Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [89]
“One hundred sixty,” Haj tries again.
“Two hundred.”
“No, no. One sixty, or I don't want it. How much is your lowest price?”
“Two hundred is my lowest price.”
“I give you one hundred eighty.”
“Oh, no, my friend. Two hundred dirham. If you don't want it, leave it.”
And so it goes on. The convoluted dance of deception escalates from light banter at the start to a staccato outburst of taunts, jibes, and insults—or “a discussion,” as Haj calls it—until the poor, bludgeoned store owner, fearing one of them is about to have a heart attack, agrees (though with much eye-rolling), to let the Hand go at the price Haj originally offered for it—150 dirham.
Yay! Tradition has been honored. A bargain has been struck. It's over!
But wait a second. Something's wrong.
Haj is far from happy.
“No.” With the capricious whim of a lunatic, he runs a large hand over his bald head and gives the trinket back, sighing, “Never mind.”
“But…”
As a casual observer to this drama, I'm aghast. And if I'm aghast, then the store owner must be apoplectic. He's left clutching his cheap, mass-produced tin hand, not knowing quite what to do next.
“You don't want it? After all of that?”
“Nah.” Haj turns up his nose. “I go somewhere else.”
And he walks out.
I feel sick. The stomachache I woke up with is growing worse. The longer I hold out, the more nauseous I become. Sweaty, woozy, unsure how I'm going to make it through the rest of the day without throwing up.
“You have the …?” Haj inquires, and he mimes a bad tummy. “Mm?”
I nod: “I'm sure it was the chicken last night.”
“Ah.” And he adds, mysteriously: “Come, there is a place. Follow.”
It's not on the schedule, but Jay decides to let the situation run. For once, something real and spontaneous is happening. Imagine that!
So, with the crew following closely, we dive into the souks along a dark intestinal conduit of pointy-shoe shops, djellaba stores, and stalls displaying entire hillsides of dried fruit—figs, dates, apricots—as well as large drums of saffron, coriander, and other herbs and spices in an array of startling colors, each one fashioned invitingly into a cone shape, like torpedoes. The foot traffic is hectic, threading past us in tangled, free-flowing lines. A man carrying two live chickens by the feet, flapping upside-down at his side, dodges into an archway, just as a teenager on a moped, then two more, spewing copious exhaust, rip rallycross style into the banks of shoppers, evidently not much caring if they hit anyone. Used to it, Haj steps aside calmly just in time, and I do too, but it's a near miss, and leaves me coughing fitfully in a rolling cloud of fumes.
The atmosphere is claustrophobic down here, dark and menacing. Spears of dust-speckled ochre sunlight, bursting through broken slats in the roof, hack the polluted air into slices, guiding our feet to a crossroads. Here, the path forks and we take a sharp right, emerging into daylight, and journey's end.
Merchandise in this part of the souks contrasts distinctly with everything else I've seen so far. There are cages hanging on hooks, with things shifting inside them. One store has a six-pack of salamanders on a rope—I guess you never know when you're going to run out—plus dead snakes, rows of empty tortoise shells arranged on shelves and easily mistaken for WWI military helmets, and an iguana on a stick. In another, a display of fresh fruit and vegetables is topped off attractively with the severed head of an antelope. Severed recently, too, I'm guessing, because it looks very surprised.
A few more yards and we step out of the flow of human traffic into a corner shop. A small space, it's jammed with the inventory of an infinitely bigger one: mainly glass containers filled with powders, herbs, and some small pebblelike objects I can't even put a name to, stacked as high as the ceiling. While I stand to one side, clutching my stomach, Haj, with the studious intensity of a taxi driver pretending he's a doctor, pores over the merchandise. While he does so, the owner