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[Page 32]
who was offering me a tiny cup of coffee, about as big as a dolls cup that is no exaggeration, for they are no bigger, I took it & tasted it it was as black & as strong as coffee is ever likely to be, I did not know what to make of it, but I drank it thinking it was chucked in by our guide, who had bought it for us, off the Arab who was boiling it on top of the pyramid, after carving our name like everyone else on the top we started to descend, when the Arab running the coffee stall demanded 4 piastres for the coffee, there was a row straight way, & we ended up fool like in giving the crafty old dog 2 piastres, to do this we had to change a 20 piastre piece, & he rooked us for 8 piastres, we did not
know the value of the money to well at that time, & they took every advantage of us when we reached the bottom of the pyramids, our guide gave us 2 little scarabs for nothing as we thought, but we found out different later on, we then went down to the Sphinx, & we had to run the gauntlet of fortune-tellers, curio sellers who ask you easily 10 times the value of what they are trying to take you down with, they had the usual load of ancient coins 2000 years old as they tell you, all made in Birmingham (England) for which they will sell for a trifle of 10 or 20 piastres, according to how big a fool you look, Wagga & I never came at the coins, though we had our fortunes told in the sand