It was stifling hot in the low red tent, where all sorts of crystals, glasses, and jewels were strewn upon hand-woven rugs on display. She was leaning over to examine a vial of perfume oil. Its glassy surface shimmered in the summer noonday sun, and her slender brown fingers glowed as if they had actually captured the essence of light within that vial. Her hair snaked below her short purple headband, coiling like a black python around her shoulders. That was the first time he’d seen her there.
“How much—who are—would you like me to buy that for you?” he stuttered in English, and his face burned with that guilty glow of a siren light. His hands fluttered to his pocket as if of their own accord.
“If you buy it for yourself it would be better,” she replied as she straightened. Her sapphire eyes arrested his. The dark face, accentuated by the light lines creasing mouth and eyes, smoothed into an amused expression. “I offer it at 281 Egyptian pounds. For you I’ll make it 278.”
He fumbled for his moneybag, and extracted 50 dollars worth of pounds. She held out her hand and took the money. Her eyebrows lifted even as her fingers closed over the banknotes. “You are not from here,” she remarked, her heavily accented English assuring him that she was.
“My Arabic is atrocious,” he apologized. “I know better than to try.”
“No, no,” she said. Her fingers danced over the tissues as she carefully folded up the vial. “Well, of course it is also the English. But you do not barter like our people do. Do you not believe that I made you purchase this for double its price?”
He shrugged, and his fingers brushed hers as she handed him the bag. The tent flap rustled as a family of blond-headed tourists shuffled in and gazed around at the glinting shop like beggars at a bank. “Would you—are you—do you like coffee?”
“What is your name, American?” The look in her eyes was almost one of recognition.
“Paul,” he said.
“I’m Yasmine,” she replied. “I close shop at day’s end. Come back then.”
She smiled at him, and he smiled back as he stumbled a couple times over the rolled-up carpets on his way out of the tent. He couldn’t wait till sunset.
"Angreek87"
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