Shopping in Saudi
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
I AM RIDING on a bus in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I am here for two months, flying charter flights during haj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage. This is long before the first Gulf War and I see no western women here other than flight attendants from various charter airlines.
I sit in the back of the bus, the women’s section, a solid wall separating me from male passengers and the bus driver. There is a separate entrance for women passengers. An honesty box is bolted to the wall, but I have never seen anyone deposit bus fare in it. We ride the bus for free back here.
I am returning from the souq, the busy marketplace, with my purchases. There is nothing to do in Jeddah. The flight attendants spend their days off watching videos, playing Scrabble, or swimming in the hotel pool, but the filter in the women-only pool has broken and we are not allowed to use the men’s pool, so today I shop.
I want a group photograph of all my flight attendant friends in our Saudi finery, gold at every finger, wrist, earlobe, throat. We drip with jewelry, bracelets jangling with each gesture, earrings sparkling in the light. Gold is cheap here and the shopkeepers in the souq take credit cards.
The bus pulls away from the curb. My fellow passengers, safe from prying eyes peering through windows at the bus stop, drop their veils, uncover their faces and talk to me. Where am I from? What did I buy? I show them my purchases. They ask what I paid and cluck their tongues. “Too much,” they sigh. “Americans don’t know how to bargain.”
Every time I ride the bus, I am asked the same questions and receive the same comments. Next time I try a different answer. I halve the price I paid. “Fifty dollars,” I tell them, for a bracelet that really cost me $100. The ladies on the bus still shake their heads, smile in pity, murmur sympathetically.
“You paid too much. Americans don’t know how to bargain,” they say smugly.
Cool story! Do you still have all your gold jewelry?
Some of it. I lost 1 earring of a pair. Another pair of earrings I gave to the wife of my guide in Cuba. One bracelet I got tired of. The bangles bent easily as the gold was 18k (soft) so I sold them. I have 1 bracelet, 1 pr. earrings and a necklace with my name in Arabic script left.