Egypt 1990 - Part VII - The Sting

How I remember it, with some writer's licence. Cairo photos from another year.

Days of trips and hotels beyond my comfort budget had used up my Eilat savings. For the first time in a month, I was going to have to break into travellers' cheques. So where should I get the best rates?

The answer came from a man who offered me two and a half times the exchange rate.

Lets Go warned against black market exchange in Cairo. The black market was almost non-existent, and the rates barely better than the exchange booth rate. I’d kept away from it in Jerusalem when a couple of Bridge friends had changed money furtively in an upstairs room. But two and a half times the going rate?

It was too good to be true. Or, for me at the time, too good to resist.

And so we went through the whole palaver. Streets away across town, one step at a time, the plan became more complicated as we went, a masterclass in sales technique. I feared nothing but a police sting. I cashed a travellers’ cheque for £100 Sterling at the bank, a quarter of the value I had with me. He spoke to a jeweller. I would hand him the cash outside and he would come back with $400. Except that he didn’t.

For years I was ashamed I fell for that trick, which took me a long time to confess to my family. The hustler was nowhere to be seen. The jeweller, with and without the tourist police’s presence, denied all knowledge. I told the tourist policewoman I had been very stupid. She told me it was my own fault. At least they were tourist police and marginally sympathetic. Nabil Ali, the man who had given me his phone number, was polite but said he could not help.

I did not deal well with my first real culture shock and foolishness. I raged. I blamed all Arabs and all Egyptians. I stomped along the Nile Corniche in a foul mood, shouting obscenities at Egyptians who carried on welcoming me in the street. I wanted out. I sought out English bookshops, the walls of the British embassy, the American University, and finally the cheapest backpackers hostel, which Lets Go described as a fleapit. I found enough sympathy and friendliness there to calm me down somewhat, but not enough to stop me taking the night bus to Sinai.

Click for what happened next.

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