Hessler’s piece was as much a snapshot of Cairo’s political and social systems as it was a profile of one man’s place within those systems. He managed to weave a compelling and at times alarming personal narrative of Sayyid Ahmed into a much larger tapestry, without letting that tapestry swallow up Ahmed’s story. Through exploring the astoundingly complex informal economy of waste disposal replete made up of subcontracts all the way down, we see the deficiencies in Egypt’s public sector, the cultural beliefs around the trade in sex drugs, and the religious and political turns of events that influenced the evolution of organic waste disposal; through Ahmed’s relationship with his wife, we see an oppressive patriarchal society at work. Indeed, the scene between Ahmed and the lawyer he consulted demonstrated the inner workings with uncomfortable detail, as the lawyer seeks to ensnare Ahmed by appealing to his masculinity, attacking Wahiba with exceedingly derogatory and violent language, and exuberantly showing Ahmed how he can ruin his wife’s life in a ploy to bring her back. I was particularly struck by how Hessler initially portrays Ahmed as a rather sympathetic, “friendly guy-in-the-street,” but as we continue to read the piece, we begin to see him as a much more complicated character, exposed to and complicit in misogynist ideology in a way that was difficult to read at times. Hessler makes us reassess Ahmed constantly throughout the piece; he was so effective in doing so that by the end of the piece I instinctively began to ask why Hessler would still drink and chat with him.
Part of what makes this tapestry so effective is Hessler’s subtle transitions between the local and global, which often come without one noticing but can also serve several purposes at once when conveyed in a more active manner. For example, I thought the transition from his account of the killing of disposal pigs, followed by the sentence “For Sayyid, none of this—the people of the oasis, the wandering pig-raisers, the Exodus-style slaughter carried out by a dying regime—is exotic or unusual,” was effective because it brought us back to Ahmed, gave us a summary of the national political story with flair, and also allowed the reader to adopt a more Ahmed-esque perspective on that national story by describing it in an over-the-top, perhaps almost Orientalist, tone. Finally, the sheer amount of detail that Hessler could stuff into the piece made the whole thing more memorable. Details we glimpse early in the piece come back as kickers later on, like when we learn that zabaleen protested the slaughter of pigs by leaving organic waste uncollected, and then we travel to a lawyer’s office in a building surrounded by said organic waste. The repetition and interpolation makes the profile stick in one’s head.
Hessler used the authority he generated from these narrative techniques to conclude with an argument about Egypt as a whole: Ahmed’s eventual return to his wife parallels Egypt’s tendency to go through a revolution and emerge where it started. This kind of extrapolation in a profile is audacious. Yet Hessler pulls it off, thanks to the months he spent following the garbage man.
