Two of my friends and I decided on the second night to try to find a bar we had heard about downtown. Because it is Ramadan, many thing are not open until after Iftar (dark) and of those that are, most do not serve alcohol. We caught a cab to downtown and then quickly realized that we no idea what to do next. I called another friend to try and get directions but the combination of loud noise and my lack of Arabic made understanding the street names impossible. We asked a waiter at a restaurant for directions and were directed around the block to a newspaper man who "know everything". The newspaper guy pointed us in the right direction. We wandered for a while without sucess, eventually ending up in a square. Out of nowhere a man approached us and asked if we were lost. We tried to ask him the name of the street and he asked where specifically we were going. We told him we were looking for Spitfire and his face lit up. He then asked if we knew Yousse. Puzzled we said no. I remembered that one my friends who had told me about the place was named Joey so I asked if maybe he meant Josef. "Yes" he exlaimed. "Youssef! I will take you to him. He is good friend." I was dubious because a common strategy of shop owners here is to offer to show a tourist where something is and the take them to their shop and try to sell them things. However, since we had no idea where we were, we took him up on his offer. Miraculously, he led us straight to the door of the bar we wanted and left without asking for any baksheesh, only a promise to get in touch with him if we needed any hashish. (We didn't).
We walked into the bar and met up with our friends. When we told them what had happened they all laughed and said the man had randomly appproached them with offers of hashish and they really did not know who he was. We still have no idea how he knew we were looking for them or where they had gone.
0 comments:
Post a Comment