proudly towers over tahrir square. it handles all things bureaucratic in egypt. anytime any kind of paperwork is needed, you go to the mugamma. people are officially born, married, or dead here; and if you want to have any legal or acknowledgable existence in cairo, you eventually have to make your way over to this monstrosity of a building.

after spending all of 10 minutes going through the organized, streamlined, peaceful, US Embassy to collect my new passport, i thought i'd try my luck by heading to the mugamma straight away to have my visa transfered to the new passport. since my visa is in my old, cancelled passport, technically in my new, valid one, i never entered egypt; i'm not here. so when i leave, that will be an issue. if i wanted to open a bank account, the bank would require a resident visa to do so, so for various reasons, this visa is important.

so i thought i'd pop in and get an idea of what i needed in order to get this visa transfered. the perimeter of each floor is lined with people sitting behind plexiglass windows, each labeled with a particular transaction. i would estimate that about 60% of the people who work in this building are completely useless and clueless and have zero professional sense whatsoever. i witnessed police men shouting at anyone who asked questions about the forms; i saw women behind the counters telling someone to shut up and leave her alone and ask somebody else. in the mugamma, there is absolutely no respect for the person; the human being; the civilian. we're all mashed up into one large piece of shit.

in front of the window are dozens of people shoving their way to the front. absolutely no signs of civilization whatsoever. whoever pushes the hardest gets to the front. doesn't matter if you're already there, someone will cut you. even the person behind the window doesn't care if you were there first, they handle whoever is speaking to them. doesn't matter that you're a woman, men are pasted all over you. the only way to survive this chaos is to join them and completely disregard the respectable concepts of waiting in line or having any manners. so you see, this is all a vicious cycle of chaos. act like animals, get treated like shit. get treated like shit, act like an animal.

the first person i spoke to said to go to window #41. i went to window #41. where is your paperwork? i don't know, what paperwork? you have to go to window #46. i go to window #46. i need paperwork to transfer my visa. are you egyptian? no, my father is. talk to this police officer. he tells me to go to another police officer who gives me a form to fill. tells me to go to window #12. i can't read/write arabic, so i go to window #12 with the form and tell her my name. in egypt, you are given a first name, and your middle name is your father's name, followed by his middle and last name. but i have zero evidence of being egyptian besides my name and that i speak arabic. i have no nationality, no ID card, not even my father's old passport. and that's fine because

all i want to do is transfer my egypt visa to my new american passport.

so she writes my name on the paper and tells me to wait. why? i have no idea. she calls me 15 minutes later. you can't fill out this paper because you have no proof you are egyptian. yes, that's what i told you. go to talk to this police officer.

i lose it a little. i have been circling this building for an hour, everyone tells me to talk to a different person, and i just want to put my old visa on my new passport, i will even buy a new visa, i don't care, i don't care about being egyptian!, just tell me where to go to transfer my visa. she looks at me with her eyebrows raised and a snarky expression that i wanted to slap off of her face and says,

"oh? did you think you were just going to walk into the mugamma, get your visa, and walk out?"

she was lucky there was plexiglass separating us.

i go to the officer and tell him, i have no proof i'm egyptian and i don't care, i just want a visa on my american passport. he says that he cares because i have an egyptian name, so he is the one who decides whether or not i can get a visa. so i have to go find this other guy in another room who is going to search for my dad's name and his birthday to confirm if i'm egyptian or not.

i get lost trying to find this guy, so i ask another window along the way, what to do. she gives me a new form to fill out and tells me to visit window #6.

i walked the fuck out of the building.

after an hour and a half, i had enough. i'll go back when my dad emails me his 1968 egyptian ID that will suddenly, hopefully, validate my existence so i can get the $15 fucking visa stamped into my new passport.