The Second Part in which Steve’s supper is Rudely Interrupted

Bright and early on our first full day in Egypt, we moved to the elusive Rose Hotel. The cab ride took us by Tahrir Square at least twice, and possibly as many as four times. After checking in we discovered that it wasn’t the Rose Hotel at all. In our defense, Egyptian hotels rarely hang signs out front, possibly as a service to enterprising  cab drivers. Determined to redeem ourselves, we walked maybe 25 blocks to the genuine Rose Hotel and asked for a simple cold-water walk-up, no view, please. “No,” said the pretty young clerk, apologetically. “Has bugs.” Turns out the only room at the Rose Hotel that didn’t have bugs was a sinfully expensive cold-water walk-up with a view. For what it’s worth, it was a pretty good view.

A room 'with view'

Splurging on supper al fresco at an outdoor café in Tahrir Square, we were surprised when a stranger shuffled out of the crowd and sat down, uninvited, next to Sweet Apricot. He introduced himself as Mr. Magdhi and immediately launched into a soaring soliloquy about Egypt’s wondrous perfumes. Sweet Apricot, whose peerless alabaster skin naturally exhales an aroma of lilac and cinnamon, told Mr. Magdhi that she didn’t wear perfume, which, though perfectly true, made no perceptible impression on him. When she mentioned we’d be returning to Greece in a few days, he nearly jumped out of his chair for sheer excitement. “You very lucky!,” Mr. Magdhi beamed. “You buy perfume in Egypt, you sell in Greece three, four times price!”

It’s like this: The last thing you want is to blow precious reserves on cheap eau de cologne that’s going to wind up soaking everything in your pack and spend the rest of the trip walking around among strangers reeking like the 20-minute room of a working-class Turkish bordello. On the other hand – and maybe this is an American thing, or maybe it’s just this American’s thing – you’re loathe to give offense. So you fidge and fiddle and hedge and shuffle and offer up too-gentle apologies and wait for the smiling con-artist before you to simply give up. Only he doesn’t give up. He never gives up. He’s like the whole Zulu Nation bearing down, and it’s only a matter of time before your ammunition is gone and your camp is over-run. Despite endlessly repeated assurances that we weren’t interested in taking on any sure-fire money-making ventures, Mr. Magdhi wouldn’t be appeased until we agreed to accompany him to a perfume shop he knew of just around the corner. The owner was a friend, he explained, and the only honest perfume merchant in downtown Cairo. “You just look,” he urged. “You don’t like, you don’t buy. No problem.”

 We followed a suddenly impatient Mr. Magdhi through the teeming streets for about half a mile at something approaching a gallop, passing along the way at least a dozen likely perfume shops until he at last waved us into a small, unpromising establishment in a less-trafficked quarter of the city. The proprietor, a round man wearing a fez and a thin robe trimmed in gold brocade, sidled up with a studiously disinterested look on his face. “Like Cleopatra,” he said, motioning to no perfume in particular. We looked, as promised, and said we saw nothing to our liking. How he did it I’d love to know, but somehow Mr. Magdhi, who’d never been out of arm’s reach, had tipped the perfume-seller to our itinerary.

“You buy perfume in Egypt, you sell in Greece five, ten times price,” said the proprietor, managing to sound eager and bored at the same time. Feeling an invisible vise creeping shut, we proposed we be allowed to sleep on it overnight and come back the next day to take advantage of that profitable opportunity. “Tomorrow no good,” he clucked, and waved his hand to take in every bottle in the shop. “Only today. All be no good tomorrow.”

Now, I happened to know that 3,000-year-old perfume extracted from Egyptian tombs still retains its fragrance, and Sweet Apricot asked him point-blank how he expected us to interest the Greeks in a product that would be “no good” by the time it reached the point of sale. He didn’t even blink. “You buy today, okay,” he said, making an apathetic attempt at a thumbs-up. “Buy now, perfume okay.”

Oddly perishable Egyptian perfume

We bought two jars that, so far as I know, Sweet Apricot has never even opened. The perfumer didn’t seem especially glad for the sale, and the moment the money changed hands Mr. Magdhi lost all interest in his great new friends and disappeared into the night with LE5 baksheesh. On the long walk back to the Rose Hotel we were forced to admit we were losing ground.

But we were learning.

Next Time: A scheming woman!