SYRIA, THE LAND OF LEBANON
were all exactly the same size, shape and material, were obtained from the same salesman at the same shop, and in the end I paid for them the same price to a piaster. Yet the purchase of each one necessitated a half-hour of excited bargaining.
It should be understood, however, that there is really nothing dishonest about such a procedure as that described above; for neither party is misled in the least by the other's protestations, and neither believes that he is deceiving the other. It is just the leisurely, intensely personal Oriental way of doing business. After you once become used to it, bargaining in the bazaars is far more full of excitement and human interest than buying something in the West, where fixed prices are distinctly marked. If you are so crude as to ask a Moslem merchant to tell under oath what he paid for an article, he will often speak the exact truth. But be sure to swear him by a formula which he considers binding. Every detail of a Syrian business transaction is embellished by one or more of the fervent oaths of the East. The traveler from the Occident, however, needs only one: the "word of an Englishman"[1] is still accepted at face value. Indeed, a generation ago, Moslems who would unblushingly call upon almighty God to witness to the most patent falsehoods, could be trusted to speak the exact truth when they
- ↑ This includes the American, for all who speak the English language are ordinarily classed as Ingleezy.
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