Getting a fax in Egypt

Slowly touring down the Nile River Valley without a schedule, my stock of local currency needed replenishment. At one point in a very small town I noticed a shop with a currency exchange sign posted outside, and I went in. As I approached the proprietor I was dumbfounded when he addressed me by name and handed me a fax from Boston, USA as follows: "Are you Mr. M---? I have a fax for you!" And indeed, I was looking at a personally addressed fax to me regarding a relatively minor issue I had raised with a vendor by telephone the previous week! I had not requested or expected a fax reply, and I could not have told you which town I would have been in on any given day if you had asked me. Picking this particular little store on that day in that town was a spontaneous whim based on my local currency needs. To this day I have no idea how this happened, short of the sender having sent this fax to every little fax machine in the entire Nile Valley together (which may have been the case although it seems a bit much given that the subject was a missing straw hat). But was every store owner asking every American if they were me up and down the Valley? The fax sender had never met me and had no idea what I looked like even if they had wanted to provide a physical description!