The Torah says Joseph's brothers arrived in Egypt and bowed before him. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 42:6 inserts an astonishing middle act: before they bowed, they searched.
Registration at the city gates
First, the Aramaic paraphrase explains how Joseph knew they had come. He had stationed "notaries at the gates of the city to register daily, of every one who came, his name and the name of his father." Every caravan, every traveler, logged by name and patronymic. Joseph had been watching for his family for years. The registry was his net.
Searching the streets and the hospices
Then comes the shocking line: the brothers, once inside Egypt, "looked through all the streets, and public places, and hospices, but could not find him." They had come to buy grain, yes — but they had also come to look for Joseph. The rabbinic tradition in Bereishit Rabbah 91:6, a commentary on Genesis compiled in the Land of Israel around the fifth century CE, reads "hospices" as inns and houses of ill repute. The brothers thought Joseph, sold into slavery at seventeen, had likely ended up in the Egyptian underclass. They looked for him in the places a slave might end up.
Guilt drives the search
The Targum, which reached its final form in the Land of Israel around the seventh or eighth century CE, does not say so directly, but the implication is there. They were not looking for him out of affection. They were looking for him out of fear and belated responsibility. When they could not find him, they went to the palace and bowed to its ruler — and the ruler was the brother they had been searching for.
The takeaway
Sometimes the person we are searching for in the street is the one sitting on the throne, waiting for us to look up.