Not every place in the world has been gutted, renovated, expressed algorithmically, and made palatable to affluent tastes. Cairo, Egypt is such a zone where you may still see unassimilated humans. This man goes through neighborhoods singing a colloquial song: “I make a knife sharp. I make a knife sharp.” As with other street vendors, his calls resound off steep, vertical surfaces of ubiquitous concrete buildings. The local scrap dealer passes by twice a day, yelling: “Bikyah!…Bikyah!” This is a shortened version of the local word for trash, or in my translation: junk. Another man comes by regularly pulling a cart piled high with propane cylinders. He hollers, “Haat … Haat,” meaning something like bring it, bring it. You bring your empty can down to him; he gives you a full one in return.

The blade sharpener above pushes along the street an apparatus with a fan belt wrapped on a flywheel the size of a bicycle rim. Everything is make-shift and home-made; the parts are scavenged. He perches on a flat wooden surface — integrated into his contraption — while he operates a pedal turning the wheel moving his grinding stone. The rest of his gear consists of scrapers, scissors and lubricants. He adorns his machinery with plastic flowers. There is a single head of wheat mounted upright on a crosspiece, its significance unknown. He sets up to work between parked cars. I never saw him in any other situation, and never found out for sure why he favored those locations.