Confessions of an Illegal Alien

Believe it or not, I've been in Cairo for over a month. In some ways it seems longer, but in others I feel as if I have only just arrived. The most immediate concern related to being in Cairo for this long is that my visa expired on 31 August, so I had to get a new one. A has said to me a number of times that it really doesn't matter and I can wait for my residency visa to come through, but the words 'illegal immigrant' are so loaded in the UK that I just couldn't bring myself to even contemplate being one, so getting a visa was vital.

Being a UK National, I've never had cause to visit a British immigration office, but when I imagine one in my head, I think of it as being like other British government offices. When you arrive, there would be someone there to tell you what to do and where to go (although probably not in a friendly way). There would be employees behind windows, grey furniture, people sitting around waiting to be called forward. Or people queuing. In an orderly fashion. Or filling in forms. We're good at queuing and filling in forms in Britain, and always in an orderly fashion.  I think I have just definitively demonstrated that whilst I might now live in Egypt, every fibre of my being is British and there's probably nothing I can do about it. Ah well.

On Sunday, in pursuit of continued legal immigrant status, I went to Mogamma. This is a huge government building in the centre of Cairo, which includes the immigration office. I had been a few months before on a failed attempt to get a residency visa, but it had slipped my mind that Mohamed went with me that time. Whilst it was pretty busy and chaotic, at least I had Mohamed to ask what to do and where to go. So, this time, I skipped up the stairs to the immigration section on the first floor, thinking to myself - hey I've done this before, it's going to be no problem! Oh dear me. I couldn't have been more wrong. I think a description of Mogamma is probably warranted at this point. As I said above, it's a massive building. In my last job I worked in a building that held 3,500 people, and I think Mogamma is probably 3 times the size at least. I'd be surprised if fewer than 10,000 people work there. It's a weird shape inside too - to get to the right section for new visas, you have to go through security, along a long corridor lined with orange, plastic, standard issue government chairs (welded to the floor of course), round the end of the building and then double back on yourself down the other side.

Mogamma

It was PACKED with people. PACKED. The only thing I can compare it with is being on the Tube at rush hour. Honestly, it was that busy. I battled up the first corridor. All the chairs were full of people, and there were more who were sitting or lying on the floor. I have it on good authority that they chuck all the would-be legal immigrants out at the end of the day, but I'm not convinced. I think some of them might have been there for weeks, they had that glazed look that indicates self-hypnosis to
cope with a situation that you worry might never end. At the end of the corridor where it doubles back on itself, there are several mystery rooms with people crowded round the doors, shouting and waving forms. It was almost impossible to get past all these apparently irate people.

Eventually I squeezed through and made it to the next corridor, which is where the real challenge begins. It's lined on one side with windows where various unfathomable stages of the visa process take place. At each of these windows, multitudes of people cluster round, clamouring for attention and waving forms. I think it must be an obligatory part of the visa process to wave your form around because everybody does it. I pushed and shoved my way through, in a very un-British way. Luckily, due to my prior visits, I knew that the application forms are just lying around, so I found one and filled it in. I even knew which window to go to, despite a severe lack of informative signage (in any language), due to my previous visit. Unfortunately, it's the end window. I got there eventually, handed over my form, photograph and passport. The woman behind the desk looked at me disdainfully and said "photocopy of passport?" F**k! I had completely forgotten that I needed a photocopy of my passport.

Back down the window corridor. Past the mysterious rooms. Forced my way through all the hypnotised people (or maybe they were actually dead? It was hard to tell). A cleaner had chosen this moment to mop the stairs so there was a traffic jam of epic proportions just to get up and down the stairs. Made it to the ground floor where the photocopying service is located. Only a tiny queue! I almost cried. Thrust myself to the front. Handed over my pound. Got my photocopies. Still a traffic jam on the stairs but as I was getting less and less British by the second, I elbowed my way through. Past the dead people, the mysterious rooms and the multitudes of people and through to the window at the end. The woman checked my form over and said "stamps". I did vaguely recall something about stamps from last time, but then the woman told Mohamed which window and wrote down the correct stamps to buy. In the fatal seconds between having my form thrust back at me and managing to say "which window...how many stamps.....", 42 more people had thrust their way to the window and elbowed me out of the way. Well, to be honest, I didn't count. It might have been more than 42. I tried waving my form around in case this really is an essential part of the process. It didn't work.

Right, I thought. I'll ask a security guard as there seem to be plenty of those. I said "stamps?" in a hopeful tone. "LAST WINDOW!!!" he yelled. He had to yell because, I think I forgot to mention, the noise level is truly impossible to describe. Head down. Surged forward. Made it to the last window, which is actually the first window. There were 6,374,863 people shouting, waving forms and pressing themselves into the window. Maybe to buy stamps. Maybe not.

Well, I've only ever had one panic attack in my life (Cambridge Folk Festival if you're interested), but right then I realised I was about to have another one. F**k the f**king stamps, I thought. Taking my inspiration from rugby union, I made it through the scrum by the mysterious rooms and past the dead people surprisingly quickly - I think it was the panic. The stairs were mercifully free of cleaning ladies with mops and buckets, so I made it down the stairs and out of the building without further incident. I rang A and intimated to him in language I can't repeat that there's no way I can do this on my own, and no I haven't applied for my visa!!!

So, yesterday, Mohamed came with me again, purely to assist with the purchasing of stamps (the purpose of which I completely fail to get). There was a misunderstanding with the stamp purchase. The woman behind the desk said four stamps, and the person at the stamp desk didn't know if it was four stamps in total or four of each stamp. It turned out to be four stamps in total. Further disdainful looks. Whilst it made me feel a bit better that even an Egyptian native Arabic speaker was confused, I just can't understand why the stamp person didn't know how many stamps. Surely that's all he does all day at his window? How many stamp options can there be?

I was told (although only when the woman was prompted by Mohamed in Arabic) to come back at 9am the following day, to window 38. That was today. So off I went again for visit number three. Went to window 38 (in the interests of at least a token attempt at brevity I won't describe how I got to window 38). A queue of only about 10 people! I tried waving my form and this time it actually worked! I handed my passport and form over. Waited. The woman looked at me. I looked back. Eventually she told me to come back at 1pm but only after a look of contempt at my ignorance. I went back at 1pm. Astonishingly, for possibly the first time in my life, being a redhead and standing out in a crowd worked in my favour. She saw me at the back of the queue, recognised me immediately, picked up my passport and waved it furiously at me. I shoved through the queue, got my passport, looked in it and........I HAD A VISA!!! After 48 hours as an illegal alien and four trips to Mogamma, I was legal again. Oh, the relief. 

I was telling my fellow teachers about the first almost-panic-attack trip, and one of them said "I think that if I died and went to hell, it would turn out to be Mogamma". A thinks it's all hilarious, and that Egyptian bureaucracy is the worst. This may be true for all I know, but it's not bureaucracy that's the problem. It is massively inefficient of course - I mean three windows for one process? But the real problem is the total chaos caused firstly by the completely inadequate signage, and secondly by the total absence of QUEUING! Who knew that one day I would be advocating the necessity of queuing? Life is full of surprises.

Oh and by the way, I now have enough stamps for three more visa applications if anyone needs any.