the joys of egyptian bureaucracy

If you had asked me one month ago what my favorite thing was about bureaucracy (someone could ask this, you never know), I would have said small town America politics. One of my favorite stories to write for The Miami Herald was when the city commissioners in tiny Hallandale Beach quadrupled their own salaries in a vaguely illegal meeting, then tried to claim they had done nothing wrong.

But that experience has been bested by the multiple-window system employed by Egypt's visa and immigration department, which I experienced first-hand this morning. When you arrive in Egypt, you are granted a 30-day visa, no questions asked. My 30 days are almost up, so that meant a trip to the Mugamma for a renewal. The office opens at 8 a.m., which is when I planned to arrive, but in a nod to how well I have embraced Egyptian Standard Time, I actually left my apartment like 1/2 hour late. See? I'm adjusting.

The Mugamma is a large, communist/Soviet-looking building towering over Tahrir Square, one of the major squares in downtown Cairo and also the home of the campus of AUC (American University of Cairo), where several of my friends have studied abroad. Many people going to the Mugamma for the first time opt to bring along an Egyptian friend to translate and/or navigate. I did not do this. For the last week-ish I have been feeling pretty good about my Arabic, and I decided (very, very foolishly) that it would be a fun experience trying to figure it out on my own, and that I would feel very accomplished when I was done. (Which I actually do, but more on that later.)

Anyway, the visa "office" of the Mugamma is one long room with 50+ windows that are sort of in numerical order (but surprisingly, not entirely). You need to bring photocopies of your passport and all Egyptian visas, and extra photos of yourself. If you have forgotten any of these, you can get them downstairs where some people are making quite a bit of money operating a copy machine. Armed with all the proper documents, I proceeded upstairs through the metal detector (it beeps for almost everyone, no one cares whatsoever) and to window 12, my first of many visits there.

I'll spare you the details (mostly because re-living it is a particularly unpleasant thought), but suffice it to say that I spent about two hours filling out forms and rotating repeatedly through several windows, including a momentary heart attack when I saw a space on one of the forms asking for my religion. I eventually just marked it with an X, no one cared, and that was that - I worried for nothing. I was considering writing in "Blaine-ologist," like from that episode of South Park (It's the one with the Super Best Friends where David Blaine commands a giant stone Abraham Lincoln to attack Washington D.C., but Jesus, Moses, et. al. save the day by summoning a giant stone John Wilkes Booth. Anyone? Bueller?) In retrospect, it is good that I did not do this, as I don't think I could explain South Park in Arabic.

But here is my journey in brief: retrieve forms, turn them in with passport and all papers, go pay for stamps, deliver them to woman holding passport hostage, come back in two hours to collect passport, figure out I need an additional "re-entry visa" in order to leave the country (like I plan to this weekend), repeat entire above process.

On the plus side: while standing in line (one of the many times) with my American passport, I managed to make friends with two other equally confused Americans with equally mediocre Arabic skills. Then on the way back to the office I got in what is possibly the only air-conditioned cab in all of Cairo, which was amazing. It is 102 degrees today, and I love A/C (still no working meter of course). And of course, the ultimate positive thing to come out of this is that I now have an extended visa through the end of December with multiple entries and exits allowed, I don't need to go back to the Mugamma for like 5 months, and I did it all on my own. Yay me!

This is all just in time for me to go on a little trip this weekend. Jess has a free weekend from USY Pilgrimage, so we are meeting in Tel Aviv and spending the weekend with Sara, who I last saw in summer 2006 when Sarina and I stayed with her for an excellent weekend. Looking forward to seeing both of them, and also to doing some shopping, going to the beach, listening to Galgalatz and wearing tank tops. Probably in that order. This has been a short week for me since yesterday was a national holiday (Revolution Day, but no one really does anything to celebrate except take off from work), and in general I can't believe I have already been here a whole month. Time flies.