An Excerpt from In the City of Flies
by Ahmad ʿAbd al-Manʿam Ramadan
Translated and introduced by Mila Fantinelli
Published by Dar al-Shorouk in January 2026, Ahmed ʿAbd al-Manʿam Ramadan’s novel “في مدينة الذباب” (In the City of Flies) presents a dystopian vision of a future city overwhelmed by accumulating rubbish and swarms of flies. The narrative follows an unnamed man employed by a secretive state institution known as al-Hāʾulāʾ (الهؤلاء, “Those People”), whose responsibilities involve surveillance and the maintenance of social order. Obsessed with cleanliness and absolute control, the narrator regards the insects as an intolerable disturbance, while remaining convinced of his authority to regulate the lives of others. As the infestation spreads throughout the city, his personal aversion develops into a collective campaign to eliminate the flies, exposing the relationship between political repression and the desire to eradicate whatever escapes institutional control. (For more on the novel, read “يوميات رجل مطارد “في مدينة الذباب“.)
January 14
This is not the first time I’ve tried to keep a diary. At the beginning of every new year, I take the diary they hand out at work and start writing down the events of my life. I keep it up for a day or two, then stop. Everything I write seems trivial. There is nothing in my life worth recording. Besides, some of the things I experience cannot be written down in my diary because they are secret and dangerous, given the nature of my work. I’m afraid to put them on paper, where they might fall into the hands of someone too curious for their own good.
Still, I’ll try once more, hoping that this time I’ll succeed and that, by the end of the year, I’ll have a notebook full of memories. After all, this daily record might prove useful when writing the reports I submit to my superiors.
In recent months, the number of flies has increased considerably. This seems perfectly logical, directly proportional to the piles of rubbish accumulating in the streets and along the roads. These heaps have now reached middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods and spread across the main streets and squares, growing into pyramids and plateaus. Even some of the wealthier districts have not escaped this flood, although their residents have taken to dumping their waste in heaps they have created in the neighboring, less affluent areas.
A few weeks ago, this led to a notorious incident, news of which spread across social media. Since the beginning of the rubbish crisis, the residents of Zamalek had made a habit of crossing the Nile to dump their black bags, filled to bursting with food scraps, takeaway packaging, imported tins, and bottles of Pepsi, beer, and whisky, on the heaps scattered across Kit Kat and Agouza. They eventually built pyramids of rubbish along the Nile Corniche. The largest became known among both locals and passersby as the Zamalek Heap. It even became a stop on microbus routes. You could simply wave down a microbus and tell the driver, “Zamalek Heap, boss!”
One otherwise unremarkable day, a resident of Zamalek was taking a small rubbish bag out of his elegant car, intending to toss it onto the summit of the pyramid that loomed at the entrance to Kit Kat, when a young passerby from that working-class neighborhood was suddenly overcome by a feeling of anger.
Now, I don’t like the word anger. Ever since that sad Friday long ago, I’ve avoided using it. But that’s not our subject now.
The young man approached the driver and ordered him not to dump his rubbish there. The other man paid him no mind and calmly went about his business, as though he hadn’t heard a thing. The young man took two steps forward, repeated his warning, then swore at him, bringing the man’s mother into the insult. At least, that is what the investigation records say.
The man continued to ignore him. He did not respond to the insult and headed toward his car door without uttering a word, which only increased the young man’s agitation. Yes. Agitation is better than anger.
The young man interpreted the luxury car owner’s behaviour as a deliberate act of class contempt. His name was Mahmoud.
Mahmoud kicked the car’s front headlight, smashing it into pieces that scattered across the ground. Only then did he manage to provoke a reaction from the Zamalek resident, who sprang out of the car, signs of agitation appearing on his waxen face for the first time.
In a voice that echoed across the neighborhood, he shouted that the headlight was worth as much as Mahmoud himself.
Then he added, “You animal!”
At this, Mahmoud felt a little better, and a mocking smile spread across his face as the man’s cries continued to echo into the distance. Mahmoud walked at a leisurely pace toward the headlight on the other side of the car and kicked it, shattering that one, too.
As his mouth slowly opened into an ever-widening grin, he said, “Now I owe you twice what I’m worth.”
By this point, a crowd of Mahmoud’s friends, acquaintances, and fellow residents had gathered behind him. Murmurs rose among them, punctuated by insults directed at the man. Their voices were so loud that they could have carried across the Nile and reached the ears of his friends in Zamalek.
The latter leaned into the driver’s seat and pulled out a baseball bat from beside it. It looked heavy, with a thick end capable of smashing their skulls. But by the time he began to raise it toward the protesters, whether to threaten or perhaps attack them, and before he could even assume a fighting stance, they had already knocked him to the ground.
He fell into their hands and beneath their feet, which trampled his limbs and pinned him to the ground in a position resembling a crucifixion. Amid the insults raining down on him, one of them said in a firm voice, “Don’t come dumping your filth here again.”
They wrested the frightening bat from his hands and struck him several times with it, delivering measured, expert blows that would neither break bones nor cause death. Then they held it above his head in mockery. They jeered at him and laughed before finally allowing him to leave, his face covered in dust and his clothes filthy, having confiscated the bat and nationalized it.
Before he could drive away, Mahmoud threw the small rubbish bag in the man’s face and told him that both he and his neighbors should find somewhere else to dump their garbage. In a commanding tone, he ordered the man to deliver this message to every resident of Zamalek: they were never to approach Kit Kat again, and the Zamalek Heap would no longer be theirs from that day forward. They could regard it as a historical relic, a remnant of a bygone regime. Anyone who disobeyed these instructions would face an uncertain fate…
You can imagine the swarms of flies that have begun gathering over the Zamalek Heap, and over the heaps in Imbaba, Bulaq, Mohandessin, and everywhere else in Egypt.
Even outside our elegant house, which I inherited from my father, a retired police officer, there is a huge rubbish heap, lying in one of Dokki’s most prestigious streets. It began as a pyramid, then grew into a flat-topped plateau, containing every imaginable kind of filth: food scraps, tins and empty bottles, cans of rotting preserved food, nail clippings, cigarette butts, dirty tissues, and condoms.
Despite my important position, I have been unable to stop this heap from growing or to have it moved elsewhere.
You may be wondering exactly what kind of work I do, the name of the organization I belong to, and its purpose. Most citizens know nothing about our institution, which was born in the shadows, far removed from the familiar, conventional agencies and not subordinate to any of them.
It was established as an independent body, even more secretive than its counterparts, to undertake the most dangerous missions and to achieve the greatest results without incurring any legal liability. It enjoys greater freedom of action thanks to its supposed secrecy.
But nothing remains hidden for long in our country. Within a few months, rumors about this new agency had spread, and people began whispering about its nature and purpose, weaving legends around it, without anyone knowing its exact, official name.
Many made guesses, and some actually came close. But I preferred the name the intellectuals gave us, even though I despise them. They called us the Those.
I like the name. Its ambiguity lends us an even greater aura of secrecy and authority.
In any case, all this influence has done nothing to keep the rubbish heaps away from me, nor has it stopped the swarms of flies from gathering outside my window. It hasn’t even prevented that stray fly from invading my bedroom, making me feel as though I were suffocating, and ruining my day.
Ahmad ʿAbd al-Manʿam Ramadan is an Egyptian short-story writer and novelist with a keen interest in literature, cinema, and their histories. His novel Cats Howling and Dogs Meowing won the Edwar al-Kharrat Prize in 2024.
Mila Fantinelli is a PhD researcher in Linguistic and Literary Studies at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan. Her research focuses on Arabic literature, ecolinguistics, and the environmental humanities, with a particular interest in the intersections between narrative, stylistics, and ecological thought. She has published on Arabic ecocriticism and ecolinguistic approaches to literary texts, and works as an editor for the European Youth Think Tank, where she writes on corpus linguistics. She also contributes to the blog Arcadiana, dedicated to literature and the arts.