Negotiating the Middle East's Bizarre Bazaar

A Parable

We hear today from only the murmuring voices of career diplomats and sundry policy makers in and out of government, and the merely hypocritical doubletalk of the EU, so anxious to sell and buy, and unready and blind to the looming light of nuclear war that flickers on the horizon out of Tehran or North Korea, or possibly Pakistan, India’s unstable neighbor.

Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate, they burble and coo, apparently the only word those professional soothsayers know, even in the face of dictators whose hole card lies open on the table: like the ace of spades, signifying martyrdom. As the centrifuges continue to whirr and more cascades for preparation of fissile uranium are mounted, the essential partner for diplomatic dealings remains unknown: is he perhaps Muhammed al-Mahdi, the hidden 12th Imam, the Messiah of the Shia, who must be called down to appear and destroy the world. It seems impossible for our paltering Western compromisers to grasp their end game, which lies open and obvious. Its fundamental modality however was played out to me simply more than decades ago.

In May 1964, my wife and children accompanied me to Jerusalem as guests of President Shazar. During the first week of receptions and meetings in Jerusalem, with visits to Jaffa and Tel Aviv our son Adam, then 6, pestered us to buy a kaffiyeh, that checkered headcloth later made notorious by Yasser Arafat. Pulling us into tourist shops where we paused to check their price, ranging from 12-16 lira, paltry enough.

I kept putting him off, arguing we’d find them cheaper elsewhere. (We had resided all that year in Italy and were used to the humor and chitchat of bargaining.) At the end of that week, Shazar said he had a busy weekend in store, and proposed to send us for 3 days to Kfar Blum, an "Anglo-Saxon" kibbutz up north on the Jordan river, where they were straightening its narrow stream, teaching Ethiopians modern agronomy. A flourishing place, the former swamps drained) and huge tanks built for carp, the fields growing cotton and alfafa, and flourishing orchards along the shore.

The President provided his official Citröen, and a young chauffeur who, being a casual Israeli, chose to detour before noon to take his plunge in the Mediterranean at Caesarea, in those years nothing but sand beach and a ruined Crusader tower a dozen yards from shore. Afterward, resuming the drive up the inland highway, we made out the towers of a city shimmering on an elevated ridge to the West.

— What's that place? I asked.

—That? Oh, it's called Nazareth.

— Nazareth? Wonderful! Let's stop and take a look!

— If you like, okay. Laughing, he added, We Jews say, Nothing but trouble ever comes out of Nazareth! You'll be sorry.

I insisted until he turned off and dropped us at the bottom at the edge of town and preferring himself to wait and guard the president’s limo. We climbed a steep street only wide enough for a donkey cart, nicely paved with blocks of that familiar, smooth and age-old polished gold-brown tufa, a runnel for rainwater cut down its middle. The sun being high, all was silent, the streets and houses glaring brightly. Not a person anywhere, people secluded in siesta. We walked up a narrow street, shuttered and still, except for one open shop. Hassocks, hookahs, brass trays, carved little tables, stacks of carpets, and ranged along three walls the usual clumsy souvenir pottery. We stepped into its cool and dim stillness. On one table lay a pile of machine-embroiderd schmattas, table linens and such, beside it a basket of as many kaffiyehs as one might hope to find. The boy went delightedly to them, picked out one in its cellophane wrapping and waved it happily.

—How much? I asked the shopkeeper, a lanky, unshaven, sour-faced Arab with a forced grin displaying stained, broken teeth.

He said, — For you, Effendi, 18 lira. Here, take it!

I replied, No, no! Quite too high. I will pay you ... 10 lira. [I thought was just opening our negotiation, fully expecting to settle at 13 lira, th average in Jerusalem.]

He cried, — What! I offer you cheap. Okay — 20 lira!

My wife and I stared at one another, bemused. I returned to him with my final offer. — Well, let it be 12 lira. Good enough?

— You crazy man? Beautiful cotton, look at it! Egyptian! You think it dishcloth? I tell you this — okay, you shall take it from me for gift. And he snatched it from the boy and thrust it into my hands. —Take it away ... it's yours .... Come on say done! Cheap for 25 lira!

I rejoined, — Now hold on, you're going the wrong way. I will pay 14 lira. Top price .... 14, okay? I took out my wallet.

—Don’t insult me, he retorted. For you I have made an excellent deal: 30 lira! Good? Shake hands! Last chance! Take it or leave it!

— Not on your life! I snarled

He yelled wildly, fists raised menacingly, — Get out! Out of my shop! Who needs your filthy lira? I will not sell my kaffiyeh to anyone but — he sneered — Your Excellency — Not for 40 lira! But for you, 50!

Upon which, he snatched the packet and hustled us into the glare of the blinding sun burning down on the vacant street. His iron shutters rattled down behind us while from behind them rang a volley of curses whose intonation needed no translation.

By then we were ourselves laughing. I said to my wife — That's it! Now I think I can understand Arabs.

First contact. That was 3 years before the terrible war of 1967. And it remains a lesson that for me illuminates the awful vicissitudes of the Middle East. I hope it may hold for this lifetime … perhaps that of our grandchildren as well.

— Jascha Kessler

Jascha Kessler is a Professor of English & Modern Literature at UCLA. He has published seven books of his poetry and fiction as well as six volumes of translations of poetry and fiction from Hungarian, Persian, Serbian and Bulgarian