Stan's sister, Solveig, and her husband, Bill, recently returned from Egypt. While there, they purchased clothing for their son, Zach, and his new wife, Jennifer. Solveig tells the story:The chic and scholarly Zacharias Sheik and his Queen Jennfertiti made a rare pre-Halloween appearance in California, following a series of oil negotiations in North Dakota. “Please, let’s go home, “ Zacharias pleaded, “I’m feeling altogether too worldly.”
The young couple had acquired their new image via a boutique aboard a ship plying up the Nile River from Luxor to Aswan (the Nile runs up river from north to south). Here in the boutique, their shoppers could make selections in peace, away from the insistent vendors at stalls and streets at every temple and tomb in Lower Egypt.
Another more exciting and involved way to shop the galabiyya and bedu dresses was made available from the boats that swarmed the ship after dark. If your cabin window is open, you might be hit with a packaged shirt, dress, or prayer rug. You’d be expected to examine the goods and holler out a bid, or toss the rejected item back to the man in the boat. Amazingly, if you did not return the goods, someone would come on board the next day and ask at Reception for the occupant of that cabin to return the item, for the boat vendors remember exactly where they throw their merchandise and they will recover any unpurchased items.
Shopper Solveig checked out the action from the fourth deck of the ship while Shopper Bill rested his sinus headache and protected the Shearer Treasury in their shuttered second-floor cabin. While a better price might have been struck here than in the ship boutique, Solveig was uncertain of the quality of goods she was examining in the dark. More than that, she was highly relieved that the four unsolicited items she tossed back to the boats landed IN the boats, not in the river.Given their boutique beginning, Queen Jennfertiti and ZSheik have but one thing to say, “Peace in the Middle East!"
