i walked through khan khalili last night. it's the local touristy market. like the merchants in several other countries i have visited, the sellers of khan khalili can pitch their stuff in a dizzying array of languages.
i first noticed the phenomenon when mrs. noz and i were in tunisia 7 years ago. whenever i passed a shop, people would yell at me in spanish. it happened in multiple markets in different tunisian cities. eventually i asked a merchant why he thought i was a spanish speaker. "most of our tourists here are from three countries," he explained, "france, spain and italy. you don't look french," he said, "you don't dress like an italian," which i took as a way of saying that i have no style (fair enough), "so that leaves spanish," he concluded.
however, the explanation only made sense in tunisia.other arab countries don't get most of their tourists from those three places. and yet, i noticed it again when i was in syria: if they guessed, syrians often guessed that i came from spain.
and the phenomenon has appeared again here in egypt. as we walked through the market last night, and in other shopping areas i passed by today, merchant after merchant called out "hola, amigo!" to me.
so last night i asked several why they thought i was spanish. they all said pretty much the same thing, "your face. from your face it is obvious that you come from spain." sometimes as they said this they moved their hands around on their own face, pantomiming cheek bones and other facial features, as if that somehow made things clearer.
the funny thing is that i don't think i look spanish at all. all of my great-grandparents were born in eastern europe and i've never been told anywhere other than in markets in arab countries that i look spanish.
