The shop employee cleared his throat and turned the calculator around to show me. I noticed that the (+) and (=) signs had been worn off by use.
"690 dirham," said my Moroccan friend.
690 dirham. I did some quick calculating. Eleven euros is about 100 dirham, let's call it ten, move the decimal point... about 70 euros. No.
"That's too much. Es demasiado," I said, looking at him and blinking. I looked at our small pile of souvenirs. "I'll give you doscientos," two hundred.
He laughed softly to his chest and shook his head at such an absurd offer. He then picked up the shirt I'd selected.
"This shirt alone is 180," he said. "Touch it. Feel how soft it is?"
"One-eighty?" I repeated. "That's too much. I bought a different one for much less than that earlier. It was a nicer design too."
"600 - no 550 for it all. Look how many pieces you're getting." He turned his attention to Brett, and his language to English. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven."
He then turned back to me and spoke Spanish. This continued for awhile, me taking out pieces saying I didn't need them, him putting them back while lowering his price. Each time, he lowered his voice I bet and ducked his head, glancing furtively at his colleague, who was engaged in a similar process.
It struck me as a dance. It struck me as flamenco. The two dancers starting out with their own ideas about what's going to happen. One dances closer, the other considers the offer, then pulls away. The tension is key. I couldn't make an offer too low and he couldn't make an offer too high. Each of us had to find the breaking point with the other. It ended, for me, in that particular shop, on that particular day, like this:
The storekeeper hunched way low. "Just take it all for 400 dirham," he said.
In some games, everybody wins. Those are my favorite games.
2 comments:
This was well written. I even have a photo of it happening in my mind.
So with it all converted, was it quite the deal?
furtively? nice!
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