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How to Shop in Cairo 105
ing shopkeepers with the idea that you are not a man to bluff
against.
I promised to give the recipe for bargaining with the
various Levantines who have shops and " bazars " in the
bazars. The Levantine is a tough nut to crack. He reh'es
on wearing down your patience. You have to wear down his.
He commences by asking twice or three times what he is
wiUing to take. You offer him what you consider the proper
price. He comes down a fraction. If you really covet the
article and mean to buy it before you leave the shop, so as
not to run any risk of its being gone before you can come
again, you go on bargaining inch by inch. Look at a
whole lot of other things, but keep up a steady fire of depre-
ciation about this, and go on refusing his gradually diminishing
prices for it. If it is only a thing which you want
mildly, the odds are that you will get it at your own price in
the end. Stick to your own price, and every time }-ou pass
the shop ask : " Well, are you going to let me have that
for piastres? " (naming your original price). One day, see-
ing that you do not mean to weaken, he will say "Yes," or tell
you the real amount at which it will pay him to sell the article.
And, as I have said above, paying him a small margin of
profit where you have named less than he gave for it, will not
lower your credit as a bargainer.
As these people are such sharks, so rapacious and mean,
you should avoid a frontal attack on the object you really
want to buy. Approach by traverses. Bargain earnestly and
eagerly over several things which you do not want ; and when
he says that they are the best things in the shop, say, " Well,
what will you let me have cheap—this, or this, or this ? " run-
ning through about two dozen things, and ending up with the
thing you really want. Then prepare to leave the shop, and he
will say you can have the last thing cheap. " What do you call
cheap ? Do you mean 5 piastres or 50 piastres? " (as the case
may be). " Yes can have it for that, and won't you have
;
you
that mummy-case (or whatever it was) too," he asks, mention-
ing the thing you priced first, for which he asked such a hide-
ous sum. You shake your head and retire, carrying off the
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