It’s funny what comes around. Twenty-four years ago I was in Cairo. I was skint and had flown there from India via Jordan where I had hitched to see Petra and then done the same down to Aqaba, before boarding a cattle boat to Nuweiba in the Sinai.
I had around 100 leather bracelets with me that I’d bought in Rajasthan and was trying to sell via some Thai Muslim mates at Cairo University. I was sleeping on a chair in a slum apartment and every day for ten days I’d walk into central Cairo with just enough money for bread at the local baker before being told at the bank that the hundred quid I had wired for hadn’t arrived. Continue reading