Why Would an Egyptian Man Give a Girl’s Number to a Lot of Other Men?

A friend of mine traveled to Egypt, and while there, gave her phone number to one man.  Several years later she is still getting phone calls from many men in Egypt who got her number from this man.  She wondered whether I thought this was “normal” behavior for men in the Middle East, to “share” their girlfriends’ telephone numbers!

Rather than answering her with my own reaction (which I’ve found from experience is not always the right interpretation, even though I’ve lived in the Middle East for 17 years), I thought I better check with a Middle Eastern man I worked with for a long time and ask what he thought about it.  I’m glad I did.

My colleage answered that the guy who gave her phone number to others is probably trying to trade it for a benefit in return. In other words, he can give her phone number to a number of people, each of whom might be trying to get out of Egpyt, in return for some kind of a favor from them. So if he gives her number

to a lot of people, he’s getting a lot of small “favors” in return for that.   What kind of favors might those be? They might be things like getting him to the front of a long line of people, introducing him to someone useful, making an intercession with him for an official, running an inconvenient errand, things like that.

Here is an interesting article about the current situation among young people in Egypt.

Comments?

Expat 21

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Tags: Dating, Dating a Middle Eastern man, dating foriegners, Egypt, marrying a foreign man, men, Middle Eastern Men, North Africa, women