laura.fo

I hate haggling. In the movies it looks so easy. He wants $400 for that carpet; you offer him $50; after some charming banter in broken English you settle for maybe $125 and both of you walk away feeling like you got a deal. What's missing there is the pervasiveness of it, and the level of dignity at stake in every minor encounter.

Today the bowab came upstairs with a top of mine that had fallen off the clothesline on my balcony. I thanked him profusely, he was very nice, and then said he wanted money. I thought that was strange, because people don't usually ASK to be tipped for small favors like that, but whatever so I gave him a few pounds.

He took it and I started to shut the door and then he called me back. No, he said, it's the first of the month and he wanted his monthly fee. "Adil has it," I told him. (Adil is his brother, the regular doorkeeper; this guy is filling in for a few weeks while Adil is in Aswan.) No, he repeats, this is the first of the month. I need to pay again. "Adil I pay two month," I tell him. No, that was only one month's fee. I pretend not to understand. He knows I'm lying and goes to get the landlord, who lives upstairs.

Seriously? I don't care. We're arguing over $10, which I'm more than happy to pay to a guy who really needs it, who is going to be the first person I scream for if I encounter an intruder (or, more likely, a gecko), and the guy who can potentially make my life really difficult if he decides he doesn't like me.* But when I first got this place I was told by others that the bowab fee I was being quoted was outrageous, more than twice what they normally charge, and that my landlords were probably trying to scam me by making me pay their fee, too. I was told I absolutely under no circumstances should pay this sum again in August, because if I do the landlords will think I'm a gullible foreigner and charge me more for furniture they'll claim I damaged when I move out, or make me overpay the electricity bill.

They have a point. Yesterday the garbage guy came and asked me for the trash fee, which he claimed was twenty pounds. But then my neighbor across the hall opened his door and he told him it was five pounds. "Eh?!" I said. "He five pounds, me twenty?" Okay, he said, he'd charge me five, too. Since I mentioned it. And because that IS the going fee I wanted to shriek, but I let it go, because I wasn't as mad as I was stunned that I'd actually successfully bargained for something.

So I feel the need to do this with the bowab and the landlord, too, at least for the sake of appearances. I'm not worried about losing ten dollars, or honestly even being overcharged for the electricity bill, which is pretty cheap here, too, but I AM worried about being one of those horrible Americans who just goes around dripping cash everywhere without arguing, not realizing that that can be just as offensive as failing to tip at all. When every interaction is loaded with the expectation of future favors being granted or rescinded, a dollar is never just a dollar. You overpay this guy now, it means he owes you later. Do that too much and you're building up a mountain of obligations the other person can never hope to reciprocate, thereby solidifying your dominance over him. Some people thrive on that dynamic, and do it on purpose, making sure they're never the one who owes, only the one who's owed. There's a fine line there between "noble and generous" and "asshole." Since I never know where that line is, these situations always stress me out.

Another example: a few days ago I got a Coke from the kiosk. I took it out of the cooler, paid for it, drank it, and returned the bottle. I've done this hundreds of times and never thought twice about it. This time, the friend I was with discreetly told me what I've been doing is mildly offensive. I should drink it first, then return the bottle, and then pay for it, and that I should hand over the money in a low-key way. I had been treating this as An Official Financial Transaction, you-give-me-soda = I-give-you-cash, but culturally I should have been pretending that they were happy to host me and that the money I give them is just sort of a tip or an expression of appreciation; an afterthought. To be so obvious about paying for something made me seem rude and unappreciative of their hospitality. That would never in a million years have occurred to me if someone hadn't pointed it out. I can see it now, but before it would have seemed like "here, I'm just helping myself to your stuff, and I'll pay you on my own terms, servant."

I met a guy the other day originally from Guatemala but now living in L.A. who finally got his citizenship and was celebrating his right to leave the country by traveling around the world. He wanted to know how much a cab from the airport was. I told him twenty pounds. He said okay, I got screwed. I said yeah but I don't think it's malevolent? It's like there's a sliding scale operating all over the country; you're charged by what it's assumed you can afford. Tourism is a major industry and we're how a lot of people earn their living. He agreed with this.

But that only works if you're here for a couple weeks, if it's understood you don't know A from B, and if there's no expectation of an ongoing relationship. What confuses me more is the shopkeeper around the corner who saw me admiring some skirts in his window the other night. He invited me to have tea with him and his nephews. Do I politely refuse, not wanting to put him out? Or do I politely accept, not wanting to turn down his hospitality? Am I _expected_ to buy something afterwards, or does he merely hope I will?

We start to chat and it turns out he's really nice, a lovely older man who speaks English with a slight British accent. I tell him my father's coming in two weeks and he wants to take us to see whirling dervishes and the mosque near the Khan, even invites us to his house in Alexandria. If I take him up on this, which I'd actually like to do, how do I go about paying him? To say how much do you charge? would be unthinkable; we're having tea; we're pretending we're friends. On the other hand I would rather pay him directly than to waste half an afternoon being pressured to buy something from his friend of a friend who will slyly give him a kickback from my purchase while he carries on with the charade that he's doing this out of pure generosity. It feels cheap and cynical to worry about that, but stupid and naive not to.

So how to address it? When X's sister paid the driver she hired for the day she made me get out of the car before she did so because the conversation was so awkward she didn't want to embarrass him any more than was strictly necessary, or maybe she was worried I'd say something stupid. Neither of them wanted to admit our pleasant day driving around town had, at root, been a matter of us hiring him, that our whole facade of a relationship was in fact marked by hierarchy.

Americans don't care. They'll say right out loud HOW MUCH DOES THAT COST? like they can buy their way into anyone's good graces. What's troubling is that in a third world economy like this one, they often can. But that doesn't mean anyone's in love with that dynamic.

In the end I paid the bowab. Of course. And now I'm all worried anyway that I argued with him in the first place. Do I look miserly? Ungrateful? I'm especially embarrassed that I gave him a few pounds for bringing my top upstairs. I honestly thought that's what he wanted, but now I know I look like I was shitting on his good deed by giving him this tiny amount of money for it, which said both "I'm paying off my obligation to you" and "that obligation is worth almost nothing to me, or I would have given you more."

I could, no lie, spend my entire summer torturing myself over things like this.

* This article's tone is offensive. The information is basically true, though. Kitty was deported once because her bowab fed someone in power information about the number of men she was entertaining in her apartment.