EGYPTIAN NOTEBOOK:
MARKET MADNESS
"How much for the dress?" I ask.
"For you . . . a hundred American dolla'."
White teeth grinning in the swarthy, crinkled lizard-skin face.
I scoff and roll my eyes.
"Fah!" I exclaim. "I'll give you fifteen Egyptian."
"You want to rob me," shouts the stallkeeper.
"Make it eighty dolla'."
"I have no American money," I say, shrugging.
"But I'll give you twenty pounds."
"It's worth a hundred twenty pounds," he cries.
I know I'm getting warmer.
"Twenty pounds," I say.
"No, no, look at the workmanship.
I must have fifty dolla', one hundred pounds."
"I'll make it twenty-five pounds," I say.
"You insult me," he cries.
"You insult me," I reply.
"Give me eighty pounds," he cries.
I shove the dress back at his hands.
"Make me an offer," he begs.
"I did," I say.
"All right, all right!
Seventy-five pounds, and it's my last offer!"
"Thirty pounds, and it's my last offer."
"Seventy, and that's rock bottom," he exclaims,
forcing the dress back into my hands.
I push it back at him.
"I'll pay thirty, and not a penny more."
"Sixty-five!"
"Thirty!"
"Sixty!"
"Thirty!"
"Fifty-five!"
I pause for effect.
"Thirty-five," I say finally.
"Fifty?" he pleads.
"I said thirty-five," I reply with a sneering smile.
"Forty-five?"
I know I've won.
"I'll give you forty," I say, and shove the money into his
hands,
then step out into the street with the dress on my arm.
Down the street, out of sight of the shop,
I look at the workmanship.
The beadwork, the gold braid are very fine, indeed.
At Niemann's it would cost me thirty-five hundred American dolla'. |
