PLOV 13 - Channel Genghis
PLOV
Five hours into the six-and-a-half train ride from Bukhara to Tashkent. For the first three, the landscape is just a dusty brown, the only bits of green popping up from the rectangles of astroturf used as football fields. Everyone out the window showing low-key signs of worry. Farmers on quads splashing through dark puddles on their way to muddy fields. No signs of mountains on the horizon. Everywhere, grey skies. "Funny that you're here now," an English-speaking teacher tells me when we chat at the Samarkand stop. "It's kind of the off-season."
Ah, the last bits of PLOV, like braised beef caught in your teeth. Allow me, Bernard, to be your floss on this strange journey.
I'm being dramatic. Plenty of sun in the last few hours in Bukhara today: grandpas walking hand-in-hand with kids, old men riding unkillable 1970s Soviet single-speeds, ladies impeccably made up and flowery-scarved. We look into the old state bank building, find it converted into a museum of contemporary Uzbek art.
The staff let us up onto the second floor and we spend an hour opening doors, sneaking glances in. Unsure what's an exhibit and what's an old building. There are cracks in the plaster everywhere. In one room, three paintings have been removed, the wall darkened and swollen behind where they were hung. After we come back down, one woman--staff? Just someone interested in us? I'll never know--gestures to come with her, takes us across the courtyard to another building, where there's a private gallery with pieces for sale.
The art of the bargain, Uzbek-style: there are a couple of ways you can go with this. A Samarkandi friend of a friend texted me that you should always offer a fifth of the asking price, because any smart seller will jack up the price for unsuspecting tourists. This made my stomach churn at first. I am a weakling. I would so much rather be fleeced than fleecer. But over time, I've figure out some tacks to take.
One option: backbone. go low, look the merchant in the eye when they smile sadly and say, no, I couldn't do this, and wait for them to counteroffer. Keep to your price, watch them squirm. Listen to their pleas. No, mister, you will bankrupt me. I have children! It's a good price. Look here, this is hand-stitched. Show no pity. Channel Genghis Khan. Hold til they've gotten down to a little less than half of what they asked, and let them out of their misery. Our logistics coordinator does this, and let me tell you: oof. It feels like watching your grandparents torture an informant. Horrifying, but gets the job done.
Another, much quicker: forget any cultural context and give in immediately. Sure, bargaining is the appropriate and expected thing to do in a market, or with a street seller. On the other hand, the current exchange rate is 12,000 uzbek som to one Canadian dollar. You can buy a silk scarf, hand-embroidered, for about 150,000 som--twelve dollars. You come from a country with good food, a working democracy, health insurance; you make sixty thousand dollars a year. Shut up and give these people your money.
My tack: try to thread the needle. Get the seller to name a price; whatever they say, clutch your fingers to your heart and repeat the number, gasping. You can't be serious. You're going to kill me with this price. I have children! (I do not have children.) What about--and let's be reasonable here--a fourth of that?
Do this with a wink; everybody knows you're not upset. But it's the way of saying, okay, I know what's going on here. If they don't smile and keep their price, turn to leave and wait for the okay, okay, what about-- and start again. If they smile and play ball, work your way three moves down the line--you say forty, I say ten, you say thirty-five, I say fifteen--til you're shy of less than halfway, and then go for whatever price you have on the table.
There are variations on this move, and there are no right answers on how to get there, but it works for me. It seems to go over well. Mixes the bargaining-is-tradition custom with a clear I'm-not-here-to-screw-you, which tends to get some respect. As in all commerce, it's a moral grey area, an improv and a dance in and of itself. I wish I had more time to perfect it; get a sense of what's kind, of what's just, which is a sense you only get through a lifetime of bazaars, I think. Only so many scarves you can buy in a fortnight, though.
As it is, I step into a ceramicist's shop and pick out a tea pot, a serving plate, four cups; I bring in my travel companions, who pick out their own things. I smile and gasp with delight when the ceramicist knocks two bowls together and they let out a clear peal, reverberating into the early afternoon. I ask questions. I am very loud in my indecision about which colours to pick out because they're just so beautiful I want to cry.
And then I get him to knock 150,000 som off the asking price, with fifty more because I hesitate in counting my money, which earns me a wry smile and an extra tiny teacup as thanks for being the first sale of the day. There are many ways to be a sucker, I decide. I'm OK with mine.
Just getting onto a plane out to Istanbul, then Montreal. Expect a recap, some gratitude, the unhinged rantings of the underslept... soon!
Till then--
B
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