The Price of Buttons

I hadn’t seen a price tag on anything in  four or five years, and had learned to disregard the cries, ” for you a special price.”

My sleeping bag was adequate for the lower Sahara but wasn’t suited to the surprisingly chilly nights of northern Morocco and Algeria. I needed something warm and thought that the tightly woven camel hair djellabas that were the traditional dress of the Berber tribesmen, would be comfortable to sleep in.

I went looking for one in Casablanca’s bazar, a warren of murky alleys and narrow, walled passages where a tangle of shoppers and sellers in colorful turbans and kaftans went about their business like the generations before them. I passed shops and stalls with coarse jute sacks overflowing with brightly colored spices and herbs, and if I wasn’t travelling light, I might have been tempted to buy a hand-knotted prayer rug to put under my sleeping bag.

Like a time-traveler who stumbled into another age, I continued past fruit mongers, tinsmiths, butchers, beggars, and artisans of every description, and came to a crowd gathered around a snake charmer who was taunting a thick, black cobra in a wicker basket.  I took a step back as it uncoiled and rose waist high, swaying back and forth to the whining melody of its tormentor’s flute, while it flared its hood and hissed in warning.

Lost, I finally stopped and asked a shaggy-haired boy who had been tagging after me, where I could find a cloth or garment stall. I gave him a copper coin as the “Cadeau “that he had been pestering me for, and he led me to a shop located even deeper into the confusion of the market district. Sitting cross-legged on a table that served as a counter was a leathery man fingering a string of wooden prayer beads. He looked at me with the steely, watchful eyes of a bird of prey. His stature, sharp nose, furrowed face and shaggy beard, gave him the aspect of a stern biblical patriarch rather than a merchant.  

I greeted him respectfully with the customary “Salam aleikum,” and then “bonjour” in French for good measure, and in response, he bowed his head and laid his right hand over his heart. I explained what it was that I wanted and he threw down a blanket on the stone floor and spread out his stock of robes. I chose one and we discussed a price. I learned the first rule of bargaining in the markets of India; never pay more than half of the suggested sum for anything.

I haggled with him to the extent that my French vocabulary and grammar permitted.  I apparently couldn’t conceal my satisfaction at coming out a winner in our exchange, but if I had read his piercing eyes, and the tightening of his sunken cheeks, I would have realized that I had crossed a line.  I counted the bills and stretched out my hand, not realizing that my insistent bargaining beyond the amount that he considered reasonable was taken as an affront.  When I tried to give him his money, instead of accepting it, he reached under the folds of his caftan and in a theatrical flourish, unsheathed a curved dagger as long as my forearm. Instinctively I took a step back while he stared me in the eye and used his impressive weapon to snip off the top button of the robe.  “What are you doing? What good is a djellaba without buttons,” I asked.  He held his knife ready to cut off yet another one. With a smile that held as much threat as mirth, he replied, “You didn’t pay for the buttons. They are extra. “

Hindsight

This wasn’t the first time in my travels, and unfortunately wouldn’t be the last time either, that I made a cultural blunder by unintentionally offending someone. For this shopkeeper, giving me a correct price was not only a manifestation of integrity on his part, but was stipulated by the rules of his religion. Charging too high a price was akin to usury and considered dishonest and sinful according to the teachings of the Koran.