Locked in what I had hoped was a goodbye handshake with a friendly Berber tribesman, I tried to pull my hand away but somehow instead agreed to purchase a Berber rug for 2000 Dirhams (approximately 300 dollars). Gord and I had been hassled and wooed with mint tea by various carpet salesmen several times in the past few weeks, each time saying no no no, but somehow this short, well spoken mountain man in the town of Tinehir had managed to convince me that I needed a new rug and before I knew it I had walked out the door with a 12x6 living room rug neatly folded and packaged up in an old potato bag.
The morning had started off innocently enough, sitting in the sun on the main road in town eating a cheese omelet and sipping our coffees. A Moroccan man sat at the table next to us and struck up a conversation in English while a local kid polished my leather shoes for a mere 40 cents. The man said that he now lived in Madrid but was back in Morocco visiting family during the sheep killing festival and asked us where we were from, how we were enjoying our trip and similar small talk. Our conversation eventually lead to discussion of our hamman experience and the friendly stranger started to give us a lesson in what we needed for our next hammam experience and offered to take us to the nearby souk to purchase the required items (glove for soap that has NOT been used on 3593 other people before us, etc etc). With an hour or so to spare before continuing our ride west, Gord and I took the man up on his offer and quickly shown different aspects of the market we wouldn't have seen had we just walked through ourselves.
The man noted that both Gord and I were rather congested and suggested that we stop at a market naturopath for a quick remedy. Barking at the 16 year old naturopathic "doctor" in Arabic, the man opened a number of mason jars and scooped a small amount of powder out of each and into a cloth which he then tied off at the end to shape into a small ball. We each took our turn holding the cloth ball up to our nose and huffing the deepest breath possible through nasal cavities, essentially sniffing a line of unknown spices, powders and snake oils into our system. Remarkably the combination seemed to do the trick though, and the kid didn't even charge us for it. Hmmm... I wonder how many others had put their nose up against that cloth.
The next stop in our tour was to see how local carpets were made and although we figured it would be yet another sales pitch, the seemingly genuine nature and no pressure approach of our "guide"during our past few market stops made it seem unlikely. The Berber man who ran the co-operative welcomed us inside, offered us mint tea (oh oh... bad sign) and began to ask us questions about life in Canada before having his wife demonstrate how she weaved a carpet together over a period of six to eighteen months *cough*bullshit*cough*. Next came the display of various rugs on offer and that is when I made the fatal mistake of showing even a little interest in one of them. This minor interest did not go unnoticed by the Berber and within seconds he was giving me his initial price and asking me what my "happy price" was. When I explained that the carpet was lovely but that my "happy price" likely wasn't enough and that I didn't want to insult him, the Berber, sharp as a knife and a damn good salesman, always had a quick reply. At one point he looked me over and said I could trade various pieces of clothing and/or my watch along with cash for the rug and even took my Timex in hand to examine it.
