posted
So, today, my mother, my sister and I were in the old city. We had to buy a few things that you can really only get there. It was fairly empty, there were tourists, but few, because of the holiday. We stopped at one man's stall to buy something my mom spotted as a gift for her friend.
My mother started negotiating the price with the man (in Jerusalem, if you stick with the price they give you, you will get ripped off... haggling is pretty much compulsory). The man kept complimenting me, and telling me how pretty I am, and how I captured his heart... it made me a little uncomfortable, but honestly, when a fair-complexioned young girl walks into these places without a young man, it's expected. It's happened to me many times before.
When my mom finally bought the present, he said "wait wait, I have a gift for your daughter..." and went to the back of the stall. He came out with a small metal bead, which he informed me would bring me luck, and started playing with a piece of wire, making a little hoop, so I could wear it around my neck. We were pretty anxious to leave by this point, and he was taking his sweet time about it, but all the while he kept telling my mom "your daughter is so beautiful... I like her a lot." I just wanted to leave.
Finally, before he gave me the bead, he turned to my mom and said "I give you one hundred camels for her!"
O_O O_O
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But joking aside, if he was actually serious, that's an incredibly steep price. I believe the standard in Bedouin culture is ten camels for a young girl, not a hundred.
But still... nobody's ever offered to trade me for camels before! Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Just think if he got to know you, how high the price could be, you should have asked to see the camals before any further haggling though, to prove he could pay if a deal were made. Posts: 376 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
We should list Raia on eBay with a minimum bid of 100camels. When the price gets high enough, we can sell the camels to pay for our flights to her wedding.
quote: We should list Raia on eBay with a minimum bid of 100camels. When the price gets high enough, we can sell the camels to pay for our flights to her wedding.
posted
Raia, just think of all the daughters your mom could buy with a hundred camels, if she shopped carefully.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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That's impressive! A friend of mine was in rural Tunisia on a project a few years ago and some local men in a shop only offered 30 to her male companions for her. Maybe Tunisian camels are bigger...
Posts: 624 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I have a friend in my unit who was in Somalia, he once shot a bunch of camels to get three insurgents hiding amoung them, 20 or so... anyway it was an international incident so they seem to have a great deal of value.
Luckily by the time they went out to count the damage the locals had hauled them all away for food! Hee Hee.
But did this man actually have 100 camels or is the Camel some medium of standard exchange? I mean in Iowa it takes about four acres of pasture to keep a cow, or 400 acres for 100 cows, in a more arid area this has to multiply by a factor of at least five so do you have 2000 acres of land to keep your camels on?
Still it is good that some part of the world are working on a standard unit for self esteem, ie "The Camel" though it could lead to all kinds of crudity about how many humps a girl is worth! BC
Posts: 1249 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
When I was sixteen a man offered 400 cows, but who knows if that was a realistic offer or not. Maybe he expected me to bargain him down.
Posts: 28 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Mom was offered a gold puzzle ring for me once. The list price was about $250, which seems insultingly low.
Granted this was at a Ren Fair, so it was probably less serious than the other offers in this thread. I've had vendors try to buy me from guys I was there with, too. One offered extra 'cause I blushed. :/
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Are you sure he wasn't refering to Camel cigarettes? I had a friend in prison who said something about getting traded for cigarettes. Used cigarettes I think, cause he kept complaining that they guys thought he was cheap ash or something like that.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Did anyone else ever wish that they would have had a Mahana play the role who actually was ugly? It's easy to be all sacrificing Johnny Lingo-like when the girl is, in all reality, really hot. It would have been far more touching if she had the face of a dog and all kinds of unsightly body hair.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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