I can see Abd-el-Atti now, when we had made up a package of scarfs, and offered a certain sum for the lot, which the sleek and polite trader refused, with his eternal, “Thot is ther larster price,” sling the articles about the room, and depart in rage. And I can see the Armenian bow us into the corridor with the same sweet courtesy, knowing very well that the trade is only just begun; that it is, in fact, under good headway; that the Arab will return, that he will yield a little from the “larster price,” and that we shall go away loaded with his wares, leaving him ruined by the transaction, but proud to be our friend.
Our experience in purchasing old Saracenic and Persian tiles is perhaps worth relating as an illustration of the character of the traders of Damascus. Tiles were plenty enough, for several ancient houses had recently been torn down, and the dealers continually acquire them from ruined mosques or those that are undergoing repairs. The dragoman found several lots in private houses, and made a bargain for a certain number at two francs and a half each; and when the bargain was made, I spent half a day in selecting the specimens we desired.
The next morning, before breakfast, we went to make sure that the lots we had bought would be at once packed and shipped. But a change had taken place in twelve hours. There was an Englishman in town who was also buying tiles; this produced a fever in the market; an impression went abroad that there was a fortune to be made in tiles, and we found that our bargain was entirely ignored. The owners supposed that the tiles we had selected must have some special value; and they demanded for the thirty-eight which we had chosen—agreeing to pay for them two francs and a half apiece—thirty pounds. In the house where we had laid aside seventy-three others at the same price, not a tile was to be discovered; the old woman who showed us the vacant chamber said she knew not what had become of them, but she believed they had been sold to an Englishman.
We returned to the house first mentioned, resolved to devote the day if necessary to the extraction of the desired tiles from the grip of their owners. The contest began about eight o'clock in the morning; it was not finished till three in the afternoon, and it was maintained on our side with some disadvantage, the only nutriment that sustained us being a cup of tea which we drank very early in the morning. The scene of the bargain was the paved court of the house, in which there was a fountain and a lemon-tree, and some rose-trees trained on espaliers along the walls. The tempting enamelled tiles were piled up at one side of the court and spread out in rows in the lewân,—the open recess where guests are usually received. The owners were two Greeks, brothers-in-law, polite, cunning, sharp, the one inflexible, the other yielding,—a combination against which it is almost impossible to trade with safety, for the yielding one constantly allures you into the grip of the inflexible. The women of the establishment, comely Greeks, clattered about the court on their high wooden pattens for a time, and at length settled down, in an adjoining apartment, to their regular work of embroidering silken purses and tobacco-pouches, taking time, however, for an occasional cigarette or a pull at a narghileh, and, in a constant chatter, keeping a lively eye upon the trade going on in the court. The handsome children added not a little to the liveliness of the scene, and their pranks served to soften the asperities of the encounter; although I could not discover, after repeated experiments, that any affection lavished upon the children lowered the price of the tiles. The Greek does not let sentiment interfere with business, and he is much more difficult to deal with than an Arab, who occasionally has impulses.
Each tile was the subject of a separate bargain and conflict. The dicker went on in Arabic, Greek, broken English, and dislocated French, and was participated in not only by the parties most concerned, but by the young Greek guide and by the donkey-boys. Abd-el-Atti exhibited all the qualities of his generalship. He was humorous, engaging, astonished, indignant, serious, playful, threatening, indifferent. Beaten on one grouping of specimens, he made instantly a new combination; more than once the transaction was abruptly broken off in mutual rage, obstinacy, and recriminations; and it was set going again by a timely jocularity or a seeming concession. I can see now the soft Greek take up a tile which had painted on it some quaint figure or some lovely flower, dip it in the fountain to bring out its brilliant color, and then put it in the sun for our admiration; and I can see the dragoman shake his head in slow depreciation, and push it one side, when that tile was the one we had resolved to possess of all others, and was the undeclared centre of contest in all the combinations for an hour thereafter.
When the day was two thirds spent we had purchased one hundred tiles, jealously watched the packing of each one, and seen the boxes nailed and corded. We could not have been more exhausted if we had undergone an examination for a doctorate of law in a German university. Two boxes, weighing two hundred pounds each, were hoisted upon the backs of mules and sent to the French company's station; there does not appear to be a dray or a burden-cart in Damascus; all freight is carried upon the back of a mule or a horse, even long logs and whole trunks of trees.
When this transaction was finished, our Greek guide, who had heard me ask the master of the house for brass trays, told me that a fellow whom I had noticed hanging about there all the morning had some trays to show me; in fact, he had at his house “seventeen trays.” I thought this a rich find, for the beautiful antique brasses of Persia are becoming rare even in Damascus; and, tired as we were, we rode across the city for a mile to a secluded private house, and were shown into an upper chamber. What was our surprise to find spread out there the same “seventy-three” tiles that we had purchased the day before, and which had been whisked away from us. By “seventeen tray,” the guide meant “seventy-three.” We told the honest owner that he was too late; we had already tiles enough to cover his tomb.