Free Around the World in 50 Years by Albert Podell

pulled a dozen vials of “aphrodisiac” out of his pocket, purportedly Spanish fly, absinthe, sperm-whale lotion, pulverized shark fin, and pepper extract. Steve told him he didn’t need any.
    â€œOkay. No need aphro. Muneer understand. You stud man. Then must need this.” He winked and withdrew from his other pocket an assortment of condoms in various sizes, colors, and enhancements. Steve pushed him away and told him to try me.
    Just then Willy came back, clutching a pile of Egyptian pounds he’d gotten from a money changer who was offering a decent rate, seven pounds for ten dollars, 35 percent better than the government rate. Willy pointed out a fat guy in an oversized overcoat standing next to a tree a few yards away. The man smiled a gleam of gold teeth. He spread his arms and opened his coat to show us packets of money held in place with safety pins: Egyptian pounds, U.S. dollars, Swiss francs, French francs, British pounds, lire, pesetas, marks, dirham.…
    Woodrow rushed over to him, waving a ten-dollar bill.
    â€œWhat did you get?” Willy asked when he’d returned.
    â€œSeven pounds. I gave him a ten and he gave me—hey, there’s only six pounds here! Hey, mister, you only gave me six pounds.”
    â€œYes, certainly,” the money changer shouted. “Stamps. It’s for stamps. One pound for black-market stamps.”
    â€œOh. I didn’t know about those. Black-market stamps. Well, uh, I mean, uh.…”
    By then the money changer had vanished.
    â€œYou know, guys,” I said, “this can be a great place if you’ve got the right attitude. What a wild bunch of likable crooks. It’s my kind of town. I have to come back here someday.”
    Two men approached and wanted to know if we had any jewelry or foreign perfume to sell.
    I sold them five bottles of our sponsor’s OFF! insect repellent and unloaded that “watch” Woodrow had purchased.
    Manu returned with a bottle of whiskey, shouting that he’d gotten a good price on Cutty Sark.
    â€œCutty Sark, my butt. That’s colored water,” I told him after I examined it.
    â€œHow can it be colored water? The seal’s intact.”
    â€œSure, and so is the press where they printed it.”
    I took the bottle from him, slipped it into our case of bourbon in the Cruiser, and waited. Within ten minutes a peddler came along hawking “Chevas Regale” [ sic ] for one Egyptian pound.
    â€œCome off it, man,” I told him. “You can’t sell us any of that colored-water junk. We only drink the real stuff. See, we have a full case of real whiskey we just smuggled in today.”
    â€œ Real whiskey?” he exclaimed.
    â€œSure thing, man. Here, have a sip.” I poured him a straight shot of Wild Turkey.
    The peddler drank, sighed, and smiled. “You want to sell some?”
    â€œSure, I’ll let you have this bottle for eight pounds.”
    â€œNo, too much.”
    â€œOkay, you can have a sealed bottle of Cutty Sark for only three pounds.”
    As we drove away, I chuckled that Alex was definitely one of a kind, and the kind of which one was enough.
    We weren’t quite sure where to go. Our plan was to camp outside of town, away from the crooks, and to come back the next morning to visit Pompey’s Pillar, the Little Sphinx, and the Catacombs of Kam el Shuqafa. But it wasn’t easy to find a place outside of town because we’d entered the delta of the Nile. Gone was the empty desert where we could open our camper and pitch our tents anywhere. Every bit of land here was either under cultivation or under water. It was here that the Nile, as it neared the sea, spread out into a triangle a hundred miles on a side, a lush green wetness that provided food and clothing and work and hope for most of Egypt’s 30 million people. Only 50,000 hardy (or harebrained) souls attempted to live in the other, inhospitable, 97