Omar SharifI first met Omar in the early seventies. A very fine bridge player was a regular visitor to Sunday Times International tournament. I was fortunate to be his dinner guest on a couple of occasions at the Hotel des Indes in the The Hague at the Staten Bank tournament. I was playing with Irving Rose and we joined Omar late in the evening after the session finished. The hotel kept the restaurant open especially. Good food and wine was accompanied with bridge stories from the nights play. Omar was always good company and usually had a story to tell about his extraordinary life.
Strangely on one occasion when I had gone to Hanover for the annual carpet fair Maggie and I walked into the bar at the Inter-Continental and found Omar their sipping a cocktail. “Are you here to play bridge Barnet?” he asked. When he found out I was there for the carpet fair he laughed as so was he. He was representing a carpet making firm based just outside Cairo. The following year I travelled to Cairo and started what turned out to be a nice business with the firm.
It’s a small world.
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