Ahmed Soliman is no ordinary merchant, and his perfume shop in the Khan el Khalili Bazaar at Cairo, is 0 ordinary shop. Among his clients are the Princess Royal, the Vander-hilts and Noel Coward, writes John Hetherington in the "Mail" Adelaide. Before war crippled Egypts tourist trade, Ahmed Soliman's shop was visited by practically every sightseef who came to Cairo. Today, with tourists secking safer zones, it is paying expenses by catching what trade it can from soldiers, sailors and airmen serving in the Near East.
There are two things about Ahmed's shop which, in my experience, are unique in the East. First, nobody who enters the doors is asked to buy. Second, Ahmed cannot be beaten down one piastre below the prices he quotes.
It is not easy to find Ahmed's shop in the maze of narrow streets, thronged with jingling gharries, honking taxicabs, and pedestrians of every class. which forms Calro's bazaar quarter.
I went through tortuous laneways crowded with open-fronted shops, offering for sale every conceivable type of merchandise from Mohammedan prayer mats to Birmingham jewellery.
The shop of Ahmed Soliman preserves the dignity of the old East more completely than any I have ever seen. True, Ahmed and his assistants wear European suits and speak English with scant trace of accent. But the dim interior, lit by indirect lights, the rows of quaintly shaped and decorated bottles on the shelves, which cover every inch of the walls, the fragrance of smouldering sandalwood mingling with the perfumes of a thousand different flowers—these belong to the East alone.
Before I knew it I was seated on a chair covered in rich brocade, accepting Ahmed's invitation to take coffee, and trying to distin-guise one from another the perfumes which mingled in the air. Though I had not seen him reach for one of his precious bottles of perfume, he was suddenly holding a bottle in his hand. "This perfume," he said, "will remind you of home."
He drew the long glass stopper from the transparent yellow perfume, allowed it to drain, then brushed it ever so lightly across my wrist like a magician making a pass with his wand. I raised the wrist to my nostrils. If I had closed my eyes I could have believed I was standing in the Australian bush among grove of wa tiles in full flower. "Golden wattle," Ahmed said. "It is my tribute to the Austra-lions,"
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.