Oh do I have one for you…. circa Cairo, mid ’90s.
I was in college and I had a friend who was really nice and down to earth. He was always in simple Levi’s and non-branded t-shirts or shirts. He never spoke about his family or what they do.
One day, I was with him in his car (a standard edition jeep Cherokee, nothing fancy), and he told me he needed to drop by his home to pick something up.
We drove into an eight-story building (not the pic above, but similar). He pulled up at the entrance and gave the keys to who I think was a watchman to park it. All cars below were randomly scattered below. (That sort of thing is pretty common in Cairo).
We took the elevator to the fifth floor and straight into a cozy apartment where I said hi to some of his family members (he has a small family of five, I think). They were in the living room and the apartment nice quite spacious, but very homey and informal. It seemed to me they were doing OK as a decent middle class Egyptian family.
Later that week, I was at a coffee shop hanging out with the dudes but my above mentioned friend was not with us.
We were bored and somehow our pointless conversations went to assessing how poor or rich each of us are. We started counting all the people we know, and when we reached to my above mentioned friend, one dude just gasped.
Dude: “Oh we can’t even come close to how loaded this guy is..”
Me: “Whaaaa? I was at his apartment a few days ago.. it was nice, but hardly a rich man’s apartment!”
Dude: “You went to the 5th floor on the 8 story building, didn’t you?”
Me: “Yeah…”
Dude: “Man… you were in their family living room. The entire fifth floor is their living room. They have a floor for receptions, a floor for recreation and entertainment (party hall and game rooms), a floor for sleeping quarters (bedrooms), a floor for services (kitchen, laundry …etc), a floor for sports (indoor pool and gym), a floor as for business (offices, conference halls), a guest floor and the rooftop terrace…. The entire eight-floor building is their house.”
Me: *jaw drops*