An agency dressed as an office

A young man in Cairo has been looking for work abroad for a year, and at night, when the worry is loudest, he scrolls.

The offers find him quickly. An agency that promises a contract in the Gulf within sixty days. A photograph of a reception desk with flags behind it. A stamp-shaped logo, a form with reference numbers, a list of placed candidates, a fee that has to be paid this week to hold his place.

He cannot tell whether it is a licensed recruiter or a room with a printer. That is not his failing. It has been made hard on purpose.

Real recruitment has become more organised over the years, and it has learnt to look the part. The people selling shortcuts that were never going to work watched this and copied the costume: the desk, the forms, the official-sounding words. Then they set their fees near the real thing, because a high price also looks like proof.

Hope has value. A small fee for honest help that might work is a fair trade. A large fee for a promise nobody can keep, paid by someone who borrowed it from his family, is not.

What makes the trade possible is his state of mind. He is not comparing options calmly. He is tired and anxious and hoping, and the sellers aim at exactly that hour of the night.

In almost any other purchase we would call this what it is: a promise that cannot be shown, priced to borrow trust it has not earned, sold to someone at his lowest.

We let it pass here for a simple reason. We want, very badly, for it to work.