Egyptian dispatch: March 31, 2013

I first visited Egypt in 1975. At that time when you entered the country you had to exchange your money at a 'tourist' rate — which was more favorable than the official one. The only trick was that you couldn't take the money out of the country. As I came to leave I still had some Egyptian pounds and I thought the smart thing to do was to buy gold, so I bought 4 gold rings. I smuggled them out of the country in my toothpaste tube, and was so nervous when I entered customs back in the UK that I almost gave myself up! Unfortunately, since the rings did not have European stamps on them they were not worth very much, so I kept them. Over the years I gave two of them away. So, when it came to our marriage 16 years later I still had the two remaining rings, plus the story of where and how I acquired them coupled with the delightfully romantic irony that I was marrying an Egyptian.