Talking Trash

a Cairo zabal                                       Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

Sayyid Ahmed is a zabal, or garbage collector, in Cairo. He has no set schedule, and he's paid whatever residents feel like giving him, which, sometimes, is nothing. He never attended school and is illiterate, but he asks for translations of the labels on the things he finds and in this way comes to know more about the residents than they know about each other. Accompanying him through his days, a journalist learns about much more than just one man and his life: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/13/tales-trash