First, I need to give you a little back story.
On a Thursday night last October, I was chilling with my friends Youssef and Shadi (Americans going by Arabic names). We didn't have any plans for the night, so we decided to just go explore Alexandria. One of our American friends, Jeremy, suggested that we go to the tailor and get shirts made for us. We took his suggestion and headed over to Menshea -- a district filled with souqs i.e. markets. We searched around the cloth market for a while, and after talking to shop owners for a good 30 minutes, Shadi finally picked out two sheets of cloth that he wanted to be made into a button down shirt (with a nice pocket on the front left). With the sheets of cloth in hand we headed to the tailor's shop located right in the middle of the souq. The tailor greeted us with the typical اهلان و سهلا مرحبا بك عامل اه الحمد الله الي اخره (translation: Welcome, welcome, welcome, how are you, thanks be to God, etc.). He then started talking to us about our friend Jeremy and asked us how Jeremy was doing. After a good 10 minutes of getting to know each other, we finally got down to business. First, he asks us how much Shadi paid for the sheets, and give Shadi props for getting a good price. Then, he wants to know every detail about the shirt he is about to make: casual or formal collar, one or two buttons on the wrist, what color buttons, tight or regular fit, and then all the regular measurements.
Shadi returned a couple days later to pick up his shirts. They were pretty styling, so I decided to take his lead and get my own personal Egyptian button down. I went through the same routine as I went through with Shadi before. But, like the last time I didn't return after a couple days to pick up my shirt.
I returned yesterday to pick up my shirt -- almost 4 months after I had dropped off my sheet of cloth. When I entered his shop, he greeted me by name, asked me how I was doing, asked how Jeremy, Youssef, and Shadi were doing, and after the 10 minutes of catch up, he went to the corner of his shop and pulled out my shirt from a pile without a single second of searching around for my shirt that has been sitting around for 4 months. The cost for his services 30 Egyptian pounds (less than $6). Pretty sweet stuff.
