I've begun to realize that this place is a bit like people who are organized messes. My step-dad is like that. His desk looks like an absolute disaster, but if my mom moves one piece of paper, he notices almost immediately. Despite the chaos, he knows the location of every object.
There are piles of trash spilling out of every nook and cranny, falling out of doorways, flooding the corners and mixing seamlessly with the dirt. But everything has its place. What is being sorted one day has disappeared the next, to be replaced with a new batch of mixed garbage. Every day it is messy, but each day the mess is slightly different. At first I thought if there were just bins in the street, people could throw things away instead of leaving pieces of trash just lying around in the roads, but there isn't much distinction between what is waste and what is being recycled, and since the statistic is that 80-90% of what is brought back here is recycled, I can imagine the distinction is rather small if at all existent.
Like the unbelievably tiny kitten whose mewl echoing through the parking garage below the guesthouse belied its minute stature, its dirt is a part of its identity. As much as Rosie and I wanted to take it into the kitchen, shove it under the faucet, and scrub it until it was Downy fresh and fluffy, its mother might not recognize it again. As much as some would like to dunk Manshiyet Nasr in a proverbial flea bath by moving its activities to designated land in the desert, doing so would strip it of its identity. Sorting trash is by far not the most glamorous profession, but it's the Zabbaleen's profession. Their ownership, their pride, their ingenuity are all tied in with the stuff at which everyone else covers their noses. There's a strength and resiliency in every face, be it tired or smiling, that is rare. So don't wash the kitten. And don't try to clean up all the messes, because sometimes things aren't nearly as messy as they first appear.
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