A Cairo artisan's stitches in time

CAIRO — He was a boy when a Greek taught him the intricacies of the sewing machine.

What was his name, that Greek?

Yani Defarkas. Nice man, steady hands.

That long time ago is mentioned the way a gray-haired man recalls how the job he took in his youth gradually became who he was. Kind of like thread, spooling, raveling. One day you're a kid with pricked fingers, the next you're an old guy with tweezers and a magnifying glass tinkering with the gadgetry of progress.

Samir Milad fixes sewing machines; he's done it since he was 11, since Defarkas sent him hustling with bobbins and needles through Cairo's alleys, past plumes of wool and cotton, past nut sellers and upholsterers, past the bygone bordellos near the stock exchange. He's repaired thousands of Singers, Brothers, Pegasuses, and an Egyptian model named after Nefertiti.

You can tell the story of a man, the story of his country, through the sewing machine. But first you have to wait until Milad gets settled in his wooden chair, the one with fading lacquer, the one that creaks when he leans back and puts his hands behind his head and raises his eyebrows, which are darker than his bristly hair.

It is then you hear of seamstresses, foot pedals, the piston rhythm of the needle, clothes made and mended by mothers and daughters, every home a miniature factory of snipping scissors, falling threads and tied-off knots. And how it all changed, not just sewing, but the whole world went high-tech, making the young more concerned with amassing fortunes than seeking a trade.

"The job today is less attractive," he says. "The young generation is greedy. They want money quickly. When I was younger, we were passionate about the skill of repairing. But the young today don't want to learn a craft."

His hands are smooth. They are a laborer's hands, softened by years of sewing machine oil. They glisten. Amber. They seem delicate when he brings them from behind his head and moves them over the laptop in a second-floor office decorated with Christian icons. The room doesn't feel lived-in; it is the office of a man who spends his time downstairs in a shop crowded with Allen wrenches and coiled silver shavings spilling from a drill.

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