My Twilight Zone Experience.....

Last weekend Alex and I decided to try and visit the American University in Cairo (AUC) bookstore, which is located downtown, right near the Nile. The trip started off well. We got a ride from Nader, one of our coworkers husbands. A nice man who is taking classes there. This bookstore is suppose to have one of the best collections of English books in the city. So we were pretty excited about the adventure, not to mention getting new books.
He dropped us off and gave us a direction to head in. We thought all was going well and tried to get into the AUC. We were told by a man that we had to go outside and around the corner. No worries we thought, that sounds easy enough. We followed his directions and ended up a block to far to the east. We decided to start heading back to the major square that was nearby and we would start over....then it happened.
"Hello my friend! Where are you from?" shouted a voice to our left. An older gentleman was sitting in a chair along the road. After briefly chatting with him, he invited to his store (everyone has one) and then he offered us drinks. Having read a little in the Lonely Planet guide, we had an idea where this was going....
The man chatted with us briefly. A little talk about family and where we were from. His family apparently has a farm outside of town where they grow crops. These crops are then turned into oils...which oddly enough he just happened to sell in his store. My roommate is a fan of the oils, so he ended up buying a few from the gentleman. We didn't feel bad because he was nice and it looked as if he could have used the money. So we were alright with this. We then told him where we were headed and he got us back on the right path. Turns out we were to go back where we came....off we went.

We had only walked half a block and we were talking about the recent turn of events when all of a sudden....

"Hello! Where are you from? What are you looking for?" Another person along the street has kindly stopped to help us out. This one was a little different though...."Oh, yes the bookstore. It's straight ahead and then turn right. Wait, I can show you another one too, come..." He proceeded to talk us another block in the wrong direction. He constantly said, "No baksheesh (tip). I no want. This is for friendship. Friendship important."
The next coincidence came when his store just happened to be on the way to the other bookshop. We went in and chatted. He showed us a picture of the boxer Mohammed Ali, who had once visited the store. Then, seconds later, he was asking us if we liked oils and he began to get them out. Then he asked if we liked papyrus and his son brought out a huge stack of these things. He could tell I was not please because he kept asking me, "What's wrong? Why you no smile? This is about friendship not money...but if you like, We give you good price....you a lucky man!"
It was very difficult to bite my tongue and not lash out at this man. Once he heard the English, he saw us as $$ and went for the kill. Alex did end up buying some oil, but we managed to escape shortly after.

Eventually we stopped in a Costa Coffee shop near the AUC. I asked of the workers there where the bookshop was and he finally pointed us in the right direction. We found it 5 minutes later. The bookshop was everything we thought it would be with a great collection of Political, fiction and classic works, as well as anything you could ever want on Egyptian History.

It was a crazy, crazy day. 2 oil shops, hours in a 4 block area and eventually, we found our target.